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Speaker: Steven W. Thrasher, PhD

In a single week in December 2025, the Democratic governors of New York and Illinois both signed bills into law which legalized medically assisted suicide. Upon noticing this, journalist and scholar Steven W. Thrasher began to study how many "right to die" bills had passed in Western countries since the Covid-19 pandemic. These laws were often passed despite the objections of disabled activists and with the support of liberal politicians—even as those same politicians were killing legislation which would create a right to housing or a right to universal medical care (ie, a "right to life"). 

Using Canada's 2016 "MAID" (Medical Assistance In Dying) law, recently passed bills in the United States and Europe, the daily occurence of suicide in U.S. jails, the films The Bridge (2006) and Life After (2015), the writings of Alice Wong, and Achille Mbembe's Necropolitics (2011) as analytics, Prof. Thrasher will challenge a liberal rights framework of independence with a disability rights framework of interdependence to theorize medically assisted suicide.

Steven W. Thrasher, PhD holds the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair of Social Justice in Reporting at Northwestern University. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Overseer Class, which was named one of the Top 10 Politics and Current Events Books of Spring 2026 by Publishers Weekly. He also wrote the award-winning debut The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide, which was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2022 by Kirkus Reviews and The Stacks; was chosen as an editors pick by the New York Times, USA Today, Apple and Amazon; won the 2023 POZ Award for Best in Literature; and was longlisted for both the PEN America/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Dr. Thrasher has also received grants from the Pulitzer Center, Ford Foundation and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. His writing has been widely published by Contexts, The Intercept, Guardian, New York Times, Village Voice, Literary Hub, and The Nation and has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, Polish and Spanish. A California native who was inducted into the Oxnard High School Alumni Hall of Fame in 2024, Thrasher holds a PhD in American Studies.

The Stephen and Sandra Glass Annual Humanities Lecture at Â鶹ԭ´´ is an endowed lecture series showcasing international figures in the humanities. Established in 2004, it honors founding faculty member Stephen L. Glass and his wife, Sandra Glass, with support from alumna Nancy Rose Bushnell ’69.

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