A TWO-DAY CONFERENCE sponsored by the Mitchell Center, on May 24 and 25, brought scholars and practitioners together in Philadelphia for the purpose of planning a series of publications inspired by the dictum in Marx's Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach: "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." This vision of social transformation represents a view that the world can be qualitatively better, and substantially more egalitarian and just, than it is — and that production of careful and serious intellectual work is an essential element of pursuing that vision. The series will include empirical-historical monographs; critiques of historical and contemporary ideology; treatises on policy studies, urban political economy, and aesthetic theory; and examinitions of issues and questions bearing on strategic politics.

This event coincided with the retirement of Penn Political Science Professor Adolph Reed, one of the conference participants, whose scholarship and activism has long sought to change the world. As he makes clear in this Penn Today profile, which appeared on May 24, Reed's pursuit of this goal is far from over.