UC San Diego Helen Edison Lecture Series and the School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) present Steven Pinker in Conversation with Dean Peter Cowhey for a free public lecture on Enlightenment Now: The Future of Progress. Join Peter Cowhey, dean of the School of Global Policy and Strategy for an in-depth conversation with Steven Pinker, an experimental psychologist and Johnstone Family Professor Psychology at Harvard University. In his new book, Enlightenment Now, Pinker makes a powerful argument that by every measure, the conditions of human life have been improving steadily for the past 200 years. This improvement can be attributed not just to the spread of eighteenth-century principles of enlightenment, but also to the evolved properties of the modern human mind. Enlightenment Now argues that we live in the best of times—and must remain devoted to reason and humanism if that is to continue. According to Pinker, contrary to popular belief our world is getting better, not worse and this seems to be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of us. The School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) is celebrating its 30^th anniversary by exploring the themes that will shape global dynamics for the coming decades: crafting 21st-century policy, navigating an evolving political economy, and fusing technology and policy.