Author Events

Jens Ludwig | Unforgiving Places

Tue, May 20, 2025 7:00 P.M.

The Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation presents a community conversation Jens Ludwig | Unforgiving Places

With Maiken Scott & David W. Brown

What if everything we understood about gun violence was wrong?

In 2007, economist Jens Ludwig moved to the South Side of Chicago to research two big questions: Why does gun violence happen, and is there anything we can do about it? Almost two decades later, the answers aren’t what he expected. Unforgiving Places is Ludwig’s revelatory portrait of gun violence in America’s most famously maligned city.

Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually grow out of a more fleeting source: interpersonal conflict, especially arguments. By examining why some arguments turn tragic while others don’t, Ludwig shows gun violence to be more circumstantial—and more solvable—than our traditional approaches lead us to believe.

Drawing on decades of research and Ludwig’s immersive fieldwork in Chicago, including “countless hours spent in schools, parks, playgrounds, housing developments, courtrooms, jails, police stations, police cars, and lots and lots of McDonald’ses,” Unforgiving Places is a breakthrough work at the cutting edge of behavioral economics. As Ludwig shows, progress on gun violence doesn’t require America to solve every other social problem first; it only requires that we find ways to intervene in the places and the ten-minute windows where human behaviors predictably go haywire.

Jens Ludwig is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. He is the Pritzker Director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, codirector of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s working group on the economics of crime, elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, and a member of the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academies of Science. His work has been featured in leading peer-reviewed scientific publications as well as national media like the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and PBS NewsHour, among other outlets.

Maiken Scott is the host and executive producer of WHYY’s The Pulse - a weekly, national health and science radio show and podcast that explores the people and places at the heart of health and science. The show airs on more than 120 public radio stations across the country and its podcast is presented by NPR. Before hosting The Pulse, Maiken covered behavioral health for WHYY.

David W. Brown is Executive Director of the Civic Coalition to Save Lives – a broad cross-sector effort bringing more than 100 businesses, philanthropic and civic organizations together to partner with the City of Philadelphia and community-based organizations focused on intervention to address the issue of gun violence. At Temple, he is the Assistant Dean for Community and Communication for the Klein College of Media and Communication. Additionally, he received the 2016 Ofield Dukes Educator Award, conferred by the National Black Public Relations Society. Brown also has the distinction of being the only person to have served as both president of PRSA’s Philadelphia chapter and the Philadelphia Advertising Club.

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The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees.