The 2025 Alice Cook-Lois Gray Distinguished Lecture, “Poverty Wages, 'We're Not Lovin' It': Gender, Race and Inequality Rising in the 21st Century,” begins at 4:30 p.m. April 15 in the ILR Conference Center, 423 King-Shaw Hall, 140 Garden Avenue. 

Annelise Orleck, professor of history and co-chair of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Dartmouth College, is the speaker. 

The public is invited and can register here. In-person attendance is encouraged. For those who can only attend via Zoom, a link will be included in the registration confirmation email.

The talk will examine the transformative moment in labor history that began around 2010, when low-wage workers in service, retail, garment, and farm work began organizing global labor actions of unprecedented scale involving workers on six 

The annual ILR lecture is named after deceased ILR faculty members Alice Hanson Cook and Lois Spier Gray and is held to advance their visions of social justice and equality. 

This year’s lecture is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Inequality, Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Cornell Population Center, Department of Sociology, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, and the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.

Read the full story on the ILR website.
Mary Catt is the Director of Communications at the ILR School.