Dr. Carl Hart, author of High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journeyof Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know about Drugs and Society, is a groundbreaking neuroscientist at Columbia University. His story of growing up in one of Miami’s toughest neighborhoods shaped his scientific work in drug addiction. He will be the first speaker in the HASS Inquiry Lecture series for fall semester 2014.
Carl Hart is Columbia University’s first tenured African American professor in the sciences. His research redefines understandings of addiction and drug effects. He regularly speaks about the need for science based drug policy. In High Price, his scientific memoir, Hart interweaves past and present so as to lead his audience to re-examine ideas about drugs and pleasure, choice and motivation, brain and society. His findings shed new light on common ideas about race, poverty, and drugs. He explains current policy in accessible language and tirelessly applies his science to help save real lives and reflect on what it means to be an individual caught within a system of entrenched poverty and inequality. Hart will speak at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center Concert Hall. 4 p.m. Free.