Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life, featuring Nicholas Kristof

Nicholas Kristof,  New York Times columnist, Pulitzer Prize winner, and best-selling author, will give a talk based on his new book. Join us in person or watch the livestream. Since 1984, Nicholas Kristof has worked almost continuously for The New York Times as a reporter, foreign correspondent, bureau chief, and now columnist, becoming one of the foremost reporters of his generation. Here, he recounts his event-filled path from a small-town farm in Oregon to every corner of the world. Reporting from Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo, while traveling far afield to India, Africa, and Europe, Kristof witnessed and wrote about century-defining events: the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, the Yemeni civil war, the Darfur genocide in Sudan, and the wave of addiction and despair that swept through his hometown and a broad swath of working-class America. 

Kristof writes about some of the great members of his profession and introduces us to extraordinary people he has met, such as the dissident whom he helped escape from China and a Catholic nun who browbeat a warlord into releasing schoolgirls he had kidnapped. These are the people, the heroes, who have allowed Kristof to remain optimistic. Side by side with the worst of humanity, you always see the best.

Kristof is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, where he was previously bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. He is the coauthor, with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, of five previous books: Tightrope, A Path Appears, Half the Sky, Thunder from the East, and China Wakes. He was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes, one with WuDunn in 1990 for their coverage of China, and the second in 2006 for his columns on Darfur.

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center's 2023-25 theme of inquiry, Defending Democracy. A book signing will follow the event, and books will be available to purchase. 

Anita Hill: Lorwin Lecture on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

The 2023-24 Lorwin Lecture on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties will be presented by award-winning author, educator, and lawyer Anita Hill.

The free tickets for this event are sold out. Seats that are not claimed by 5:45 will be released on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Other options for viewing:

Get a free ticket to watch the livestream in 156 Straub Hall. Watch the event in real time or on demand by registering for the Zoom event. To watch the event later, you must register for the Zoom event.  

The talk will explore what this committed feminist fighter has learned from her advocacy around issues of gender violence and the perils and promises our current moment holds for "feminist futures." 

Hill is a professor of social policy, law, and women’s studies at Brandeis University. Hill’s most recent book is Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence (2021), which is a University of Oregon Common Reading selection for 2023-24.

This is a concluding event to the year-long 50th anniversary celebrations of CSWS and is presented in partnership with the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. It is cosponsored by the UO Division of Equity and Inclusion, Oregon Humanities Center, and Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation.

 

Morse Bookmarks: How the Heartland Went Red

Stephanie Ternullo, assistant professor in the government department at Harvard, will discuss her new book, How the Heartland Went Red: Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics.

 How the Heartland Went Red shows how place informs Americans’ partisan attachments through a comparative study of three White, postindustrial cities during the 2020 presidential election. The book argues that we can best understand the reddening of the American Heartland by examining how local contexts have sped up or slowed down White voters’ turn toward the right.

 

Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture

 Featuring Alexandra Filindra, associate professor of political science and psychology at University of Illinois Chicago. 

Filindra's new book Race, Rights, and Rifles examines the ties between American gun culture and white male supremacy from the American Revolution to today. 

Although many associate gun-centric ideology with individualist and libertarian traditions in American political culture, Race, Rights, and Rifles shows that it rests on an equally old but different foundation. Instead, Alexandra Frilindra shows that American gun culture can be traced back to the American Revolution when republican notions of civic duty were fused with a belief in white male supremacy and a commitment to maintaining racial and gender hierarchies.

Drawing on wide-ranging historical and contemporary evidence, Race, Rights, and Rifles traces how this ideology emerged during the Revolution and became embedded in America’s institutions, from state militias to the NRA.

Alexandra Filindra specializes in American gun politics, immigration policy, race and ethnic politics, public opinion, and political psychology. Filindra received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University and served as a post-doctoral researcher at Brown University’s Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions and the Center for the Study of Human Development. The author of more than 30 peer-reviewed articles, Filindra has received research grants from the University of Illinois Chicago, the Pew Center for the States, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Rhode Island Foundation. She is the recipient of three best paper awards from the American Political Science Association and the Lucius Barker Award from the Midwest Political Science Association. 

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series and is free and open to the public. Free pizza will be available for attendees. 

The New Town Hall: Building a Communications Platform for Democracy

Featuring Kevin Esterling, Professor and Chair of Political Science at UC-Riverside. Esterling directs the Laboratory for Technology, Communication, and Democracy at UC-Riverside, developing new technology to advance more constructive, informed, and inclusive public communications.

Part of the Wayne Morse Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series. 

Global Indigenous Sovereignty Activism with Jennifer O'Neal and Kirsten Thorpe

This public event will feature the work of two scholars and activists: Jennifer O'Neal, Assistant Professor in the UO Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies and current Resident Scholar at the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics; and Kirsten Thorpe, Chancellor’s Indigenous Research Fellow at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. The event will focus, in particular, on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Democracy: The Challenges Ahead, with Rep. Peter DeFazio

Join us for the annual Wayne Morse Chair lecture featuring Representative Peter DeFazio, 2023-24 Wayne Morse Chair. 

Rep. DeFazio served for 36 years as the U.S. Representative for Oregon’s 4th congressional district, making him the longest-serving member of Congress in Oregon history.

Congressman DeFazio chaired the influential House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which has jurisdiction over highways and transit, ports and water resources, railroads, aviation, economic development, and the Coast Guard. Among his many accomplishments as committee chair, he increased federal investment in America’s infrastructure by more than $550 billion. 

Rep. DeFazio previously served as the ranking member on the House Natural Resources Committee, where he focused on energy, federal lands, ocean and fisheries, and Native American issues. A native of Massachusetts and a veteran of the United States Air Force Reserve, he previously was a county commissioner in Lane County.  

Rep. DeFazio voted against and refused to accept every congressional pay raise while the government was deficit spending. Instead, he used his pay raises to fund scholarships at five southwestern Oregon community colleges.

Responding to Patriarchy: Women and the 2024 Election

Featuring Jane Junn, USC Associates Chair in Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science and Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of Southern California. 

Exploring original data on American voters and gender roles, Junn will discuss how U.S. women respond in uneven and sometimes surprising ways to sexism and limits on women’s rights.

Junn studies public opinion, political behavior, and survey methodology, including work on the relationship between education and public participation, Asian American political participation, and gender and politics. She is the author or editor of five books, including The Politics of Belonging: Race, Public Opinion, and Immigration (2013), with Natalie Masuoka. 

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series. 

Morse Bookmarks: Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture, with Alexandra Filindra

Alexandra Filindra, associate professor of political science and psychology at University of Illinois Chicago, will visit the University of Oregon to discuss her new book. 

Race, Rights, and Rifles examines the ties between American gun culture and white male supremacy from the American Revolution to today. 

Although many associate gun-centric ideology with individualist and libertarian traditions in American political culture, Race, Rights, and Rifles shows that it rests on an equally old but different foundation. Instead, Alexandra Frilindra shows that American gun culture can be traced back to the American Revolution when republican notions of civic duty were fused with a belief in white male supremacy and a commitment to maintaining racial and gender hierarchies.

Drawing on wide-ranging historical and contemporary evidence, Race, Rights, and Rifles traces how this ideology emerged during the Revolution and became embedded in America’s institutions, from state militias to the NRA.

Alexandra Filindra specializes in American gun politics, immigration policy, race and ethnic politics, public opinion, and political psychology. Filindra received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University and served as a post-doctoral researcher at Brown University’s Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions and the Center for the Study of Human Development. The author of more than 30 peer-review articles, Filindra has received research grants from the University of Illinois Chicago, the Pew Center for the States, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Rhode Island Foundation. She is the recipient of three best paper awards from the American Political Science Association and the Lucius Barker Award from the Midwest Political Science Association. A second book on gun politics (with Noah Kaplan) is under contract with New York University Press.

How the Supreme Court Lost the American Public

Linda Greenhouse is a Pulitzer Prize-winning legal journalist. She covered the Supreme Court for The New York Times between 1978 and 2008 and is currently Senior Research Scholar in Law at Yale Law School. 

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics 2023-25 theme, Defending Democracy. It is funded in part by the Lorwin Lectureship on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Check out the resource guide created by the UO Law Library for this event. 

Morse Roundtable: The 2024 Election One Year Out

Predictions and analysis with an all-star panel featuring UO professors and policy experts Stuart Chinn, Alison Gash, Chandler James, Neil O'Brian, and Dan Tichenor.  Stuart Chinn is the Frank Nash Professor of Law. He writes and teaches about constitutional law, legislation, and legal and political history. The author of Recalibrating Reform: The Limits of Social Change (Cambridge), his work has also appeared in many peer-reviewed venues and law reviews. Alison Gash is a professor of political science whose research focuses on the intersection of law and social policy. She is the author of Below the Radar: How Silence Can Save Civil Rights (Oxford) and her work has appeared in Newsweek, Politico, Fortune, Washington Monthly, Slate, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, and The Conversation. Chandler James is an assistant professor of political science who specializes in American politics, with a focus on the U.S. presidency. His research has been published in Presidential Studies Quarterly and has been supported by the American Political Science Association, the University of Chicago Council on Advanced Studies, and the Bradley Foundation. Neil O’Brian is an assistant professor of political science who studies U.S. politics, focusing on public opinion, political parties and polarization. Neil’s recent work examines how people’s perceptions of politics and current events affect their political attitudes. He is writing a book on the 1960s racial realignment and its effect on party polarization. Daniel Tichenor is the Philip H. Knight Chair of Social Science and a Senior Scholar and Program Director at the Wayne Morse Center. He has published numerous books and articles on national political institutions, social movements, immigration, labor, and civil rights. His most recent books are Rivalry and Reform (Chicago) and with Alison Gash, Democracy's Child (Oxford).

Morse Bookmarks: "Nice Is Not Enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High" featuring author C.J. Pascoe

This event features UO Sociology professor C. J. Pascoe discussing her new book, Nice Is Not Enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High, which was published in August 2023. 

Nice is Not Enough tells the story of American High School, a school characterized by acceptance, connection, and kindness—a school where, a prominent sign states, “there is no room for hate.” This book describes how American High, like many high schools, uses a “regime of kindness” to address persistent inequalities. By examining how this regime of kindness works at American High, Nice is Not Enough shows the limits of this approach and suggests ways we might begin to dismantle systemic inequalities in high school and beyond. 

Pascoe's research focuses on inequality, youth and schooling. She is an award-winning teacher and associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon where she teaches classes on schools, inequality, social psychology and sexuality. She is also a co-editor of academic journal Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World. Her book, Dude, You’re  a Fag:  Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, won the American Educational Research Association’s 2007 Book of the Year Award as well as an honorable mention for the American Sociological Association's Section on Sex and Gender’s Distinguished Book Award. 

 

The 17th Annual Rennard Strickland Lecture: Shared Stewardship, with Elizabeth Kronk Warner

Dean Elizabeth Kronk Warner will deliver the Rennard Strickland Lecture. Remote participation is available via Zoom. A brief Q&A session and reception will follow the lecture.

The Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center established the Rennard Strickland Lecture series to honor the legacy of late Oregon Law dean Rennard Strickland. Strickland was Osage, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and widely regarded as a leader in Indian law and policy. The lecture's focus is Indigenous environmental leadership and community vision for the twenty-first century.

Elizabeth Kronk Warner is the Jefferson B. & Rita E. Fordham Presidential Dean and Professor of Law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. Dean Kronk Warner is a nationally recognized expert in the intersection of Environmental and Indian law. Former supervisor of the Tribal Judicial Support Clinic at the University of Kansas School of Law, she has taught courses in Property, Indian, Environmental, and Natural Resources Law and also teaches and coaches several moot court competition teams. Dean Kronk Warner has received several teaching excellence awards, co-authored several books on envionmental issues and Native Americans, and has over 40 articles and book chapters to her credit. A citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Dean Kronk Warner has served as an appellate judge for the Tribe and as a district judge for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Tribe. Learn more: https://faculty.utah.edu/u6024740-Elizabeth_Kronk_Warner/hm/index.hml. 

Defending Democratic Institutions

Tim Alberta is an award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and staff writer for The Atlantic magazine. In 2019, he published American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump. In November 2023, he will publish a new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.  This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center's 2023-25 theme of inquiry, Defending Democracy, and is funded in part by the Lorwin Lectureship on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. It will be recorded and available on the Wayne Morse Center YouTube channel a couple weeks post event.

Reforming Police for Racial Equality: Lessons from the Civil Rights Era

Featuring Andrew McCall, Columbia University. This talk focuses on police community relations programs, established during the mid-20th century as a solution to police brutality. McCall juxtaposes data on the establishment of these programs with arrest and reported crime data to explore how well the programs worked, if they made communities safer, and if they changed the extent to which departments worked to preserve racial hierarchies.

McCall is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. His research examines the causes of racial inequality in policing, with a particular focus on reforms during the mid-20th century, professional associations, and department design.  His research has been funded by the Center for Empirical Legal Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and the National Science Foundation. 

This event is sponsored by the Department of Political Science and the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. It is part of the Wayne Morse Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series. 

Livestream available.

The Right's Gender Wars and the Assault on Democracy

Twenty years ago, Arlene Stein interviewed residents of “Timbertown,” Oregon who became embroiled in a bitter battle over LGBT rights, publishing the prize-winning book The Stranger Next Door. In this talk, which coincides with the re-release of the book with an updated preface, she revisits Stranger in the context of an even more deeply divided nation.

Stein is a professor of  sociology at Rutgers whose research focuses on the intersection of gender, sexuality, culture, and politics. The author or editor of nine books, she received the American Sociological Association’s Simon and Gagnon Award for career contributions to the study of sexualities.

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Women in Society and the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics' Public Affairs Speaker Series. Cosponsored by the Department of Sociology and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Join in person or watch the livestream. 

Your queer (and/or gender-diverse) career: a discussion and Q&A for students

Discuss what to consider during the job hunt and in the workplace with career center staff and each other. Featuring special guest Margot Canaday, author of Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America. Immediately following Canaday’s public talk, which takes place at 4:30 p.m. in 110 Knight Law Center. Pizza will be served. 

Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America

Princeton historian Margot Canaday will discuss her book, Queer Career, which explores the experiences of sexual minorities in the American workforce during the second half of the twentieth century. Canaday shows how LGBT history helps us understand the recent history of capitalism and labor and rewrites our understanding of the queer past. 

Livestreaming is available for this event. 

Canaday is a legal and political historian who studies gender and sexuality in modern America. Her first book, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America (Princeton, 2009), won many awards, including the Organization of American Historians' Ellis Hawley Prize and the American Political Science Association's Gladys M. Kammerer Award (co-winner). Canaday has received fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the Princeton University Society of Fellows, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. 

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, it is also part of the center's 2022-23 theme of inquiry, Making Work Work. Cosponsored by the Center for the Study of Women in Society; History Department; Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies; the Labor Education and Research Center; and United Academics Pride Caucus. 

 

Career discussion for LGBTQIAP students to follow the lecture. If you have questions about that, please contact WMC codirector Rebecca Dinwoodie at rcd@uoregon.edu.

16th Annual Rennard Strickland Lecture: "The Duty of Protection to Indian Tribes"

The Rennard Strickland Lecture Series was established in 2006 to honor the legacy of Dean Rennard Strickland and to build on his contributions to the field of Indian law, to legal education, and to the Environmental and Natural Resources and Indian law programs in our law school.  The theme of the lecture series is the examination of native leadership and vision for environmental stewardship in the 21st century. 

The Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center is honored to announce Matthew L.M. Fletcher as this year's lecturer. Fletcher will give his talk in Rm. 175 of Knight Law Center and a reception will take place in the Commons following the lecture. 

Can't make it in person? Join the livestream. The lecture will also be recorded and uploaded to Oregon Law's YouTube page. 

Sponsored by: the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center, the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program, the Environment Initiative, and the Native Environmental Sovereignty Project. 

Baristas, Amazon Workers, Teachers and Electricians Unite: Building Unions and Workers' Rights for the Future

Liz Shuler will give a lecture on the state of labor unions and employee rights and where the current movement is headed.

Shuler, BA ’92 (journalism), is the first woman to be elected president of the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest labor federation. She is a 2022 inductee into the School of Journalism and Communication’s Hall of Achievement. 

Gig Economy: Predatory Platforms, Precarious Work

Featuring Juliet Schor, 2022-23 Wayne Morse Chair. 

Juliet Schor is an economist and sociologist at Boston College whose research focuses on work, consumption, and climate change. Her most recent book is a collaboration titled After the Gig: how the sharing economy got hijacked and how to win it back (2020), which won the Porchlight Management and Workplace Culture Book of the Year. Schor is a cofounder of the Center for a New American Dream, the South End Press, and the Center for Popular Economics. 

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics' 2021-23 theme, Making Work Work. 

This event is free and open to the public. Join us in person or watch the livestream. 

Labor History Lecture Series: Matt Garcia

The Wayne Morse Center, the Labor Education and Research Center, and the UO History Department present a lecture from Matt Garcia, Dartmouth Professor of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies and History. Professor Garcia will present on the continuing challenges to farmworker organizing, and to explore models of “social responsibility” and labor rights in the fast food industry over the last fifty years.

Houselessness and Housing Demand: What are the needs and how do we meet them?

Join the Dept. of Political Science and the Wayne Morse Center as they co-host a panel of housing advocates discussing challenges and promising strategies addressing our growing housing crisis. Scholars and practitioners from Portland and cities across the country will share their experiences--and highlight the voices of those in their communities--working to create stable, safe and affordable housing.

The event will be in person and livestreamed. Please pre-register in the link below to receive the livestream zoom link.

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_r8fGFdM-TdCmkimBlcPrqA

Panelists:

Alexis Biddle

Alexis Biddle is the Great Communities Program Director and Staff Attorney for 1000 Friends of Oregon.  Alexis works on issues like housing, transportation, infrastructure, in towns and cities outside of the Portland Metro region. While based Eugene, Alexis travels the state to work with residents, city planners, and local decision-makers to ensure that Oregon's urban and rural communities are not just livable, but thriving. Alexis holds a Master's degree in Community and Regional Planning as well as a law degree from University of Oregon.

Christopher Herring

Chris Herring is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California Los Angeles, and current Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Inequality in America Initiative. His research focuses on poverty, housing, and homelessness in US cities. Chris has collaborated on three major studies and publications with the National Coalition on Homelessness and San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness. He has also collaborated on research with the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, the Western Regional Advocacy Project, and ACORN. Chris regularly consults with think-tanks, county governments, and legal aid groups.

Deyanira Nevarez Martinez

Deyanira Nevarez Martinez is faculty in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning in the School of Planning, Design and Construction at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on the role of the state in homelessness and housing precarity. A major theme in her work is the criminalization of poverty in the United States. Additionally, her work has looked at issues of gentrification, racial equity in land-use and transportation, and racial segregation.

Paavo Monkkonen

Paavo Monkkonen is Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, director of the Latin American Cities Initiative and Faculty Cluster Leader for the Global Public Affairs Initiative. Paavo researches and writes on the ways policies and markets shape urbanization and social segregation in cities around the world. His scholarship ranges from studies of large-scale national housing finance programs to analysis of local land use regulations and property rights institutions.

Claire Herbert, Moderator

Claire Herbert is an assistant professor of sociology at UO and a 2021-22 Wayne Morse Center Resident Scholar. Her research focuses on law, housing, incarceration, and urban sociology. Her first book is about the informal use of property in Detroit, Michigan, including squatting, scrapping, and gardening. Her current research is on informal housing in Lane County.

Book launch and conversation w/ Sarita Gupta and Erica Smiley

Join in person or via livestream

The Future We Need: Organizing for a Better Democracy in the Twenty-First Century, co-authored by Sarita Gupta and Erica Smiley, was published by Cornell University Press on April 15. The two authors will talk about the origin and goals of the book. Commentary by Margaret Hallock. 

Sarita Gupta is vice president of the Ford Foundation and 2021-22 Wayne Morse Chair. Gupta has more than 20 years of experience working to expand people’s ability to come together to improve their workplaces, their communities, and their lives by creating solutions to the problems they face. She has deep expertise in policy advocacy, organizing, and building partnerships across the workers’ rights and care movements, having served as the executive director of Jobs With Justice and codirector of Caring Across Generations.  Margaret Hallock retired in 2015 as the founding director of the University of Oregon’s Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. She formerly directed the UO Labor Education & Research Center (LERC). Hallock is a Ph.D. economist who taught economics and worked for Service Employees International Union 503 where she led the struggle for pay equity for women workers. She served as a policy advisor to Governor Ted Kulongoski for labor, revenue and workforce development. She serves on the boards of Sponsors, a reentry organization, and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon. Erica Smiley is the executive director of Jobs With Justice, where she has been spearheading strategic organizing and policy interventions for nearly 15 years. Smiley has served in numerous leadership capacities at Jobs With Justice, including senior field organizer for the southern region and organizing director. She is a WILL Empower Fellow – a joint project of Rutgers University and Georgetown University – and is currently co-authoring a book on bargaining and working people democracy with Sarita Gupta. Part of the Wayne Morse Center's 2021-23 theme, Making Work Work. 

A Path Forward for Working Oregonians?

A panel discussion with Oregon Labor Commissioner Val Hoyle, Jessica Giannettino Villatoro, and Sarita Gupta. Join in person or via livestream. 

Jessica Giannettino Villatoro is the political and legislative director at Oregon AFL-CIO. She has spent the better part of a decade building power for working people through local and state advocacy, and overseeing electoral and ballot measure campaigns.

Sarita Gupta is vice president of the Ford Foundation and 2021-22 Wayne Morse Chair. Gupta has more than 20 years of experience working to expand people’s ability to come together to improve their workplaces, their communities, and their lives by creating solutions to the problems they face. She has deep expertise in policy advocacy, organizing, and building partnerships across the workers’ rights and care movements, having served as the executive director of Jobs With Justice and codirector of Caring Across Generations. 

Val Hoyle was elected in 2018 as Oregon’s statewide labor commissioner. Previously, she was an Oregon state representative and house majority leader. Hoyle spent 25 years working in the bicycle industry in domestic and international trade.

How Policy and Enforcement Shape Unsheltered Homelessness in Lane County

This panel brings together representatives from city and county government as well as community partners to discuss the planning and enforcement of regulations surrounding unsheltered homelessness and informal housing in Lane County. Through this conversation we aim to identify shared obstacles, concerns, and experiences of officials and organizations charged with addressing this pressing social problem.

Panelists Claire Herbert is an assistant professor of sociology at UO and a 2021-22 Wayne Morse Center Resident Scholar. Her research focuses on law, housing, incarceration, and urban sociology. Her first book is about the informal use of property in Detroit, Michigan, including squatting, scrapping, and gardening. Her current research is on informal housing in Lane County.

Heather Sielicki works for Everyone Village, a planned shelter development with a mutual benefit model located on the Rexius property in west Eugene that has been approved by Eugene City Council to host up to 60 units of shelter. She has worked for Carry it Forward and White Bird Clinic and currently serves as a Eugene human rights commissioner and vice-chair for Lane Coalition for Organizations Active in Disaster Response. 

Sarai Johnson is the Lane County housing and shelter strategist. She coordinates efforts among the city, county, and local service providers to avoid duplication of work on the shared goal of housing for everyone. Her assignment is to create a new path forward by working together – among government agencies and other service providers who help people who are unhoused. 

Chris Skinner has been chief of the Eugene Police Department since April 2018. His public safety career began in Monmouth, Oregon. He came to Eugene from Richland, Washington, where he was appointed chief of police in 2011.

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center's 2021-23 theme, Making Work Work. 

University of Oregon Union Town Hall with Sarita Gupta

This event will bring together the presidents of each of the University of Oregon's major unions to discuss the challenges and possibilities facing a largely unionized university workplace, now and in the future, with Wayne Morse Chair Sarita Gupta. Participants will include Avinnash Tiwari, United Academics of the University of Oregon; Stephanie Prentiss, Service Employees International Union 503; and Mel Keller, Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation. Bob Bussel, recently retired Director of the Labor Education and Research Center, will moderate.

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics 2021-23 theme, Making Work Work. It is cosponsored by United Academics of the University of Oregon (AAUP/AFT Local 3209, AFL-CIO).

Fighting for Democracy: From Ukraine to the U.S. Senate and Voting Rights

Featuring Senator Jeff Merkley. 

Register for the Zoom event

Jeff Merkley has been in the U.S. Senate since 2009, serving on the Senate committees on appropriations, environment and public works, budget, and foreign relations. Previously, he was speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives, where he served a total of five terms. 

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series.

The Future We Need for Workers and Our Democracy

Featuring Sarita Gupta, vice president of the Ford Foundation and 2021-22 Wayne Morse Chair. 

What will labor organizing look like in the future? Gupta answers this question by describing not only how working people can improve their wages and working conditions, but how they can exert real power over many more aspects of their lives. Gupta will consider the central role that collective bargaining must play in the renewal of diverse communities and our democracy.

As vice president of the Ford Foundation, Gupta oversees all US programs. Gupta has more than 20 years of experience working to expand people’s ability to come together to improve their workplaces, their communities, and their lives by creating solutions to the problems they face. She has deep expertise in policy advocacy, organizing, and building partnerships across the workers’ rights and care movements, having served as the executive director of Jobs With Justice and codirector of Caring Across Generations. She is a nationally recognized expert on the economic, labor, and political issues affecting working people, and is widely acknowledged as a key leader and strategist in the progressive movement.

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics 2021-23 theme, Making Work Work. It is cosponsored by the Center for the Study of Women in Society. 

Join us in person for this free event or watch the livestream.

Uneasy Justice: The Roberts Court 2022

A panel of distinguished law scholars will analyze the Supreme Court's current term, which features blockbuster cases on issues including abortion, religion, guns, free speech, and more. More generally, the panel will take up fresh questions about the Court's legitimacy, Court reform proposals, and the consolidation of judicial conservativism. Joining host Daniel Tichenor (Knight Chair of Political Science) are the University of Maryland's Regent Professor Mark Graber, CUNY's Kurz Chair of Constitutional Rights Anna Law, and SUNY's Rockefeller College Dean Julie Novkov. 

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series and is supported by the Philip H. Knight Chair Fund. Cosponsored by the UO School of Law. 

Citizenship Reimagined: Race, Immigration, and the New States' Rights

Join us in person or online for this event. 

This event is subject to UO COVID guidelines; refer to the UO COVID-19 Resource page for more details. Please register for this event to be notified of any event changes.

Featuring Allan Colbern and Karthick Ramakrishnan discussing their new book, Citizenship Reimagined, which examines how federalism shapes citizenship in the United States and explores what it means for states to pass policies that expand or contract the rights of immigrants, people of color, women, and LGBTQ communities.

Allan Colbern is an assistant professor in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the New College at Arizona State University. He works with immigrant rights organizations such as the California Immigrant Policy Center and New York Immigrant Coalition on building state-wide capacity and pro-immigrant policy blueprints. Colbern's book Today’s Runaway Slaves: Unauthorized Immigrants in a Federalist Framework is the feature of his TEDxASUWest Talk, We Have Been Here Before. 

Karthick Ramakrishnan is a professor of public policy and political science at the University of California, Riverside, and founding director of its Center for Social Innovation. He has published many articles and 7 books, including most recently, Citizenship Reimagined (Cambridge, 2020) and Framing Immigrants (Russell Sage, 2016). Ramakrishnan directs the National Asian American Survey and is founder of AAPIData.com, which publishes demographic data and policy research on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series and is supported by the Philip H. Knight Chair Fund.

Immigrant Oregon Panel Discussion

This event is subject to UO COVID guidelines; refer to the UO COVID-19 Resource page for more details. Please register for this event to be notified of any event changes.

Watch via  YouTube Live

This panel features authors of a new report, “A State of Immigrants: A New Look at the Immigrant Experience in Oregon.” The report documents the actions of immigrants and the adoption of public policies and community level strategies in Oregon that are helping immigrants and refugees achieve social, civic, cultural, and economic integration.    

The report was coordinated and edited by Bob Bussel, director of the UO Labor Education and Research Center, and includes contributions by an interdisciplinary group of scholars from the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, and Portland State University. The event, which is free and open to the public, is part of the Wayne Morse Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series and is cosponsored by the UO Labor Education Research Center and made possible by the Philip H. Knight Chair Fund. 

Panelists

Daniel  López-Cevallos, associate professor of Latina/o/x studies, ethnic studies, and health equity at OSU

Lola Loustaunau, UO sociology graduate student and Wayne Morse Graduate Research Fellow

Maggie Mitteis, UO College of Education graduate student

Lynn Stephen, Philip H. Knight Chair and professor of anthropology at UO

15th Annual Rennard Strickland Lecture

The Rennard Strickland Lecture Series was established in 2006 to honor the legacy of Dean Rennard Strickland and to build on his contributions to the field of Indian law, to legal education, and to the Environmental and Natural Resources and Indian law programs in our law school.

The theme of the lecture series is the examination of Native leadership and vision for environmental stewardship in the 21st century. This year’s speaker will be Professor Stacey Leeds. Her talk is titled "Oil and Gas: An Oklahoma Origin Story and McGirt."

Building the Future: Policies for a Gender-Equitable Recovery

This event is subject to UO COVID guidelines; refer to the UO COVID-19 Resource page for more details. Please register for this event to be notified of any event changes. The event will also be livestreamed on YouTube.  Recently named one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders by Fortune Magazine, C. Nicole Mason is the president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR).

For the past two decades, Mason has spearheaded research on issues relating to economic security, poverty, women’s issues, and entitlement reforms; policy formation and political participation among women, communities of color; and racial equity. Prior to IWPR, Mason was the executive director of the Women of Color Policy Network at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

At the start of the pandemic, she coined the term she-cession to describe the disproportionate impact of the employment and income losses on women. Mason is the author of Born Bright: A Young Girl’s Journey from Nothing to Something in America (St. Martin’s Press) and has written hundreds of articles on women, poverty, and economic security.

This event is the annual lecture for the Wayne Morse Center's Margaret Hallock Program for Women's Rights and is part of the Wayne Morse Center's 2021-23 theme, Making Work Work. It is also part of the University of Oregon's African American Workshop and Lecture Series, which is sponsored by the Office of the President and coordinated by the Division of Equity and Inclusion. Cosponsored by the Center for the Study of Women in Society. 

Historicizing COVID-19: Challenges and Questions

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The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented attention to the work of historians of medicine and public health. Journalists from around the world have asked these scholars to provide "lessons from history" as nations and governments have tried to contain and control the pandemic. Providing neat, helpful lessons has been challenging because historians’ answers are often far from simple. In this talk, Evelynn Hammonds will discuss the difficulties of offering historical examples that can capture the complex forces that shape all epidemics.

Evelynn Hammonds is chair of the Department of the History of Science and professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard. She is the author of Childhood's Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880–1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) and has published articles on the history of disease, race and science, African American feminism, African American women and the epidemic of HIV/AIDS, and analyses of gender and race in science and medicine. Her current work focuses on the intersection of scientific, medical, and socio-political concepts of race in the United States.

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics as a part of its 2019-21 theme of inquiry, Science, Policy, and the Public. Cosponsored by the UO Black Studies and Minor Program, History Department, and Global Health Minor Program. 

The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome, with Alondra Nelson

Alondra Nelson is deputy director for science and society in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She is also president of the Social Science Research Council and the Harold F. Linder Chair and Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. She was previously a professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she served as the inaugural Dean of Social Science.

Nelson is author of several books, including The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome. She has contributed to national policy discussions on inequality and about the social implications of new technologies, including artificial intelligence, big data, and human gene editing.

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center’s Science, Policy and the Public theme of inquiry and cosponsored by UO Black Studies and Minor Program. It is part of the African American Workshop and Lecture Series and the Lorwin Lectureship on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Register for this free event.

Fundamental Rights, Data Privacy, and the Power of Tech Companies, a conversation with Senator Ron Wyden

 

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Senator Ron Wyden (UO Law '74) has been a champion for net neutrality, internet freedom, and cybersecurity for decades. He is a leading voice on policy related to tech companies and data privacy and coauthored the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which governs everyday interactions with websites, services, and social media networks and impacts fundamental rights under the U.S. Constitution. 

In this conversation, Senator Wyden will address how the internet interacts with the freedoms guaranteed under the First and Fourth Amendments (for example, law enforcement's use of personal location data to arrest Capitol insurrectionists), regulation of tech companies, issues surrounding data privacy, and the costs and benefits of reforming Section 230 of the CDA. The conversation will be moderated by Wayne Morse Law Fellow Shiwanni Johnson, founder and president of the UO Technology and Law Club.

Since 1996, Ron Wyden has held the U.S. Senate seat once occupied by his mentor, Wayne Morse. He is chair of the Senate Finance Committee and a senior member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Wyden also sits on the committees on budget and intelligence. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 15 years. While there, Wyden played an influential role in the passage of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. He has won many awards for his pioneering role in establishing a free and open internet and is known for his commitment to ensuring that more Americans can afford access, and have means of access, to broadband and phone service. Wyden currently sits on the advisory board of the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics.

Shiwanni Johnson is a third-year law student at the University of Oregon School of Law and a Wayne Morse Law Fellow. She came to Oregon Law interested in data privacy and cybersecurity, and founded the Technology and Law Club her second year. After graduating law school, Shiwanni hopes to continue to pursue these interests within the legal profession.

Part of the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics' Public Affairs Speaker Series. Cosponsored by the UO School of Law, UO Technology and Law Club, Information Security Systems Association, Technology Association of Oregon, UO Cybersecurity Club, and Lewis & Clark Law School Data Privacy Group.

A Democracy Worth Fighting For: A Conversation with Erica Smiley, Lisa Hubbard, and Margaret Hallock

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In this conversation, longtime social and economic justice organizer Erica Smiley will explore how the pandemic has left millions of people behind—especially women and people of color—while wealth grows even more concentrated in the hands of the few. She will explain why more political and economic democracy is necessary to lessen poverty and racism. Smiley and respondents Margaret Hallock and Lisa Hubbard will discuss achieving worker power through organizing “whole people” in their communities. This strategy will help the labor movement in the United States build on the unions we have in order to create the new institutions we need.

Erica Smiley is the executive director of Jobs With Justice, where she has been spearheading strategic organizing and policy interventions for nearly 15 years. Smiley has served in numerous leadership capacities at Jobs With Justice, including senior field organizer for the southern region and organizing director. She is a WILL Empower Fellow – a joint project of Rutgers University and Georgetown University – and is currently co-authoring a book on bargaining and working people democracy with Sarita Gupta.

Margaret Hallock retired in 2015 as the founding director of the University of Oregon’s Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. She formerly directed the UO Labor Education & Research Center (LERC). Hallock is a Ph.D. economist who taught economics and worked for Service Employees International Union 503 where she led the struggle for pay equity for women workers. She served as a policy advisor to Governor Ted Kulongoski for labor, revenue and workforce development. She serves on the boards of Sponsors, a reentry organization, and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon.

Lisa Hubbard (she/they) is the interim executive director of Portland Jobs with Justice. Growing up in a union family, she learned the value of solidarity at an early age and has spent more than 30 years as a strategic campaigner, organizer, and movement builder with low wage workers and communities of color across the U.S. She has led a combination of union and community organizing, politics, policy and communications at the national AFL-CIO, UFCW, SEIU, a state labor federation, local unions, and with the building trades.

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center's Margaret Hallock Program for Women's Rights and is funded by the Lorwin Lectureship on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Cosponsored by the UO Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Labor Education & Research Center, and Center for the Study of Women in Society.

Genetic Tests and Human Futures: A Panel Discussion

 

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This panel will explore questions associated with genetic tests, including when such tests are used and what information they can and cannot offer. How do individuals, families, and clinicians navigate the testing process? How do genetic tests shape our understanding of disease and disability? What do they reveal about our desire to predict and control the future, including the future of what it means to be fully human?

Panelists

Alice Wexler is the author of The Woman Who Walked into the Sea: Huntington's and the Making of a Genetic Disease (2008),  which won a 2009 Book Award from the American Medical Writers Association. She is also the sister of Nancy Wexler, leader of the team that discovered the Huntington's disease gene and a central figure in Alice's book, Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk, and Genetic Research (1995).

George Estreich writes about the intersection between new biomedical technologies and disability, including The Shape of the Eye, a memoir about his daughter Laura, who has Down Syndrome. His most recent book, Fables and Futures: Biotechnology, Disability, and the Stories we Tell Ourselves (MIT Press), was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and was named a Best Science Book of 2019 by NPR's Science Friday. 

Kathryn L. Murray is the director of genetic services at the Center for Genetics and Maternal Fetal Medicine in Eugene. She has been instrumental in bringing comprehensive genetic counseling to Eugene. She has been active in the System Ethics Committee of Providence Health & PeaceHealth Systems and was the onsite principal investigator in the BRCA1 Predisposition Testing Program at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. At the University of Michigan, she aided in the verification of genetic markers for the Huntington disease gene. 

Moderated by Judith Eisen, professor of biology and Wayne Morse Center Distinguished Scholar.

This event is sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics as a part of its 2019-21 theme of inquiry, Science, Policy, and the Public. It is also part of the Lorwin Lectureship on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Cressman Lecture: "Can Science Be Saved?"

During the COVID-19 pandemic, public debates about the validity of scientific findings and the value of science overall have intensified, as some Americans have actively resisted and even denied the legitimacy of scientific guidance about how to address the disease. What are the social and psychological drivers of public skepticism about science? How can skeptics be convinced otherwise? According to Naomi Oreskes, professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, people won’t be persuaded with more science or more facts. They deny scientific findings because they do not like the implications of their veracity—what Oreskes terms “implicatory denial.”

To convince deniers, their fears and ideologies must be addressed. Some Americans hold a worldview that prioritizes the inviolability of individual rights and the sanctity of the economy above all else, and adhere to an ideology of “limited government.” Oreskes contends, “This runs very, very deep in American culture. It ties into an extraordinary individualism that you don’t generally see in other places in the world. We tend to be more resistant to collective action in the United States than people in other countries. And it ties into this very, very deep idea in American culture that the government that governs best governs least.”

Naomi Oreskes will explore the complexities of Americans’ denial of scientific findings and skepticism about science in her 2020–21 Cressman Lecture “Can Science Be Saved?”  via Zoom.

As Oreskes explains, “Many Americans think that we face a general crisis of trust in science. With the rejection of mask-wearing by many Americans—as well as many of our political leaders—it is easy to come to that conclusion. But evidence shows that the vast majority of Americans do, in fact, trust science.  Scientists (along with doctors and nurses) remain among the most respected and trusted figures in American life. However, Americans do distrust and reject science in particular areas, and we know something about why that is: Americans reject scientific findings and advice when they dislike their implications. Often this involves a perceived threat to our individual freedoms and personal liberties, or to strongly held beliefs. In the COVID-19 crisis, irresponsible political leaders fomented the idea that asking a person to wear a mask was asking them to give up their freedom. This, of course, was preposterous; wearing a mask is little more than an inconvenience. Still, because the question of mask-wearing has become entangled with the question of personal choice, solving it will not be a matter of giving people more or better information.  This means that scientists will have to accept that asking people to trust science is more than a matter of asking them to accept facts; it is also a matter of ethics, morality, and citizenship.”

Oreskes is a leading public intellectual on the role of science in society, the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and on anti-scientific disinformation campaigns. She has written numerous books including Discerning Experts (2019), Why Trust Science? (2019), and Science on a Mission: American Oceanography from the Cold War to Climate Change (2020), and the forthcoming The Magic of the Marketplace: The True History of a False Idea with Erik Conway. 

Oreskes’s lecture is free and open to the public. Registration is required to participate in the live Zoom event. The talk will be recorded and available for viewing on the OHC’s YouTube channel. For more information, contact ohc@uoregon.edu.

Reproduction and Genetic Technologies

For more than 50 years, technologies like amniocentesis have used for prenatal screening purposes, to help individuals and families with histories of serious genetic illness make informed reproductive decisions. What do we do now that technologies exist not just to provide information but to select and even modify the genetic makeup of the next generation?

Panelists:

Camisha Russell is an assistant professor of philosophy at University of Oregon.  Her primary research and teaching interests are in critical philosophy of race, feminist philosophy, and bioethics. Her book The Assisted Reproduction of Race (Indiana University Press, 2018) considers the role of the race idea in practices surrounding assisted reproductive technologies and argues for the benefits of thinking of race itself as a technology. 

Paul Knoepfler is a professor of cell biology and human anatomy at UC Davis School of Medicine. His research interests are primarily focused on the epigenomics of cancer and stem cells. A science writer, advocate, and cancer survivor, he has written and spoken widely about “designer babies.”

Moderator: Judith Eisen, Professor of Biology and Wayne Morse Center Distinguished Scholar.

Commentary by Françoise Baylis, bioethicist and university research professor at Dalhousie University and Wayne Morse Chair.

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics as part of its Science, Policy, and the Public theme of inquiry.

Register for this free event.

Labor in the 21st Century: A Labor Black History Event

In this conversation, Rev. Terry Melvin will expound on the concepts of solidarity and racial justice through the lens of personal narrative. His working-class experiences shaped his political consciousness as a life-long leader in the labor movement. As President of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, he recognizes that collective bargaining laws advance worker and racial justice. Most importantly, his faith guides his actions towards humanity and his efforts to build a strong labor movement.

Cosponsored by the University of Oregon: Black Studies Program, Center for the Study of Women in Society, Sociology Department, and Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics

Building on the Code: How Genetic Technologies Benefit Biomedical Research and Human Health

Join the Knight Campus and Wayne Morse Chair Françoise Baylis for a discussion on the many benefits genetic technologies are having on today’s biomedical research and what promises it holds for human health. Dr. Baylis will be joined by panelists Calin Plesa (Assistant Professor, Knight Campus), Shoukhrat Mitalipov (Professor and Director of the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy, OHSU), and Chris Gemmiti (Executive Director of Technical Operations, CRISPR Therapeutics) for a dynamic conversation followed by audience Q & A.

Zoom Webinar 

Bios:

Moderator Françoise Baylis - 2020-21 Wayne Morse Chair Françoise Baylis is a bioethicist and university research professor at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia. A philosopher whose innovative research in bioethics lies at the intersection of policy and practice, she challenges readers to think broadly and deeply about the direction of health, science and biotechnology. Her work aims to move the limits of mainstream bioethics and develop more effective ways to understand and tackle public policy challenge. Baylis' most recent book is Altered Inheritance: CRISPR and the Ethics of Human Genome Editing (Harvard University Press, 2019). Baylis brings her ethical sensibilities, informed by best practices, theory and common sense, to a wide range of public issues. She is a frequent guest on CBC and Radio Canada and the author of many news stories with a “behind the scenes” look at ethical issues. Her current research focuses on heritable human genome modification, the body economy, assisted human reproduction, and research involving women. With a personal mantra to make the powerful care, Baylis contributes to national policy-making via government research contracts, membership on national committees and public education. This work – all of which is informed by a strong commitment to the common good – focuses largely on issues of social justice. Baylis is a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. In 2017 she was awarded the Canadian Bioethics Society Lifetime Achievement Award. She has been named to "Who's Who in Black Canada" (2002–present).

 

Panelist Calin Plesa – Calin Plesa is an Assistant Professor in the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact at the University of Oregon. He received a BASc in Engineering Physics from Simon Fraser University, MSc in Nanoscience from Chalmers University of Technology, and a PhD from Delft University of Technology in Bionanoscience. As an HFSP Fellow in the Kosuri lab at UCLA he developed DropSynth, a low-cost scalable method to synthesize thousands of genes. Calin holds a CASI award from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and started his lab at the University of Oregon in 2019. The Plesa lab focuses on accelerating the pace at which we understand and engineer biological protein-based systems. Towards this end, it develops new technologies for gene synthesis, multiplex functional assays, in-vivo mutagenesis, and genotype-phenotype linkages for a number of different research areas and applications. These enable access to the huge sequence diversity present in natural systems as well as testing of rationally designed hypotheses encoded onto DNA at much larger scales than previously possible.

