"Militarizing the Police: Empire and the Global Color Line"

This talk offers an historical sociology of militarized policing in the US and Britain, where the model of our current “civil police” was born. It explores the deep historical roots of militarized policing, its causes, and its inextricable connections with empire abroad and racial dynamics at home.

Julian Go is Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, where he is also a member of the Committee on International Relations, a Faculty Affiliate of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, and Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows. He has published widely on US empire, US colonialism, global historical sociology, and postcolonial social theory. He has received prizes for his scholarship from the American Sociological Association, the Eastern Sociological Society, the American Political Science Association, and the International Studies Association, among other organizations. He is the winner of Lewis A. Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting given by the American Sociological Association. Currently he is President of the Social Science History Association.