​Welcome to Binge Thinking. We invite professors and experts to give lectures in bars around Boston, NYC, and DC!

In a world of AI slop, doomscrolling and brainrot, Binge Thinking brings real experts into real places for nights of learning, conversation, and community.

Think Responsibly.

​TOPIC:
Why Some Countries Come Together, Why Others Fall Apart: Nation-Building, Ethnic Inequality, and Civil War

SPEAKER:
Dr. Andreas Wimmer, Columbia University

​Some countries hold together for centuries. Others split apart, sometimes violently, within a few decades. Same idea of the "nation," wildly different results. So what's the secret ingredient?

​It turns out a lot comes down to who holds power and who gets left out. When governments build alliances across ethnic lines, people start to feel like they belong to one shared nation. When major groups get shut out of power, the state loses its legitimacy, and that's when civil wars and cross-border conflicts tend to break out.

​In this talk, Dr. Andreas Wimmer pulls from decades of research and brand-new global data to explain why nation-building works in some places and backfires in others.

​Topics include:

​How the nation-state was born and spread across the world

​Why empires and dynasties lost out to nationalists, and the role war played in it

​The three ingredients for successful nation-building: strong civil society, a shared language, and a state that actually delivers

​What happens when ethnic groups are excluded from power

​Why some civil wars and border conflicts are really about "who belongs"

​Beyond the theory, this is a story about belonging.

​Whether a country thrives or fractures often depends on a simple question: does everyone feel like they have a seat at the table? This talk digs into the history, and the data, behind the answer.

​About the Speaker

​Dr. Andreas Wimmer is the Lieber Professor of Sociology and Political Philosophy at Columbia University. He earned his M.A. in social anthropology and sociology (1989), his PhD in social anthropology (1992, summa cum laude), and his habilitation (1994), all from the University of Zurich.

​Before Columbia, he taught at Princeton and UCLA, and his research has taken him from field work in Oaxaca, Mexico and Iraq to large-scale quantitative studies of nations and conflict. He is the author of Nation Building: Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall Apart (2018). His honors include the Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research, an honorary PhD from McGill University, lifetime achievement awards from sections of the American Sociological Association and the International Studies Association, and the Heisenberg Fellowship from the German Research Council. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He also holds an honorary PhD from the University of Copenhagen.

​Agenda
6:30 PM - Doors Open (Grab a seat and drinks!)
7:00 PM - Lecture Begins
7:40 PM - Audience Q&A
8:00 PM - Drinks & Conversation
8:30 PM - Event Ends

​Join us and grab a drink as we ask why some nations unite while others splinter. Is it power, language, or who gets a seat at the table?