 

Panelist Shoukhrat Mitalipov – Shoukhrat Mitalipov is a Director of the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy of Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). He is also a Professor in the Division of Reproductive & Developmental Sciences at Oregon National Primate Research Center, OHSU. Dr. Mitalipov earned his Ph.D. degree in Developmental & Stem Cell Biology from Research Center for Medical Genetics in Moscow, Russia. He came to Utah State University in 1995 to conduct his postdoctoral research in stem cell and developmental biology and moved to OHSU in 1998. Dr. Mitalipov’s research interest is to understand the mechanisms of cytoplasmic control of nuclear genome identity and reprogramming of somatic cells to the totipotent and pluripotent states. Another objective is to develop novel germline gene therapy approaches for the treatment of inherited human diseases. Dr. Mitalipov is know for his leading discoveries in producing human patient-matched embryonic stem cells using somatic cell nuclear transfer. His team has also pioneered gene therapy approaches that prevent transmission of genetic defects in both nuclear and mitochondrial genes to future generations.

 

Panelist Chris Gemmiti – Dr. Gemmiti has dedicated his 20+ year career to cell therapy and regenerative medicine, through both industry and academic roles. He is currently the Executive Director of Technical Operations at CRISPR Therapeutics. This includes multiple candidates in the Hemoglobinopathy, Immuno-oncology and Regenerative Medicine franchises. He was most recently the Senior VP of Operations at Sentien, a clinical-stage MSC company. He held a key role in opening and executing Sentien’s IND for COVID-19 patients experiencing multi-organ failure. Chris joined Sentien from Harvard’s Wyss Institute, where he guided translation strategy and technical development of early-stage regenerative medicine technologies. Previously, at Organogenesis Inc., he was the business unit Director responsible for the clinical development, FDA approval (2012), and commercial launch of GINTUIT™, the first manufactured allogeneic cell therapy approved by BLA. He holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Georgia Tech and BS in BME from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Gemmiti has served on Advisory Boards at Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins, Duke University, TERMIS, Cell Therapy Bioprocessing and Alliance for Regenerative Medicine.

Can Science Make Sense of Life? with Sheila Jasanoff

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Sheila Jasanoff is a professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her work explores the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies. A pioneer in her field, she has authored more than 130 articles and chapters and is author or editor of more than 15 books.

This talk is based on and shares a title with Jasanoff’s most recent book, which explores the dramatic authority accorded to the biological sciences and biotechnology in the genomic age. She explores flashpoints in law, politics, ethics, and culture to argue that science’s promises to edit, or even rewrite, the texts of life to correct nature’s mistakes have gone too far.

Commentary by Andrew Nelson, Randall C. Papé Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Lundquist College of Business, and Associate Vice President, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, University of Oregon; and Françoise Baylis, bioethicist and university research professor at Dalhousie University and Wayne Morse Chair. 

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics as part of its Science, Policy, and the Public theme of inquiry. Cosponsored by the Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact.

The History and Future of Scientific Racism and Eugenics Panel Discussion

This panel will consider the enduring legacy of eugenics alongside the possibilities that genetic technologies now offer for understanding population histories, diverse and diasporic ancestries, and race- and gender-based health disparities.

Panelists:

Alexandra Minna Stern is a professor of history, American culture and women's and gender studies as well as associate dean for the humanities at the University of Michigan. She is the author of  Telling Genes: The Story of Genetic Counseling in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) and Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination (Beacon, 2020). 

Jada Benn Torres is an associate professor of anthropology and the director for the Laboratory of Genetic Anthropology and Biocultural Studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Torres' research explores genetic ancestry and population history of African and Indigenous Caribbean peoples. She also studies women’s health disparities, with a specific focus on the uterine fibroids among women of African descent. Her most recent book is Genetic Ancestry: Our Stories, Our Pasts (Routledge, 2020).

Moderator: Judith Eisen, Professor of Biology and Wayne Morse Center Distinguished Scholar.

Commentary by Françoise Baylis, 2020-21 Wayne Morse Chair. 

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics as part of its Science, Policy, and the Public theme of inquiry. Cosponsored by the UO Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies; and the UO Black Studies Program and Minor. 

Register here for the free Zoom event. 

Designer Babies: All You Ever Wanted to Know (and More) with Françoise Baylis

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Françoise Baylis, 2020-21 Wayne Morse Chair, is a bioethicist and university research professor at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia.  A philosopher whose innovative research in bioethics lies at the intersection of policy and practice, she challenges readers to think broadly and deeply about the direction of health, science and biotechnology. Her work aims to move the limits of mainstream bioethics and develop more effective ways to understand and tackle public policy challenges. Baylis' most recent book is Altered Inheritance: CRISPR and the Ethics of Human Genome Editing (Harvard University Press, 2019).

Baylis is a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. In 2017 she was awarded the Canadian Bioethics Society Lifetime Achievement Award. She has been named to "Who's Who in Black Canada" (2002–present). 

This is the annual Wayne Morse Chair Public Address and is part of the Wayne Morse Center's Science, Policy, and the Public theme of inquiry. It is cosponsored by the UO Department of Philosophy; Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; and the Center for the Study of Women in Society. 

Overcoming the Challenges of Communicating Emerging Science about COVID-19 with Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson

REGISTER HERE: https://sojc.link/jamieson Using the debate over the safety and efficacy of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 as a case study, this talk will explore ways to communicate the nature of emerging science to the press and public in polarized times and make the case for the need to more cogently communicate the standards that govern assessment of the quality of scientific evidence.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson is the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania and Director of the university’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. She has authored or co-authored 16 books, including Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President, which won the Association of American Publishers’ 2019 R.R. Hawkins Award and was published in a revised paperback edition by Oxford University Press in June 2020. Among her other award-winning books are Spiral of Cynicism (with Joseph Cappella) and The Obama Victory: How Media, Money and Message Shaped the 2008 Election (with Kate Kenski and Bruce Hardy). In 2020, the National Academy of Sciences awarded Jamieson its Public Welfare Medal for her “non-partisan crusade to ensure the integrity of facts in public discourse and development of the science of scientific communication to promote public understanding of complex issues.” Jamieson is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Sciences, and a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association. She also is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the International Communication Association. For her contributions to the study of political communication, she received the American Political Science Association’s Murray Edelman Distinguished Career Award in 1995. In 2016, the American Philosophical Society awarded her its Henry Allen Moe Prize in the Humanities.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Science and Communication Research, Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact, and Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, this lecture is part of the School of Journalism and Communication’s annual Richard W. and Laurie Johnston Lecture series. This series brings professionals to the SOJC for thought-provoking lectures, workshops, and discussions about the thorny issues today’s journalists face, and is made possible by generous gifts from the Johnston family, George E. Jones of U.S. News and World Report, and the Correspondents Fund.

The State From Below: Democracy and Citizenship in Policed Communities

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Vesla Weaver is the Bloomberg Distinguished Associate Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. Her research aims to better understand the causes and consequences of racial inequality in the United States, how state policies and institutions shape political life and identity, and especially the effects of increasing punishment and surveillance in America on democratic inclusion.

Weaver has served on the Harvard/NIJ Executive Session on Community Corrections, the Center for Community Change’s Good Jobs for All initiative, and the APSA Presidential Taskforce on Racial Inequality in the Americas.  In 2017, she was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. She is currently working on a new book based on the Portals Policing Project.  

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series. 

Register for the Zoom webinar here

Facts Still Matter: Countering the Influence of Russian Hackers, Trolls, and “Viral Deception"

Featuring Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and cofounder of FactCheck.org. 

Register for this free event

This talk is sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics’ Public Affairs Speaker Series and the Center for Science Communication Research (SCR). It is made possible in part by the Richard W. and Laurie Johnston Lecture Fund.  

Jamieson is the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania and Director of the university’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. She has authored or co-authored 16 books, including Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President. Among her other award-winning books are Spiral of Cynicism (with Joseph Cappella) and The Obama Victory: How Media, Money and Message Shaped the 2008 Election (with Kate Kenski and Bruce Hardy). In 2020, the National Academy of Sciences awarded Jamieson its Public Welfare Medal for her “non-partisan crusade to ensure the integrity of facts in public discourse and development of the science of scientific communication to promote public understanding of complex issues.”

In 2003, Jamieson cofounded FactCheck.org, the non-profit non-partisan website that describes itself as a "consumer advocate for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics." 

Jamieson is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Sciences, and a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association. She also is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the International Communication Association. 

Defending Democracy: A Conversation with Eric H. Holder, Jr., 82nd Attorney General of the United States (2009-2015)

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A leading progressive voice, Eric Holder has been instrumental in shaping the direction of the United States on a number of critical issues at the intersection of law and policy. He served in the Obama Administration as the 82nd Attorney General of the United States (2009 to 2015), the third longest serving Attorney General in U.S. history and the first African American to hold that office. A staunch advocate for civil rights and voting rights, Holder is active in gerrymandering reform as Chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. He is a partner at Covington & Burling LLP, in Washington, D.C.  This event is the keynote for the Wayne Morse Center's 20th Anniversary Celebration and is sponsored by the Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series. It's part of the African American Workshop and Lecture Series, which is sponsored by the Office of the President and coordinated by the Division of Equity and Inclusion. It is also part of the Lorwin Lectureship on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. It is cosponsored by the UO Political Science Department; the UO School of Law; the UO Division of Equity and Inclusion; and KLCC, public radio.

Immunity Passports: Pandemic Privilege or Biological Discrimination?  

 

As governments around the world seek paths toward reopening their economies and away from the "social distancing" restrictions that have been imposed in order to control the spread of covid-19, immunity passports have been proposed as one solution. Françoise Baylis and Natalie Kofler will discuss and answer questions about the many ethical, practical, and scientific challenges posed by immunity passports and other types of state-sanctioned health checks.

 

Françoise Baylis is a philosopher whose innovative work aims to move the limits of mainstream bioethics and develop more effective ways to understand and tackle public policy challenges. Baylis brings her ethical sensibilities, informed by best practices, theory and common sense, to a wide range of public issues. She is a frequent guest on CBC and Radio Canada and the author of many news stories with a “behind the scenes” look at ethical issues. Her current research focuses on heritable human genome modification, the body economy, assisted human reproduction, and research involving women. She will serve as the 2020-21 Wayne Morse Chair.

 

Natalie Kofler is a molecular biologist and founding director of Editing Nature at Yale University, a global initiative to steer responsible development and deployment of environmental genetic technologies. She also serves as an adviser for the Scientific Citizenship Initiative, Harvard Medical School. Natalie’s work navigates the technical, ecological, and ethical complexity of gene editing applications designed to impact wild species, such as CRISPR-edited mosquitos to prevent malaria transmission, genetic strategies to eliminate invasive species, or the use of CRISPR gene editing to promote species resiliency to changing climates.

A Conversation w/ Robert Kuttner on Saving our Economic Future

Join us for an online discussion and Q&A with Robert Kuttner, co-founder of the Economic Policy Institute and current editor of The American Prospect. Kuttner was a longtime columnist for BusinessWeek, and continues to write columns for Huffington Post, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times international edition. He has been writing extensively about averting economic catastrophe during and after the coronavirus pandemic.

Moderated by Dan Tichenor, Philip H. Knight Professor of Social Science at the UO Department of Political Science and director of the Wayne Morse Center’s Program for Democratic Governance. Part of the Wayne Morse Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series.  Free; registration required. Spaces are limited.

Climate Town Hall: Organizing for Environmental Justice

This town hall features a panel on local environmental equity issues, followed by breakout groups that focus on how climate activists can engage with local environmental justice issues. Together, we will share resources, identify and organize next steps to take together.

Childcare provided. If you need childcare, please email info@350eugene.org. Made possible in part by a grant from the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics.

 

How We Became Our Data: A Genealogy of the Informational Person

Featuring Colin Koopman, associate professor of philosophy and director of the New Media and Culture Program at the University of Oregon. His books include: Pragmatism as Transition: Historicity and Hope in James, Dewey, and Rorty (2009); Genealogy as Critique: Foucault and the Problems of Modernity (2013); and How We Became Our Data: A Genealogy of the Informational Person (2019). His essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times and Aeon as well as in academic journals such as Critical Inquiry, Contemporary Political Theory, Diacritics, and New Media & Society.

Presented by the Wayne Morse Center’s Program for Democratic Governance.  Cosponsored by the UO Department of Philosophy and Oregon Data Science.

LERC Presents: A Labor Black History Month Event with April Sims April Sims, the Secretary-Treasurer of the Washington State Labor Council, is the first woman of color and the first black person to be elected as a WSLC executive officer.  

In this talk, Sims will explore the concept of intersectionality through the lens of personal narrative, intergenerational reflections on working-class experiences that shaped her political consciousness as a woman and as a black person, and the ways in which those anecdotes directly informed her life as a unionist and leader in the labor movement. She will also share her experiences and observations regarding social and economic justice views on the current political economy of collective bargaining. Learn more.

Co-sponsored by:

Black Studies Program Center for the Study of Women in Society Sociology Department Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, and the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF)

Women Voters: Race, Gender, and Dynamism in U.S. Presidential Elections

Featuring Jane Junn, University of Southern California.

Jane Junn is a professor of political science and gender and sexuality studies at the University of Southern California. She is an expert on voting, political participation, public opinion, Asian American politics, gender and politics, racial and ethnic identity, and the politics of immigration in the United States. She is the author of five books, including The Politics of Belonging: Race, Immigration, and Public Opinion and Education and Democratic Citizenship in America. Her research on the intersection of gender, race, and voting has been widely cited by journalists and political commentators in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center as part of its Democratic Governance Speaker Series. Cosponsored by the UO Center for the Study of Women in Society and UO Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. 

Disasters, Resilience, and the Next Generation

A Lecture on Lifeline Infrastructure and Community Resilience as part of the Le Val Lund Award. Featured speaker: Yumei Wang P.E., Resilience Engineer at Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries Followed by a panel discussion with:

John DeWenter, Board Chair, Springfield Utility Board Jeni Hall, Solar Project Manager, Energy Trust of Oregon Mike Harryman, State Resilience Officer for Oregon Moderated by Josh Bruce, Director, Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience. Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics; cosponsored by Cascadia Region Earthquake Workgroup and UO Safety and Risk Services. Part of the Wayne Morse Center's 2019-21 theme, Science, Policy, and the Public. Free and open to the public.

