The 17th Annual Torstenson Lecture in Sociology, featuring Michelle S. Phelps, Ph.D.

Following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, Minneapolis became the epicenter of fiery protests over police violence and the failures of police reform. In response, members of the city council pledged to “end” the police department. The Minneapolis Reckoning tells the story of how the city appeared to arrive at the brink of police abolition after years of Black Lives Matter activism—and what happened after. This account of the city’s struggles over what constitutes real accountability, justice, and safety offers a vitally important picture of the possibilities and limits of challenging police power in America.

Michelle S. Phelps is Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is the coauthor of Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice (Oxford, 2017) and the author of The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America (Princeton, 2024). Her award-winning research on the criminal legal system has been published in leading disciplinary and interdisciplinary academic journals and featured in major media outlets including the Washington Post, TIME Magazine, and The New Yorker.