Conversations on Racism and Police Training

Join Sam Harris as he confronts the issue of race in the US in a series of thoughts and conversations on the topic.

In this first installment in the series, Sam Harris responds to misrepresentations of his views on profiling (again).

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In the second installment in the series, Sam Harris speaks with Thomas Chatterton Williams about the reality and politics of race. They discuss his book Self Portrait in Black and White, race as a social and biological construct, the prospects of achieving a "post-racial" society, interracial marriage, and other topics.

Thomas Chatterton Williams is the author of Losing My Cool and Self-Portrait in Black and White. He is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and American Scholar, and a 2019 New America Fellow. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, Harper’s, and other journals.

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In the third installment, Sam discusses the recent social protests and civil unrest, in light of what we know about racism and police violence in America.

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In the fourth installment, Sam Harris tries to clear up any confusion that may be about his views on racism in the US.

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In the final installment in this series, Sam Harris speaks with Rener Gracie about police procedure and about the special relevance of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for safely controlling resisting suspects.

Rener Gracie is a third-generation member of the legendary Gracie Family credited with creating the self-defense system known as Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. He started learning the family craft at two years old, and he was 10 years old when his father created the UFC. Today, Rener is the co-owner and chief instructor at the Gracie University of Jiu-Jitsu, the global jiu-jitsu organization headquartered in Southern California. With over 180 brick-and-mortar locations worldwide, and over 300,000 students learning via the interactive online jiu-jitsu portal (GracieUniversity.com), Rener has dedicated his life to sharing jiu-jitsu with the world.

In recent years, Rener has become a central figure in the discussion surrounding police use of force in the United States. With over 20 years of experience teaching law enforcement professionals, he presents compelling data that substantiates the need for more training for police officers at a time when many are fighting to "defund the police," which would accomplish the exact opposite.



Join neuroscientist, philosopher, and best-selling author Sam Harris as he explores important and controversial questions about the human mind, society, and current events.

Sam Harris is the author of five New York Times bestsellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, Waking Up, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance (with Maajid Nawaz). The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. His writing and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence, rationality—but generally focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live.

Harris's work has been published in more than 20 languages and has been discussed in The New York Times, Time, Scientific American, Nature, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere.

Sam Harris received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.