Political Discussion Networks, Political Engagement, and the Latino Electorate

Featuring Marisa Abrajano, professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests are in American politics, particularly in developing ways to increase politics participation and civic engagement amongst racial/ethnic minorities. Her most recent book is White Backlash: Immigration, Race and American Politics (with Zoltan Hajnal, 2015). 

A Good Provider is One Who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21st Century

Featuring Jason DeParle, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist.

His new book, A Good Provider is One Who Leaves, tells the story of an unforgettable family as they endure years of sacrifice and separation, willing themselves out of shantytown poverty into a new global middle class. Migration is changing the world–reordering politics, economics, and cultures across the globe. With nearly 45 million immigrants in the United States, few issues are as polarizing. But if the politics of immigration is broken, immigration itself—tens of millions of people gathered from every corner of the globe—remains an underappreciated American success.

Jason DeParle is a senior writer at The New York Times and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine. Previously he served as a domestic correspondent in Washington for The Times. Prior to joining The Times, Mr. DeParle was an editor at The Washington Monthly since 1987.

A Democratic Governance Speaker Series event, sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center and the UO School of Journalism and Communication. 

 

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, An evening with New York Times best-selling author Stephanie Land

Stephanie Land’s bestselling debut memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive recounts her harrowing saga as a single mom navigating the poverty trap. Her unflinching and inspiring testimony exposes the physical, economic, and social brutality that domestic workers face, all while radiating a parent’s hope and resilience.

At age 28, Land’s dream of attending college and becoming a writer are deferred when a summer fling turns into an unplanned pregnancy. After facing domestic abuse, and lacking any form of reliable safety net, she checks into a homeless shelter with her 7-month-old daughter. She begins the bureaucratic nightmare of applying for food stamps and subsidized housing, and starts cleaning houses for $9/hour. Mired in patronizing government processes and paltry wages, Land illustrates the trauma of grasping for stability from a rigged system, and demonstrates how hard work doesn’t always pay off.

After years of barely scraping by, Land graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Montana in 2014, and started a career as a freelance writer. She writes about economic and social justice, domestic abuse, chronic illness, and motherhood, and has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Vox, Salon, and many other outlets. She’s worked with Barbara Ehrenreich at the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and is a writing fellow at the Center for Community Change.

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center’s Margaret Hallock Program for Women’s Rights. Cosponsored by the UO Division of Equity and Inclusion, Center for the Study of Women in Society, Department of Sociology, and Labor Education and Research Center. 

Judge Torres

An immigrant. A dreamer. A survivor. This is the story of Xiomara Torres. Milta Ortiz’s Judge Torres recounts the inspiring story of one of Oregon’s finest judges, woven together with magic realism and Mayan folktales from her home of El Salvador.

Many thanks to our co-sponsors:

Latinx Scholars ARC / UO Housing School of Music & Dance Law School Theatre Arts Wayne Morris Center Romance Languages Indigenous, Race, & Ethnic Studies EC Brown Foundation Latinx Strategies Group

 

 

How the Arts are Addressing the Climate Crisis - an evening of discussion and performance

This event features three short performances (musical, theatrical, and poetic) followed by a roundtable discussion on the role of artists and art in addressing the climate emergency and building individual and collective resilience.

Roundtable participants: Wayne Morse Chair and viola da gamba player Dr. Lucy Jones painter Naeemeh Naeemaei  Theresa May (UO Theater Arts) Emily Scott (UO History of Art and Architecture and Environmental Studies) John Witte (UO English)

Part of the Wayne Morse Center’s 2019-21 inquiry into Science, Policy and the Public.

Free and open to the public

The Looming Cascadia Earthquake – What You Need to Know (at UO Portland)

Featuring Dr. Lucy Jones (Caltech).

Dr. Lucy Jones is the founder of the Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society, with a mission to foster the understanding and application of scientific information in the creation of more resilient communities. She is also a research associate at the Seismological Laboratory of Caltech. In 2016, she completed 33 years of federal service with the US Geological Survey. Most recently, she led the creation of a national science strategy for all the natural hazards studied by the USGS to promote the science that would better prepare the nation for future natural hazards. In her recent book The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us (and What We Can Do About Them), Dr. Jones offers both a look at how natural disasters have affected the course of history and how we can prepare for them.

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, UO Portland, and the School of Architecture & Environment.

“Shake It Up: What you need to know about the looming Cascadia earthquake”

Learn about the risks posed by the predicted Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and what you can do to prepare for it.

A training for UO students, faculty, and staff that features a panel discussion by seismologists Dr. Lucy Jones (Caltech) and Prof. Doug Toomey (UO Earth Sciences), as well as Krista Dillon (Director of Operations for UO Safety and Risk Services). Participants will learn what the earthquake might feel like, what kind of damage is expected, and how they can take steps to be more prepared on campus and at home. It will include a brief “drop, cover and hold” drill as part of the Great Oregon ShakeOut.

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, UO Safety and Risk Services, and the Department of Earth Sciences.

UO employees can sign up for the training on MyTrack; students do not need to register. 

Disaster Resilience: How We Get There

2019-20 Wayne Morse Chair Lecture featuring Dr. Lucy Jones, Caltech. As the planet warms, we face increased risk from hotter and longer wildfire seasons, more intense storms, drought, flooding, and more. In the Pacific Northwest, we also live with the reality of the looming Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake. Working with both the public and private sectors, Caltech seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones seeks to increase communities’ ability to adapt and be resilient to the dynamic changes of the world around them. The aim is to understand and communicate where the greatest vulnerabilities lie and what actions can be taken to reduce the risk that are the most cost-effective.

Dr. Jones completed 33 years of federal service with the US Geological Survey in March 2016. Most recently, she led the creation of a national science strategy for all the natural hazards studied by the USGS to promote the science that would better prepare the nation for future natural hazards.

In her book The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us (and What We Can Do About Them), Dr. Jones offers both a look at how natural disasters have affected the course of history and how we can prepare for them.

Free pamphlets will be available to attendees offering a checklist of items to purchase and steps to take over a three-month period to create an emergency supply kit and disaster preparation plan for themselves and their families.

Please see below for links to other disaster preparedness information and resources. We know that thinking about natural hazards can produce anxiety. Having a plan can help you feel less scared.

OPB: Unprepared: Will We Be Ready For The Megaquake In Oregon?

NPR: The Big One: Your Survival Guide (features several interviews with Dr. Jones)

Hope in Challenging Times: How cities—and people—lead the way in tackling our toughest issues

Featuring Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for public interest technology and local initiatives at New America.

Prior to joining New America, she served for eight years on President Obama’s senior staff, first as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs followed by five years as Director of the Domestic Policy Council. Before working in government, she was Senior Vice President at the National Council of La Raza (now UNIDOS US), the nation’s largest Hispanic policy and advocacy organization, where she served for 20 years.

Immigrants Out, “Guestworkers” In: A Hidden History of the Trump Years

In the United States and across Europe, nation-states are slamming their doors on immigrants and refugees. This nationalist reaction to the diversity that globalization has brought seems to portend depressed immigration levels for the foreseeable future. Yet employers still demand immigrant labor in a growing economy. Even as U.S. President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies drove undocumented workers deeper into the shadows, his administration also approved a record-breaking quarter-million temporary agricultural worker visas, known as H2A or “guestworkers.” Similar patterns are in effect around the globe. In this panel, historians join key Oregon advocates for both agricultural and workers’ interests to contextualize the “guestworker” phenomenon locally and globally, and ask whether it represents the future of immigrant labor in the United States and beyond.

Organized by Julie Weise, 2018-19 Wayne Morse Resident Scholar.

Panelists: 

Michael Dale is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Workers' Justice Project, and non-profit law firm that represents low wage, immigrant, and contingent workers with respect to civil employment law problems. He worked for 25 years as an Oregon legal aid attorney, and helped establish the Oregon Law Center in 1995. Over the last ten years he has been engaged in extensive litigation over the rules governing the use of H-2B temporary workers, winning cases in the 3rd, 11th, and 4th Circuit Courts of Appeals. Christoph Rass is one of Germany’s leading historians of twentieth-century European labor migration. A professor at Osnabrück University’s Institute for Migration and Intercultural Studies, Rass concentrates on institutions and knowledge production in migration regimes, forced migrations, and GIS-based modeling of migration patterns. Rass is a recent recipient of the Kalliope Prize for Migration Research from the German Emigration Center. Jeff Stone is the CEO of Oregon Association of Nurseries and formerly chief of staff to Metro Council. Stone has a BS from the University of Oregon in political science and has deep experience in Oregon and national political affairs. He has served as an executive and board member of numerous business and nonprofit organizations. Julie M. Weise is a scholar of twentieth-century Mexican migration history in global context. An associate professor of history at the University of Oregon, Weise is the author of the prize-winning Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910 (UNC Press, 2015). Her current book project, “Citizenship Displaced: Migrant Political Cultures in the Era of State Control,” places postwar Mexican migration history in conversation with parallel histories in Europe and southern Africa. Cosponsored by the UO Office of International Affairs, the UO Department of History, and the Global Studies Institute's Global Oregon Faculty Collaboration Fund. Part of the Wayne Morse Center's 2017-19 theme on Borders, Migration, and Belonging. 

Refreshments will be served. 

 

The U.​S.​ Economic Outlook: Do Deficits Matter?

The University of Oregon invites you to hear from guest speaker Keith Hall, director of the Congressional Budget Office, with remarks from Sarah Nutter, dean, Lundquist College of Business.

Since 1975, the Congressional Budget Office has produced independent analyses of budgetary and economic issues to support the Congressional budget process. Each year, the agency’s economists and budget analysts produce dozens of reports and hundreds of cost estimates for proposed legislation.

Keith Hall has directed the Congressional Budget Office since 2015. He has more than 25 years of public service, most recently as the chief economist and director of economics at the International Trade Commission (ITC). Before that, he was a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, chief economist for the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, chief economist for the Department of Commerce, a senior international economist for the ITC, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas, and an international economist at the Department of Treasury. In those positions, he worked on a wide variety of topics, including labor market analysis and policy, economic conditions and measurement, macroeconomic analysis and forecasting, international economics and policy, and computational partial equilibrium modeling. He earned his Ph​D​ and MS​ in economics from Purdue University.

Sponsored by the University of Oregon Lundquist College of Business, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics.

Populism for the 1%: The Fall of the Republican Party and the Rise of Donald Trump

Featuring Paul Pierson, political science professor at UC Berkeley. His most recent books are The Transformation of American Politics: Activist Government and the Rise of Conservatism (Princeton University Press 2007), which was co-edited with Theda Skocpol; and Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (Simon and Schuster 2010), co-authored by Jacob Hacker.

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center in partnership with the UO Department of Political Science. 

Screening: “Shash Jaa’: ‘Bears Ears’”

Featuring discussion with Anna Elza Brady (UO Law '18), former policy and communications strategist for Utah Diné Bikéyah.

Shásh Jaa’ is nearly 1.9 million acres of wilderness in southeastern Utah that is sacred ancestral land to local Native American tribes. In 2015, five nations came together to form the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, an effort to protect their homeland from development and destruction. The film follows the story of the coalition as they lobby the Obama Administration to designate Bears Ears a national monument. That effort was successful. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has drastically reduced the acreage of the monument. Join us as we screen the film and hear the perspective of the former policy and communications strategist for Utah Diné Bikéyah, a nonprofit organization that works toward healing of people and the Earth by supporting indigenous communities in protecting their culturally significant, ancestral lands.

Anna Elza Brady is the former policy and communications strategist for Utah Diné Bikéyah and currently works as a law clerk to Washington Supreme Court​ Justice Susan Owens. A Wayne Morse Law Fellow, Brady graduated from the University of Oregon’s School of Law in 2018 with a concentration in environmental and natural resource law. This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center's inquiry into Borders, Migration, and Belonging. It is cosponsored by the Native American Law Student Association.

Rivalry and Reform: Presidents, Social Movements, & the Transformation of American Politics

Sidney Milkis, University of Virginia politics professor, and Dan Tichenor, Wayne Morse senior faculty fellow, will discuss their forthcoming book. 

The Known Citizen: Exploring Privacy in Modern America

Featuring Sarah E. Igo, history professor, director of the American studies program, and faculty director of the E. Bronson Ingram College at Vanderbilt University.

Igo's work focuses on modern American cultural and intellectual history, the history of the human sciences, the sociology of knowledge, and the history of the public sphere. She is the author of two books, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (Harvard University Press, 2007),  and The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2018). 

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics and cosponsored by the UO History Department and the UO New Media and Culture Certificate program. 

Immigration in Oregon: Communities, Economies, Policies

A panel discussion on the economic impacts of immigration in Oregon, the impact of Ballot Measure 105 on communities, and possible policy issues in the 2019 Legislative Session.

Panel: Colin Crader, Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO). Jeff Stone, CEO of Association of Oregon Nurseries, formerly Chief of Staff to Metro Council. Stone has a BA from the UO in Political Science and has deep experience in Oregon and national political affairs. He has served as an executive and board member of numerous business and nonprofit organizations. Reyna Lopez, Executive Director, Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), Oregon's farmworkers union and advocacy organization for Latinx working families. Lopez was formerly the organizing director for Family Forward Oregon. Reyna is the daughter of immigrants from Mexico. Raised in Salem, she earned a BA from Willamette University in political science and sociology. Representative Diego Hernandez, House District 47 representing outer East Portland. Hernandez, the youngest member of Oregon's House of Representatives, has a BA from the UO in political science and ethnic studies and a masters degree in social work from PSU. He has worked as an educator and community organizer and is a member of the Reynolds School Board. Commentator: Mae Ngai, 2019 Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics, Professor of History and Asian Studies, Columbia University. Ngai's research focuses on immigration, citizenship and nationalism. She is the author of Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004). Moderator: Dan Tichenor, Senior Scholar, Wayne Morse Centers for Law and Politics

CLLAS Town Hall: Citizenship and Denaturalization in the Era of US Nationalism

The Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies presents the CLLAS Town Hall, "Citizenship and Denaturalization in the Era of US Nationalism," with 2018-19 Wayne Morse Chair Professor Mae Ngai. 

At the town hall, Professor Ngai will be addressing issues of immigration, citizenship, and denaturalization both historically and in present day. The event will be moderated by UO Professor Rocío Zambrana (Department of Philosophy).

Mae M. Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History at Columbia University, is a U.S. legal and political historian interested in questions of immigration, citizenship, and nationalism. She is author of the award-winning Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004) and The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America (2010). Ngai has written on immigration history and policy for the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and the Boston Review.

Nation of Immigrants: A Short History of An Idea

Featuring Mae Ngai, 2018-19 Wayne Morse Chair. Ngai is a professor of Asian American Studies and history at Columbia University. 

