“That Which Cannot Be Owned”: A Lecture with Dr. Gerald Torres

Join Artspace New Haven for an in-person lecture with Yale University Professor of Environmental Justice at the Yale School of the Environment and a Professor at Yale Law School, Gerald Torres. Dr. Torres’s lecture addresses the neo-liberal moment that defines our current predicament as it imagines the imperatives of the market can be used to manage all the problems facing us. Yet we inhabit a world where many things that are essential to life resist that ideological straitjacket. Dr. Torres will talk about those things which are properly thought of as common property and what it means for democratic politics. 

“That Which Cannot Be Owned: A Lecture with Dr. Gerald Torres” is part of the series “The Commons: Towards Reclaiming Collective Power,” conceptualized by Bergman & Salinas as attendant works within their exhibition Against the General Good/ Contra el Bien General, on view September 17–December 3, 2022. For in-person programs, Artspace encourages mask-wearing and social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19 within our community. 

Gerald Torres is Professor of Environmental Justice at the Yale School of the Environment and a Professor at Yale Law School. He is former President of the Association of American Law Schools and has served as Counsel to the Attorney General on environmental matters and Indian affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Torres served on the Board of the Environmental Law Institute, the EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, and was the founding chairman of the Advancement Project. He is board chair of Earth Day and a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He was a consultant to the United Nations on environmental matters. Torres is a life member of the American Law Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations.