Join us as we discuss how billionaires from finance and big tech adopted more oligarchical roles in US politics and higher education with Charlie Eaton, Associate Professor of Sociology at UC Merced and author of the book Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education.

• Charlie Eaton is an Associate Professor of Sociology at UC Merced where he co-founded the Higher Education, Race, and the Economy (HERE) Lab. He investigates the power of elites in politics and the economy, as well as policy and organizational strategies to promote more equitable distributions of power and wealth. My book, Bankers in the Ivory Tower (University of Chicago Press, 2022), is about the relationship between financialization, inequalities in higher education, and the rise of private equity and hedge fund investors among US billionaires. The book won the Pierre Bourdieu best book award from the American Sociological Association. His ongoing research examines how billionaires from finance and big tech adopted more oligarchical roles in US politics and he writes about this project in his newsletter, Axis of Oligarchy.

This session is a part of the larger Jubilee School: College for All series.