Her research focuses on immigration, citizenship, and nationalism. Ngai is the author of Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004), which won six major book awards; and The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America (2010). Ngai has written on immigration history and policy for The Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and the Boston Review. Before becoming a historian, she was a labor-union organizer and educator in New York City, working for District 65-UAW and the Consortium for Worker Education. Her upcoming book is Yellow and Gold: The Chinese Mining Diaspora, 1848-1908, a study of Chinese gold miners and racial politics in nineteenth-century California, the Australian colony of Victoria, and the South African Transvaal.

Game Change or More of the Same? Assessing the Midterm Election

A discussion featuring Alison Gash, UO Political Science; Margaret Hallock, Wayne Morse Center; Jeff Mapes, OPB; and Kerry Tymchuk, Oregon Historical Society.

Alison Gash is a political science professor at UO and an expert in U.S. courts, gender, race, sexuality, same-sex marriage, constitutional rights and public policy. Her research explores how advocates work to overcome contentious policy debates and how their efforts ultimately influence the "facts on the ground." She is the author of Below the Radar: How Silence Can Save Civil Rights (Oxford University Press 2015). Her work as been featured in Washington Monthly, Politico, Slate, Huffington Post, Newsweek and The Conversation. 

Margaret Hallock is a Ph.D. economist who has been engaged in public policy in Oregon for over 4 decades. She is the founding director of the University of Oregon’s Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics where she served from 2001-2015 and again in fall 2018.  Formerly Hallock taught economics at the UO, directed the UO Labor Education and Research Center, served as senior economist for the State of Oregon, and worked for the Service Employees International Union 503, where she led the struggle for pay equity for women workers. During 2003-04 Hallock served as a policy advisor to Governor Ted Kulongoski for labor, revenue and workforce development. She has contributed to public policy issues in labor, taxes, healthcare and workforce development. Hallock is also active in the community, having served on numerous boards and committees. She is the immediate past Chair of the Board of Directors of Sponsors, Inc, a Eugene nonprofit that assists people returning to the community from prison.

Jeff Mapes is a senior political reporter at Oregon Public Broadcasting. Prior to working at OPB, Mapes covered state and national politics for The Oregonian for nearly 32 years. He has reported on numerous presidential, congressional, gubernatorial and ballot measure campaigns, and legislative sessions.

Kerry Tymchuk has been the executive director of the Oregon Historical Society since 2011. His career includes service as a Marion County deputy district attorney, director of speechwriting to U.S. Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole, director of speechwriting and legal counsel to U.S. Senator Bob Dole, and state director to U.S. Senator Gordon Smith. He was recognized by the Portland Business Journal as the Most Admired Non-Profit Executive in Portland and as the 2018 Statesman of the Year by Oregon Business and Industry. 

 

 

 

 

Nativism and White Supremacy: Oregon, the U.S., and Europe

A discussion featuring Jess Campbell, Rural Organizing Project; Terri Givens, author and professor;  Zakir Khan, CAIR-Oregon; and Laura Pulido, UO Ethnic Studies.

Jess Campbell has been involved in rural organizing for more than 15 years. She has worked with some of the most rural communities in Oregon to fight for the commons from post offices to libraries, to organize and counterorganize in frontline communities reeling from vigilante and state violence and white nationalist organizing, and to advance experimental campaigns at the intersections of racial, economic, and social justice. She is co-author of Up in Arms: A Guide to Oregon’s Patriot Movement.

Terri Givens is an author, consultant, and political scientist. She is the author/editor of many books and articles on immigration policy, European politics and security, including Voting Radical Right in Western Europe, Immigration Policy and Security and ImmigrantPolitics: Race and Representation in Western Europe.Her most recent book is Legislating Equality: The Politics of Antidiscrimination Policy in Europe (Oxford University Press, May 2014). She is developing a textbook on comparative immigration politics, and is working on a manuscript on the historical connections between Europe and the U.S. on racism and immigration control. 

Zakir Khan is the Board Chair for the Council on American-Islamic Relations - Oregon Chapter. His work as the Executive Director of the Transparency and Accountability Project earned national acclaim when it became one of two database projects nationwide to publish police disciplinary records. 

Laura Pulido is the chair of the UO Ethnic Studies Department and a 2018-19 Wayne Morse Resident Scholar working on a project titled “Cultural Memory and White Supremacy in the Creation of the United States.” She is a qualitative social scientist who works at the intersection of geography and critical ethnic studies. 

War and the Media: 1960s to the Trump Era

Featuring Norman Solomon, journalist, activist, and author. Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, where he is coordinator of its ExposeFacts program. His books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death and Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State.

A collection of Solomon’s columns won the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. The award, presented by the National Council of Teachers of English, honored Solomon’s book "The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media."

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. Cosponsored by Eugene PeaceWorks and KEPW Community Radio  97.3 FM.

Producing Literature & Film for Queer Latinx Youth-a film discussion and book celebration

Join us for a discussion of the groundbreaking new bilingual queer Latinx children's book, When We Love Someone We Sing to Them, and get a "sneak peek" of our new short film La Serenata.

Teaching for Gender Inclusivity with Maya Gonzalez

Teachers and parents: learn simple, transformative tools and frameworks for including LGBTQ2S+ children and families. Get tips regarding how to speak, look at media, and teach multiple disciplines in the classroom, library, and home.  Visiting presenter Maya Gonzalez is a Queer/Chicanx artist, progressive educator, and award-winning illustrator and author of children’s books including "Call Me Tree," "They, She, He, Me, Free to Be," and with Ernesto Javier Martinez, "When We Love Someone We Sing to Them / Cuando Amamos Cantamos." Gonzalez will provide examples of expanded gender inclusion for littles, explore the importance of first voice LGBTQ+ narratives and reflection for young kids, and provide numerous resources related to her holistic/nature-based frame of gender and sexuality for kids.  This workshop is presented in partnership by Eugene Public Library, Wayne Morse Center for Law & Politics at the UO, and UO Dept. of Ethnic Studies.

Maya Gonzalez is a Queer/Chicanx artist, progressive educator, and award-winning illustrator and author of children's books including Call Me Tree and They, She, He, Me, Free to Be.

Women and the 2018 Midterm Elections

Featuring E.J. Graff, senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism. Graff researches and reports on gender and sexuality issues and is a board member of the Journalism & Women Symposium, or JAWS. 

An award-winning journalist, commentator, and author, Graff's work has appeared in such publications as the New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Columbia Journalism Review, Democracy Journal, Foreign Policy, The Los Angeles Times, Ms., The Nation, The New Republic, Salon.com, Slate.com, The Village Voice, and The Women’s Review of Books, and has been excerpted in dozens of anthologies and textbooks.

 

Screening of Harvest of Empire

A powerful documentary that exposes the direct connection between the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America and the immigration crisis we face today. Followed by discussion.

Organized by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics and the UO chapter of Define American.

The Human Flow

The Human Flow, with a post-film discussion led by Define American chapter member Mariko Plescia. 

 

Organized by University of Oregon Define American chapter, in partnership with the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Oregon Humanities Center, and The Department of Romance Languages, among others.

Film Screening: Human Flow by AI Weiwei, followed by community discussion with Manuel Padilla

Post-film discussion led by Portland Meet Portland director Manuel Padilla. Over 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war in the greatest human displacement since World War II. “Human Flow” is an epic film journey that depicts this global crisis through the lens of human experience. Captured over the course of an eventful year in 23 countries, the film follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretches across the globe in countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, and Turkey.  This event is organized by the UO student organization Define American, in partnership with the JSMA, Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, Oregon Humanities Center, and the Department of Romance Languages, among others. 

We Tell You Now: Storytelling on Indigenous Terms

This event provides a venue for Indigenous peoples to speak about borders, migration and belonging on Indigenous terms. In addition to a panel discussion, the event will include video and photographic storytelling by UO students about Native people in the UO community and families at Chifin Native Youth Center.   Panelists:

Romario Garcia ​Bautista (Zapotec), a junior at the UO involved with many organizations, including Ambassador Program, MEChA, Native American Student Union, and Impact Se-ah-dom Edmo (Shoshone-Bannock, Nez Perce, Yakama), Sovereignty Program Director, Western States Center Sven Haakanson, PhD (Sugpiaq), curator for North American anthropology and associate professor in anthropology at University of Washington Angie Morrill PhD (Klamath Tribes), Director of Indian Education, Portland Public Schools

  This event is organized by Leilani Sabzalian, Alutiiq (Education Studies) and Torsten Kjellstrand (SOJC) with support from the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, Many Nations Longhouse, and Agora Journalism Center and in cooperation with Chifin Native Youth Center and the UO Native American Student Union. It is part of the Wayne Morse Center’s 2017-2019 inquiry into Borders, Migration and Belonging.

Globalization and the Migrant Crisis in the Mediterranean

Featuring Wayne Morse Resident Scholar Angela Joya.  This talk will compare how Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt have shaped waves of recent migration from the Middle East and North Africa to European and other western countries. It will explore how the structural adjustment policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have contributed to forced displacement, along with wars and military conflicts. How are global power relations reproduced in the crises that turn workers and peasants into migrants and refugees, driving an increasing number of people to risk life and limb to cross the Mediterranean?

On the Frontlines of the Gig Economy: Organizing Taxi Workers under Ubernomics (Eugene)

Featuring Bhairavi Desai, executive director and founding member of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. The NYTWA is a 19,000-member strong union of NYC professional drivers, uniting drivers of yellow cabs, green cars, black cars & app-dispached cars. Desai received the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World Award in 2005.

 

This is the second annual event in the Margaret Hallock Program for Women's Rights and will be partly funded by the Lorwin Lectureship on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

On the Frontlines of the Gig Economy: Organizing Taxi Workers under Ubernomics (Portland)

Featuring Bhairavi Desai, executive director and founding member of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. The NYTWA is a 19,000-member strong union of NYC professional drivers, uniting drivers of yellow cabs, green cars, black cars & app-dispached cars. Desai received the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World Award in 2005.

 

This is the second annual event in the Margaret Hallock Program for Women's Rights and will be partly funded by the Lorwin Lectureship on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Black Lives Matter and American Racial Politics

Guest speaker Alvin Tillery is an associate professor and associate chair of political science and African American studies at Northwestern University. His interests include American political development, racial and ethnic politics, and critical race theory.

This event is part of Democracy under Pressure, the Wayne Morse Center 2017-18 Public Affairs Speaker Series.

Should Money Talk: The Politics of Electing Judges

Moderated by Erin Gould with panelists Nicolas Dranias, Judge David Schuman, Senator Floyd Pronzanski and Rebecca Tweed.

Open to the public. 1.5 CLE credits pending for legal practitioners. Organized by the Wayne Morse Law Fellows.

 

Erin Gould graduated from the University of Oregon School of Law, where she also served as a Wayne Morse fellow. Gould is the president-elect of the Lane County Bar Association Board of Directors and served as vice president of the board of directors for the Center for Community Counseling. She founded her current law practice in 2015.

Nicolas Dranias, president and executive director of the Compact for America Educational Foundation, is a constitutional scholar and an expert in the law of interstate compacts. He has appeared as a constitutional scholar on Fox News, MSNBC, NPR, and many other outlets.

Senator Floyd Prozanski was first elected to the Oregon Legislature in 1994. He served in the House of Representatives between 1995 to 2000 and 2003. Sen. Prozanski was appointed to represent Oregon Senate District 4 in 2003. He was elected in 2004 to complete the current term and has been reelected three times since 2006.

 

The Honorable David Schuman was a judge of the Oregon Court of Appeals from 2001-14 and currently is a professor in the UO School of Law. Prior to his time at the court of appeals, he served as deputy attorney general of Oregon.

 

Rebecca Tweed has been top political strategist in Oregon and has worked on more than 40 political campaigns for local government, legislative and statewide candidates, plus county and statewide ballot measures. Tweed runs her own consulting firm, Tweed Strategies.

The Origins of Today’s Radical Right and the Crisis of Our Democracy

Guest speaker Nancy MacLean is an American historian and the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University. Maclean’s research focuses on race, gender, labor history and social movements in 20th century U.S. history, with particular attention to the U.S. South.

This event is part of Democracy under Pressure, the Wayne Morse Center 2017-18 Public Affairs Speaker Series.

CLLAS Symposium - Justice Across Borders: Gender, Race, and Migration in the Americas

The Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies (CLLAS) presents, “Justice Across Borders: Gender, Race, and Migration in the Americas.” Our thematic line of inquiry this year, America, Bridge Between Oceans, poses the following questions: What happens when we put the Atlantic world in conversation with the Pacific? What kind of art and cultural production emerges? Which stories of struggles for racial, economic, gender and environmental justice arise? How does looking at Latinx and Latin American Studies from within the Pacific Rim region open up innovative and necessary methodological and analytical horizons? These questions also inspire our symposium Justice Across Borders: Race, Gender, and Migration in the Americas.

Fostering conversations about race, ethnicity, diasporas, gender, sexuality, migration, environmental justice, and culture that bridge the Atlantic and Pacific world, the symposium, Justice Across Borders: Race, Gender, and Migration in the Americas, explores what kind of new knowledges, art, social transformations, and activism we can create together in the face of increasing inequalities and social violence across the continent. We meditate on what contributions emerge from Pacific Rim-based research, art, advocacy work, and political movements when we put ourselves in conversation with scholars, artists, and activists based in the Atlantic coast.  We will discuss the increasing visibility of Caribbean migrants in the Pacific Northwest, environmental justice issues in Mexico, the U.S., Puerto Rico and the Southern Cone, archipelagic studies that encompass Caribbean and Pacific islands, gender politics within Latin American and Latinx communities in Oregon, experiences of Latin Americans alongside Pacific Islanders in the Pacific Rim region, queer Latina and AfroLatin@ art, indigeneity, blackness and Jewish diasporas in Latin America, challenges faced by a variety of Latinx communities in the U.S., etc. From a Latinx and Latin American Studies perspective, we engage comparative and relational dialogues with fields such as Pacific Islander Studies, Asian and Asian American Studies, Black Studies, Native American Studies, among others, hoping to bring new light into the epistemic possibilities of our fields and the meaning of Justice for all of us.

Symposium organizer: Alai Reyes-Santos

9:00 – 9:15 AM (Browsing Room) Welcome from UO administration officials, CLLAS director, symposium coordinator.

