About Us

Chicago Society was founded in 2001 to bring students together and create events on campus that foster student, faculty, and community engagement with pertinent issues. Since our founding, we have held a wide variety of events, from a conference that attracted over a thousand attendees to small-scale lunches with professors. Our events have appeared in newspapers in places as far apart as Serbia, Turkey, Australia, and China, where we have furthered the reputation of our university as the heart of great debate and discussion on the world’s most pressing issues.

Chicago Society is a great organization for students who are interested in:

• Joining an active and enthusiastic group of students with a great variety of interests
• Working behind the scenes with experts from around the world who are featured at Chicago Society events
• Strengthening relationships with professors within the University through CS member lunches as well as larger events
• Creating events about their own interests with university funding
• Designing marketing proposals and materials (each event is a new marketing challenge)
• Helping to organize events through finance efforts such as writing grant proposals and coordinating logistics efforts, both of which are crucial to all of our events

Members of Chicago Society frequently organize CS lunches and dinners with their favorite professors, giving all members the chance to meet interesting and friendly professors from all disciplines—while eating free food from area restaurants.

There are no applications for membership and we always welcome new members. For more information about getting involved, click here.

Selected List of Large Events

This is a short list containing some of our previous large events. To see a comprehensive list, please visit our Past Chicago Society Events page.

• LOL 101: Comedy as Commentary
• “China and the Future of the World”
• “Rediscovering Ragtime: An Evening with Reginald Robinson”
• “Media and the Public Interest: Debating the Responsibility of the Press in a Democratic Society”
• “Envisioning Kosovo: Prospects for an Uncertain Future”
• “Undressing College: The Naked Economics of Student Life”
• “Business Ethics Today: Is there a Market for Ethics in Corporate America?”
• A Fireside Chat with Rashid Khalidi on the Axis of Evil
• “The Stories of Kashmir: An Evening Exploring the Literary Traditions of Kashmir”
• “What’s Wrong With Prostitution?”

Selected List of Speakers

This is a list of selected speakers from previous Chicago Society events. To see a comprehensive list, please visit our Past Chicago Society Events page.

• Anwar Ibrahim, Former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia
• Wang Guangya, Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations
• Christopher R. Hill, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
• Santiago Creel Miranda, Mexico’s Minister of the Interior
• David Hiller, Publisher and Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Tribune
• Charles Wheelan, Author of Naked Economics
• Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, Columbia University (author of Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East)
• Les Janka, President of the Council on American-Saudi Dialogue
• Samantha Power, Winner of Pulitzer-Prize for A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (Harvard University)

More information

• Past Events
• The Vision Statement
• Organizational Bylaws
  
• The Executive Board
• Contact Details