Join in person in Knight Law Center 175 or via livestream for this timely discussion, which will be followed by audience Q&A. It is part of the Wayne Morse Center's 2025-2027 Theme of Inquiry Common Ground: Cities, Towns, and Counties Confronting Shared Challenges and is free and open to the public.

Click here to join the livestream. No registration required. Free and open to the public.

Moderated by Dr. Lesley Jo Weaver (UO), Associate Professor at the University of Oregon and co-director of the Homelessness Policy and Health Research Group

UCLA sociologist Chris Herring’s research focuses on poverty, homelessness, and housing in US cities. His current book project is an ethnography of the criminalization of homelessness in San Francisco to be published with UC Press.  He has co-directed two participatory action research projects and publications with the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, where he organized with the Human Rights Working Group. Herring served as a researcher at the San Francisco’s Mayor’s Office of Homelessness and has collaborated on research with the National Coalition on Homelessness, Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, the Western Regional Advocacy Project, and ACORN. He regularly consults with county governments, think tanks, and legal aid groups.

Herring’s writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Places, Progressive Planning, Shelterforce, the Berkeley Journal of Sociology, and homeless street newspapers across the US and Canada. His research and commentary has also been featured in the LA Times, NY Times, UK Guardian, Al Jazeera, the San Francisco Chronicle, Bloomberg’s City Lab, and other outlets.

UO Professor Claire Herbert's research focuses on law, housing, property, and urban sociology. Her book, A Detroit Story: Urban Decline and the Rise of Property Informality was published with University of California Press in 2021. In this book, she examines the way that de jure illegal uses of property - like squatting, scrapping, and gardening - shape the form of the city, neighborhood conditions, and residents’ well being.

Professor Herbert is currently writing a book called When Home is Illegal: Unsheltered Homelessness in America which examines the interaction between local regulations, enforcement, and the well-being of residents experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Professor Herbert is also Co-PI on an NSF-funded, mixed-methods project called "Informality and Inequality in the Global North: Regulation, Non-Compliance, and Enforcement in US Land Use and Housing Law" which studies informal infill: housing units produced in violation of local regulations but that provide an important source of affordable housing. 

In her compelling new book, The Master-Servant Doctrine: How Old Legal Rules Haunt the Modern Workplace, Oregon Law Professor Liz Tippett reveals through historical context and contemporary case studies how modern employment law and management practices remain tainted by the centuries-old “master-servant” doctrine, which gives employers significant power over workers. In this talk, Tippett will share insights relevant for advocates, legal scholars, and anyone who’s ever worked a terrible job.

Free and open to the public.

Sponsored by UO's Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. Co-sponsored by the University of Oregon School of Law.