You might know former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich for his public service, many books, or entertaining and informative social media posts, but he always considered teaching his true calling. Now, after over 40 years and an extraordinary 40,000 students, Reich is preparing for his last class, wrestling with the dual realities of his own aging and his students inheriting a world out of balance.

The Last Class is a love letter to education, a nuanced and deeply personal portrait of master educator Robert Reich teaching his final course and reflecting on a period of immense transformation, personally and globally.

Over the course of the film, Reich confronts the impending finality, and his own aging, with increasing candor, introspection, and, ultimately, emotion. He displays a rawness of feeling he has never shared publicly before. Drawing on his lifetime in politics, he uses his class, "Wealth and Poverty," to offer us all a deeper look at why inequalities of income and wealth have widened significantly since the late 1970s, and why this poses dangerous risks to our society.

One thousand students fill the biggest lecture hall on the UC Berkeley campus, the last class to receive Reich's wisdom and exhortations not to accept that the world has to stay the way it is. His belief in the next generation's ability to take on the fight is inspiring.

Join your community in watching The Last Class as the Department of Sociology and Criminology hosts a screening of the 2025 documentary at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 3, in Gearhart 026. Everyone is invited.