9:20-10:30 AM (Browsing Room) Race, Ethnicity and Diasporas Rocio Zambrana, Claudia Holguín, Lanie Millar, Monique Balbuena, Roberto Arroyo Chair: Marta Maldonado

10:40-11:50 AM (Browsing Room) Women and Gender in Latin America and U.S. Latinx communities Vicky Falcon, Michelle McKinley, Kristin Yarris, Lynn Stephen, Gabriela Martinez Chair: Vicky Falcon

12:00- 1:00 PM (Gerlinger Alumni Lounge) Keynote Speaker/Lunch “New Directions in Latinx and Latin American Studies: Archipelagos Across the Caribbean and the Pacific” Guest: Yolanda Martinez-San Miguel Chair: Rocio Zambrana and Lanie Millar

2:00-3:00 PM (Browsing Room) Environmental Justice in the Americas  David Vazquez and Judith Vega, Sarah Wald, Analisa Taylor, Pedro Garcia-Caro Chair: David Vazquez

3:10 – 4:30 PM Roundtable (Browsing Room) “Art, Migration, and Political Activism: Caribbean and Pacific Islander Migrants in the Pacific” (SPONSORS: Department of Ethnic Studies and Wayne Morse Center for Law & Politics) Panelists:  Judith Sierra-Rivera, JoAnna Poblete, Philipp Carrasco, Ileana Rodriguez Silva, Joyce Pualani Warren Chair: Alai Reyes-Santos

4:40PM – 5:40 PM  Plenary Session (Browsing Room) “Latinx Communities: Questions, Challenges, and Transformations” Monica Rojas, Laura Pulido, Ramona Hernández, Edwin Melendez Chair: Gerardo Sandoval

6:00 PM – 7:30 PM (Gerlinger Alumni Lounge) Riffiando: Dominican Artists in the House! A Talk/Reading/Performance Josefina Baez, Ana-Maurine Lara, and Ernesto Lara Coordinator: Ana-Maurine Lara

Light Dinner/Reception

Sponsored by the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies (CLLAS); Wayne Morse Center for Law & Politics; UO College of Arts and Sciences; The Office of the Provost; Center for the Study of Women in Society; Latin American Studies program; Department of English; Department of Romance Languages; Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Department of Anthropology; Department of Ethnic Studies; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; School of Journalism and Communications; Department of Philosophy; and the Global Studies Institute.

 

Lorwin-O'Connell Conference: Immigration Law and Policy 2018

This conference will focus attention on issues in legal practice and empirical research that have particular significance for children, women, and families. It brings together practicing attorneys and judges in the field of immigration law with researchers and advocates engaged with immigrant and refugee communities in Oregon and beyond.

In addition to sessions on DACA and mixed-status families, criminalization (detention, deportation, fear and silencing), and the status of immigration law and policy as of February 2018, we will hold a special afternoon devoted to language politics and translation in Oregon courts. The featured speaker in that session will be Mariano-Florentino (“Tino”) Cuéllar, Associate Justice, California Supreme Court.

This conference is free and open to the public; registration is only necessary for those wanting lunch ($15) or CLE credits + lunch ($40 for a limited time). We are applying for 6-8 hours of CLE credit. Details TBA in December.

About the Lorwin Lectureship: The Lorwin Lectureship was created in 2009 with funding from the estate of Val and Madge Lorwin. Lectures by renowned scholars and experts promote greater appreciation for the importance of civil rights.

The lectureship, overseen by the College of Arts and Sciences and the UO School of Law, is administered through education and research centers, including the Oregon Humanities Center, the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, and the Center for the Study of Women in Society.

About the O’Connell Conference: The O’Connell Conference is an annual event, made possible by former Oregon Supreme Court Justice Ken O’Connell, intended to allow the judicial and legal community to examine current topics in public policy.

America First?: Isolationism and Global Engagement in Historical Perspective

Guest speaker Christopher Nichols is the director of the Oregon State University Center for the Humanities. Nichols specializes in history and its relationships with isolationism, internationalism, and globalization.

This event is part of Democracy under Pressure, the Wayne Morse Center 2017-18 Public Affairs Speaker Series.

PDX Screening of "Documented," featuring Jose Antonio Vargas

In 2011, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas outed himself as an undocumented immigrant in an essay published in the New York Times Magazine. Documented chronicles his journey to America from the Philippines as a child; his journey through America as an immigration reform activist; and his journey inward as he re-connects with his mother, whom he hasn't seen in person in over 20 years.

Screening of “Documented,” featuring Jose Antonio Vargas

In 2011, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas outed himself as an undocumented immigrant in an essay published in the New York Times Magazine. Documented chronicles his journey to America from the Philippines as a child; his journey through America as an immigration reform activist; and his journey inward as he re-connects with his mother, whom he hasn't seen in person in over 20 years. This event is free.

Locked Up and Shut Out: How Mass Incarceration and Mass Deportation Are Intertwined

12-2 p.m.: Brown bag lunch and public discussion

2-4 p.m.: Scholarly symposium

Featured speakers:

Kelly Lytle Hernandez is an associate professor in the UCLA History Department. Her work focuses on race, policing, immigration, and incarceration in the United States. Her new book, City of Inmates: Conquest and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), explores the long rise of incarceration as a social institution.

Torrie Hester is an assistant professor in the St. Louis University History Department. Her research interests include immigration and region, race and ethnicity, as well as law and foreign policy during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Her book Deportation: The Origins of U.S. Policy (Penn Press, 2017) shows how early U.S. deportation law and policy shaped the country.

Sharon Luk is an assistant professor in the University of Oregon Ethnic Studies Department. Her fields of study include racism and racial capitalism, ethnic ontologies, epistemology, social movements, feminisms, and ephemeral archives. Her book The Life of Paper: Letters and a Poetics of Living Beyond Captivity (forthcoming fall 2017, University of California Press) explores the life-worlds sustained through letter correspondence within the evolution of mass incarceration and its attendant racial regimes in California history.

This event is  part of the Wayne Morse Center's 2017-19 theme, Borders, Migration, and Belonging. Cosponsored by the UO Prison Education Committee. 

CLLAS Town Hall with Jose Antonio Vargas

A conversation about undocumented America, moderated by Chris Chávez (SOJC). 

Define American: My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant w/ Jose Antonio Vargas

Featuring Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and founder of Define American,  Jose Antonio Vargas. Vargas will discuss how American identity and citizenship are construed in culture and policy through the telling of his own story.

Vargas, the 2017-18 Wayne Morse Chair, is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and filmmaker. He is the founder of Define American, a nonprofit organization that uses storytelling to shift the conversation about immigration, and #EmergingUS, a multimedia startup for a new multi-ethnic, multiracial America.

In 2011, Vargas wrote an essay for the New York Times Magazine in which he revealed and chronicled his life in America as an undocumented immigrant. A year later, he appeared on the cover of TIME with fellow undocumented immigrants as part of a follow-up story he wrote. He also wrote, produced, and directed Documented, an award-winning documentary on his experience. Vargas will be in residence at the Wayne Morse Center mid-October to mid-November 2017. His visit is in conjunction with the Wayne Morse Center's 2017-19 theme of inquiry, Borders, Migration, and Belonging.

Cosponsors include the UO Center for Student Involvement: BE Series, Cinema Studies, Oregon Humanities Center, Division of Equity and Inclusion, School of Journalism and Communication, Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, and Ethnic Studies.

Wayne Morse Scholar Program Application Deadline

Tackle big questions of democracy and governance.  Explore various forms of political engagement.  Participate in praxis in real-world settings.  Develop leadership skills.  Connect with prominent scholars and elected officials.  Join a community of students committed to service and justice.  Apply today!

Book Celebration: Michelle McKinley, “Fractional Freedoms”

On May 25, the Center for the Study of Women in Society will celebrate the release of director Michelle McKinley’s book, Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600-1700 (Cambridge University Press). This event includes a panel discussion starting at 10 a.m., with a roundtable at 2 p.m.

The book explores domestic slavery and what law school professor McKinley terms “fractional freedoms” in the context of colonial Peru.

Speakers & commentators: Carlos Aguirre, University of Oregon; Larissa Brewer-García, University of Chicago; Karen Graubart, University of Notre Dame; Allison Madar, California State University, Chico; Rachel Sarah O’Toole, University of California, Irvine; Brett Rushforth, University of Oregon; Ana María Silva, University of Michigan; Nicole von Germeten,  Oregon State University.

The Future of Public Education, Featuring AFT President Randi Weingarten

Randi Weingarten is president of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO. Prior to her election as AFT president in 2008, Weingarten served for 12 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2, representing approximately 200,000 educators in the New York City public school system, as well as home child care providers and other workers in health, law and education.

In 2013, the New York Observer named Weingarten one of the most influential New Yorkers of the past 25 years. Washington Life magazine included Weingarten on its 2013 Power 100 list of influential leaders. A teacher of history at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood from 1991 to 1997, Weingarten helped her students win several state and national awards debating constitutional issues.

Weingarten’s column “What Matters Most” appears in the New York Times’ Sunday Review the third Sunday of each month. Weingarten holds degrees from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Cardozo School of Law. She worked as a lawyer for the Wall Street firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan from 1983 to 1986. She is an active member of the Democratic National Committee and numerous professional, civic and philanthropic organizations.

Part of the Wayne Morse Center's Margaret Hallock Program for Women's Rights. Cosponsored by United Academics, AAUP-AFT Local 3209 and the Labor Education and Research Center.

The Future of Public Education, featuring Randi Weingarten

Randi Weingarten is president of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO. Prior to her election as AFT president in 2008, Weingarten served for 12 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2, representing approximately 200,000 educators in the New York City public school system, as well as home child care providers and other workers in health, law and education.

In 2013, the New York Observer named Weingarten one of the most influential New Yorkers of the past 25 years. Washington Life magazine included Weingarten on its 2013 Power 100 list of influential leaders. A teacher of history at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood from 1991 to 1997, Weingarten helped her students win several state and national awards debating constitutional issues.

Weingarten’s column “What Matters Most” appears in the New York Times’ Sunday Review the third Sunday of each month. Weingarten holds degrees from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Cardozo School of Law. She worked as a lawyer for the Wall Street firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan from 1983 to 1986. She is an active member of the Democratic National Committee and numerous professional, civic and philanthropic organizations.

Part of the Wayne Morse Center's Margaret Hallock Program for Women's Rights. Cosponsored by AFT-Oregon, the World Affairs Council, and the Labor Education and Research Center.

“Achieving Justice: Gendered Violence, Displacement, and Legal Access in Guatemala and Oregon”

Roundtable Discussion: will explore how gendered violence in Guatemala leads indigenous women to flee the country as refugees to seek asylum in the United States. By putting experts on gendered violence in Central America into conversation with Oregon-based asylum attorneys, the roundtable will explore the legal reforms with greatest potential to provide effective justice for its survivors. The roundtable will address many critical questions such as: in countries with multiple forms of violence and weak rule of law, what resources are available to displaced women seeking justice and security? What obstacles to gendered justice in Guatemala push women to leave the country? Once in the U.S., what factors prevent women from seeking protection through asylum, and what resources help them create new systems of support and autonomy?

Speakers:

Erin Beck, UO Department of Political Science Gabriela Martínez, UO School of Journalism and Communication Lynn Stephen, UO Department of Anthropology Vannia Glasinovic, U.S. Asylum Attorney Christopher Anders, U.S. Asylum Attorney Anna Ciesielski, U.S. Asylum Attorney

What Kids Bring to School: How educators can address poverty, domestic violence, and other issues affecting their students

Featuring Marsha Kline Pruett of Smith College, School for Social Work where she serves as the faculty chair of the Research Sequence. Her current focus examines family dynamics and development with a specialization of healthy child and family developments during life changes. Her clinical research incorporated preventative interventions, consultation, program design and evaluation.

Free and open to the public.

Checks & Balances in the Age of Trump

How well does our constitutional democracy work when one party controls the levers of power and crucial rights are at stake?  This panel will try to answer this question by bringing together experts on social movements, the media, the courts, state governments, the presidency, and Congress to assess our system of checks and balances today.  Panelists Stuart Chinn, UO law professor Ellen Rosenblum, Oregon’s attorney general Hector Tobar, UO journalism professor and best-selling author Dan Tichenor, UO political science professor and director of the Wayne Morse Center’s Program for Democratic Engagement and Governance Kelley Weigel, executive director of the Western States Center

Free Speech on Campus: A Challenge for Our Times

We live today in an era where students often demand censorship, and universities, afraid to offend their students, surrender academic freedom to charges of offense. What has brought about this confluence of events? Can such an approach to academic discourse be reconciled with the central mission of higher education to promote robust discourse, deliberation, and disagreement?  In this lecture, Professor Geoffrey R. Stone explores these questions, examines the history and vulnerability of academic freedom, and offers thoughts on how universities should reconcile their fundamental commitment to free and robust discourse with the equally fundamental need to nurture a community that values civility and mutual respect. Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. A member of the law faculty since 1973, Mr. Stone served as dean ofthe Law School (1987-1994) and Provost of the University of Chicago (1994-2002). Mr. Stone is the author orco-author of many books on constitutional law and has been an editor of the Supreme Court Review. In the fall of 2013, Mr. Stone served as a member of President Obama’s five-member NSA Review Group, which in the wake of the Snowden disclosures advised the President and the Congress on abroad range of NSA surveillance programs.

2017 O'Connell Conference: Issues at the Intersection of Law and Science

Legal precedent and the practice of law require lawyers and judges to look at decisions that have evolved over time. Yet we live in a world where the pace of scientific discovery and technological innovation only seem to accelerate. The intersection of tradition with rapid change presents lawyers and judges with challenges and a need to know how to approach those challenges in order to best serve their clients, the public  and the legal profession.

Learn about the speakers.

 

Answering the Call: Oregon Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins talks candidly about her time in office

Outgoing Secretary of State and UO Law alumna Jeanne P. Atkins will retire—for the second time—at the end of 2016 after a 35-year career in public service and women’s rights advocacy. 

In March of 2015 she was appointed to fill the remainder of the term of then-Secretary of State Kate Brown when Brown became Governor. 

Hear her story and what she has learned as Secretary of State in the past two years, as she oversaw more than 50 audits of state government; a project to restore the original Oregon Constitution; arguably the most contentious presidential election in U.S. history; and efforts to reform campaign finance laws in Oregon, in addition to serving on the State Land Board during difficult deliberations around the Elliott State Forest.

Oregon Migrations Symposium

Migration has been central to life in Oregon for thousands of years and has become especially poignant since non-Native people began resettling here during the 1830s and 1840s. Oregonians have long engaged in complex debates about which peoples are entitled to certain rights and responsibilities as residents of the state — from notions of Manifest Destiny to black and Asian exclusion laws to tribal treaty negotiations and termination to welcoming late-twentieth-century refugees to recent political struggles over tuition equity and drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants.

The Oregon Migrations symposium will bring together scholars and holders of community history to investigate the various ways that Oregon inhabitants and newcomers have shaped each other through time, helping us better understand today’s discussions about belonging.

Sponsored by Oregon Historical Society, Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics and the UO Labor Education Research Center.

