Orlando Patterson is one of the world's leading historical sociologists. He is best known for his sweeping comparative studies of the history and meaning of slavery and freedom, Slavery and Social Death (1982) and Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (1991); Freedom won the National Book Award for non-fiction. He has also published widely on the sociology of ethnicity and race, and on development in the Caribbean including his native Jamaica. He has served as Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Jamaica for social policy and development, and has been recognized with the Gold Musgrave Medal for contributions to literature, the Sorokin Prize for distinguished contributions to scholarship in sociology, and the Ralphe Bunche Prize for the best work in political science studying ethnic and cultural pluralism. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the author of three novels.

The Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds was established in academic year 2015-16 as a home for historical, normative, and comparative social inquiry from across the humanistic social sciences at McGill. Its research clusters in Constitutional Studies, Democracy Space and Technology, Global Antiquities, Global Justice, and Transitions and Global Modernities, encourage multidisciplinary research that spans regions of the world and eras of history. Each spring the Lin Centre will host a public lecture by a leading scholar who has made major contributions to its field of research. It is supported by a generous gift to McGill from Yan P. Lin Ph.D. '92, More information is available at http://www.mcgill.ca/lin-centre.

Lecture 4:30-6 pm, reception to follow