Challenges for the New Administration

Featuring Robert Kuttner, cofounder and coeditor of The American Prospect. He was a longtime columnist for Business Week, and continues to write columns in the Boston Globe. He cofounded the Economic Policy Institute in Washington and serves on its executive committee.

Part of the Wayne Morse Center’s Program for Democratic Engagement and Governance. Cosponsored by the UO Department of Political Science and the UO Labor Education and Research Center.

Challenges for the New Administration

Featuring Robert Kuttner, cofounder and coeditor of The American Prospect. He was a longtime columnist for Business Week, and continues to write columns in the Boston Globe. He co-founded the Economic Policy Institute in Washington and serves on its executive committee.

Part of the Wayne Morse Center’s Program for Democratic Engagement and Governance. Sponsored by the UO School of Journalism and Communication in Portland, UO Portland, UO Law Portland, UO Labor Education and Research Center and UO Department of Political Science.

10th Annual Rennard Strickland Lecture

The Rennard Strickland Lecture Series was established in 2006 to honor the legacy of Dean Rennard Strickland and to build on his contributions to the field of Indian law, to legal education, and to the Environmental and Natural Resources and Indian law programs at the University of Oregon School of Law. The theme of the lecture series is the examination of native leadership and vision for environmental stewardship in the 21st century.

This year's Rennard Strickland Lecture will be held on November 1, 2016, at 5:30 PM in room 110 of the Knight Law School and will feature Carole Goldberg, Vice Chancellor and Jonathan D. Varat Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA. 

Carole Goldberg has taught Civil Procedure, Federal Indian Law, Tribal Legal Systems, the Tribal Legal Development Clinic, and the Tribal Appellate Court Clinic. The two clinics have rendered legal services to Indian tribes and Indian judicial systems.  In 2006, she served as the Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, and in 2007 she was appointed a Justice of the Hualapai Court of Appeals.   In 2010, President Barack Obama appointed her to the Indian Law and Order Commission, which investigated issues of safety and justice in tribal communities, and in 2013 issued a Final Report recommending ways to improve Indian country criminal justice.

Following law school, Professor Goldberg clerked for Judge Robert F. Peckham, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.  She has twice served as Associate Dean for the School of Law, from 1984 to 1989 and from 1991 to 1992. She has also served as Chair of the Academic Senate in 1993-1994.  In 2011, she was appointed Vice Chancellor, Academic Personnel, for the UCLA campus.  

Goldberg's recent books include Defying the Odds:  The Tule River Tribe's Struggle for Sovereignty in Three Centuries (Yale University Press 2010, co-authored with anthropologist Gelya Frank) and Indian Law Stories (Foundation Press 2011, co-edited with Kevin Washburn and Philip Frickey).  Professor Goldberg has written widely on the subject of federal Indian law and tribal law, and is co-editor and co-author of Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law (1982, 2005, 2012 editions), as well as co-author of a casebook, American Indian Law: Native Nations and the Federal System (7th ed., 2015).

Ready for Hillary? Gender & Media in the Presidential Campaigns

Featuring Regina Lawrence, nationally recognized authority on political communication, civic engagement, gender and politics, and the role of media in public discourse about politics and policy. Her two latest books are Hillary Clinton’s Race for the White House: Gender Politics and the Media on the Campaign Trail and When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina.

Measures 97 & 98: Should Oregon Tax Corporations for Kids?

Election 2016 is more than Clinton v. Trump! Come learn about two of the most significant measures on the Oregon ballot this fall, both of which deeply affect public schools. (Oregon’s high school graduation rate is the 3rd worst in the country, and Oregon spends less per pupil than 70% of US states.)

Join OCAP and Dr. Daniel HoSang for a discussion of Measure 97, the proposed corporate sales tax provision, and Measure 98, which concerns dropout prevention and technical education proposals. Dr. HoSang is a national expert on the state direct ballot measures who will discuss the politics behind the measures and what they mean for you.  Pizza will be served.

'Our Children's Burden': How Public Education Helps Sustain a Diverse Democracy

Featuring Amy Stuart Wells, professor of sociology and education and the coordinator of Policy Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her writing focuses on issues of race and education, specifically educational policies such as school desegregation, school choice, charter schools, and tracking, and how they affect opportunities for students of color.

Gender Identity in the Workplace – A Discussion of Legal and Personal Considerations

The Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics and OUTLaws will host transgender activist Jamison Green, Ph.D. Doctor of Law, Manchester Metropolitan University, for lectures and discussions on transgender issues in law.

The first lecture will be "Gender Identity in the Workplace – A Discussion of Legal and Personal Considerations." A light lunch will be served at the event.

Making the Case for Transgender Health and Rights: Gender Recognition in the Courts and in Prison

The Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, UO OUTLaws, and the Pride Foundation will host transgender activist Jamison Green, Ph.D. Doctor of Law, Manchester Metropolitan University, for lectures and discussions on transgender issues in law. This event is a part of the Wayne Morse Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series.

The second lecture will be "Making the Case for Transgender Health and Rights: Gender Recognition in the Courts and in Prison." Pizza will be served at the event.

Latina/os and K-12 Education: Bridging Research and Practice

This event will feature:     •    Dr. Patricia Gándara, research professor, UCLA, codirector of the Civil Rights Project of UCLA , and Visiting Distinguished Scholar at UO Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics and the College of Education, Fall 2015     •    Dr. Gustavo Balderas, superintendent of Eugene School District 4J     •    Additional speakers     •    The Latino Roots exhibit     •    And more! The goals of this event are to:     •    Bring together the education community (K-12), the community at large, and the university community to talk about the state of education for Oregon Latina/os     •    Showcase examples of UO research addressing Latina/os and education     •    Stimulate conversations and network building.

Black Lives Matter: Race and Justice Across America

Featuring Charles Ogletree, professor of Harvard Law School and the founding and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. 

Event is free and open to the public, registration is required. Register and find out more information on our website. 

Black Lives Matter: Race and Justice Across America

Featuring Charles Ogletree, professor of law at Harvard Law School and the founding and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.

Ogletree is a legal theorist with an international reputation for his work in securing equal rights for all. He has written extensively on race and justice, his most recent book being Punishment in Popular Culture (NYU Press, 2015), which he co-edited with Austin Sarat.

Among his many honors and awards, Ogletree has been named by Ebony Magazine as one of the 100+ Most Influential Black Americans every year since 2006. Ogletree visited Oregon as the Wayne Morse Chair in 2001-02.

Access and Higher Education

Featuring UO President Michael Schill. Schill became the 18th president of the University of Oregon in 2015. He previously served as the dean and Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. President Schill is an expert in the fields of property, real estate, and housing law and policy. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School. 

To support access, President Schill announced the Oregon Commitment program which invests $17 million to increase UO’s graduation rate 10% in five years.

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series.

Racial Categories and Statistics: Can we achieve justice without them?

Featuring Kim Williams, Portland State University. An associate professor of political science at PSU, Williams also directs the Center for Women, Politics & Policy in PSU’s Hatfield School of Government. She previously taught at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research focuses on race and immigration in American politics. Williams is the author of Mark One or More: Civil Rights in Multiracial America (University of Michigan Press, 2006) as well as numerous book chapters and articles. This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series.

Harney County and the Sagebrush Rebellion: Past and Present Issues in Federal Land Management

Presenters include David Hayes, former Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer of the Department of the Interior for President Clinton and President Obama, and Amanda Peacher, an OPB reporter who covered the Malheur Wildlife Refuge occupation.  

Solving Oregon's K-12 Funding Crisis: Where We've Been and Solutions for the Future

This panel discussion is part of our 2015-17 theme, The Future of Public Education, and features four experts on Oregon education funding.

Adam Davis, founder of DMH Research; Sarah Gelser, Oregon State Legislature District 8; Colt Gill, Superintendent of Bethel School District in Eugene; and John Taponga, President of ECONorthwest.

2016 Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples Lecture

The University of Oregon will host the 4th Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples Symposium on Monday, April 25, 2016 at 6:30 p.m. at the Many Nations Longhouse. Keynote speakers are Maxine Burkett, from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and Elizabeth Kronk from the University of Kansas. This event will examine the intersection of tribal sovereignty and rights in the face of climate-induced impacts on indigenous peoples and homelands. For more information on our speakers, visit: http://ccip.uoregon.edu/.

Calm Before the Storm: Oregon and National Campaigns at Halftime

Join us for a panel discussion featuring a great lineup of political experts:

Betsy Boyd, Assoc. VP of Federal Affairs, University of Oregon. Before joining UO in 2000, Boyd worked for Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-Springfield) for fourteen years. She serves as a liaison between the university and Oregon’s congressional delegation. Jeff Mapes, Senior Political Reporter, Oregon Public Broadcasting. Mapes has been covering Oregon politics since 1984 and reported on numerous legislative sessions and political campaigns at local, state, and federal levels. Part time author, part time avid bike commuter, Mapes published his book, Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists are Changing American Cities, in 2009.  Jack Roberts, Oregon Lottery Director. Roberts held the position of Oregon’s Commissioner of Labor and Industries from 1995 to 2003. From 2009 to 2013 he wrote in the Oregonian newspaper as a biweekly political column. In October 2013, he was selected to be the director of the Oregon Lottery by Governor John Kitzhaber. Serena Cruz, Executive Director, Virginia Garcia Memorial Foundation. As executive director, Cruz oversees the foundation’s activities. Before joining Virginia Garcia, she managed Albina Construction LLC, in which she founded in 2007. She served eight years on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners for District 2, and at age 31, she was the youngest woman ever elected to Multnomah County government.

Documentary Film Premiere “Sad Happiness: Cinthya’s Transborder Journey,” with director Lynn Stephen, followed by Q&A

Opening event of the CSWS Northwest Women Writers Symposium: This documentary directed by Lynn Stephen, Distinguished Professor of CAS (Anthropology) and co-director of the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies (CLLAS), explores the differential rights that U.S. citizen children and their undocumented parents have through the story of one extended Zapotec family. Shot in Oregon and Oaxaca, Mexico, and narrated by 11-year old Cinthya, the film follows Cinthya’s trip to her parent’s home community of Teotitlán del Valle with her godmother, anthropologist Lynn Stephen. There she meets her extended family and discovers her indigenous Zapotec and Mexican roots. While in Oaxaca, she participates in her community’s annual celebration of their patron saint, learns how to make chocolate and spin wool, explores a Zapotec archaeological site, and shares in a family party where she dances with her great-grandmother. Her absent parents are omnipresent on the trip as Cinthya’s cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and great-grandparents all talk to her about them and how they wish for their return. Cinthya’s happiness is modified by the sadness of her parents being unable to accompany her. At a larger level, Cinthya’s story illuminates the desires and struggles of the millions of families divided between the U.S. and other countries where children are mobile citizens and parents cannot leave. In English, Spanish, and Zapotec with English subtitles. TRT: 39 minutes.

“Crossing Borders: What It Means in the Life of a Child” a panel featuring author Reyna Grande in discussion of her memoir, “The Distance Between Us”

Opening day panel of the CSWS Northwest Women Writers Symposium, with keynote author Reyna Grande

This panel will focus on the memoir The Distance Between Us, featuring Reyna Grande reading sections from her work, with comments by community educators and University of Oregon faculty and alumni.

In her memoir The Distance Between Us (Atria Books, 2012), Grande writes about her life before and after her undocumented border crossing as a young child from Mexico to the United States. A National Book Circle Critics Award finalist, this book was hailed by Los Angeles Times reviewer Hector Tobar as “the Angela’s Ashes of the modern Mexican immigrant experience.”

Panelists include:

Reyna Grande: featured presenter Moderator: Lynn Stephen, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon and co-director of the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies (CLLAS). Gustavo Balderas, Superintendent, Eugene School District 4J Lidiana Soto, UO graduate and recent Migrant Education Program worker Carmen X Urbina, Program Development and Outreach Coordinator, Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership Program, UO College of Education; Administrator on Special Assignment, Eugene School District 4J Kristin Yarris, a migration scholar and Assistant Professor in the UO Department of International Studies

This panel will be followed by a brief reception. Additional events before and after.

Thunder on the Left and Right: Populism in the 2016 Elections

Series focused on the 2016 election. Join us as we explore the meaning and context behind the glitz and headlines in a dramatic election year. We’ll be discussing economic populism alongside our special guest speakers.

Margaret Hallock, formerly of the Wayne Morse Center Ellen Herman, UO History Joe Lowndes, UO Political Science Dan Tichenor, UO Political Science Moderated by Rebecca Flynn, Wayne Morse Center

No Más Bebés screening and discussion with producer Virginia Espino and featured activist Consuelo Hermosillo

They came to have their babies. They went home sterilized. The story of immigrant mothers who sued county doctors, the state, and the U.S. government after they were pushed into sterilizations while giving birth at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the 1960s and 70s. Led by an intrepid, 26-year-old Chicana lawyer and armed with hospital records secretly gathered by a whistle-blowing young doctor, the mothers faced public exposure and stood up to powerful institutions in the name of justice.

Presidential Lecture: Myth and Miracles from the King Years

A public lecture by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the Civil Rights Movement, Taylor Branch.

A book signing will follow the lecture in the Straub Hall foyer. 

Taylor Branch is an American author and public speaker best known for his landmark trilogy on the civil rights era, America in the King Years. He has returned to civil rights history in his latest book, The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement (2013). His 2009 memoir, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, chronicles an unprecedented eight-year project to gather a sitting president’s comprehensive oral history secretly on tape. His cover story for the October 2011 issue of The Atlantic, “The Shame of College Sports,” touched off continuing national debate.

Aside from writing, Taylor speaks before a wide variety of audiences. He began his career as a magazine journalist for The Washington Monthly in 1970, moving later to Harper’s and Esquire. 

http://taylorbranch.com​

Book Celebration: Slow News, A Manifesto for the Critical News Consumer

“Emphasizing the core values of freedom of speech, the book simply defines news as ‘anything that changes the status quo.’ It is this elegant writing that makes Laufer’s book required reading.” —John Pavlic, Rutgers University

Join us for remarks and a book signing by Peter Laufer. Featuring Laufer‘s recent book Slow News: A Manifesto for the Critical News Consumer. The event will be followed by a reception.

Peter Laufer is the author of more than a dozen books about topics ranging from butterfly collecting to Mexico-U.S. border issues to Americans imprisoned abroad. He has worked as an NBC correspondent, a radio news reporter, and has written many feature stories for national news organizations. Laufer is the James Wallace Chair Professor in Journalism at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center’s Media and Democracy theme of inquiry.

This event is co-sponsored by the UO School of Journalism and Communication. 

We're Free, But Not *Free*: Custodial Citizenship in Our Time

Vesla Weaver is an assistant professor of political science and African American Studies at Yale University. She received her doctorate in Government and Social Policy at Harvard University. Weaver is broadly interested in understanding racial inequality in the United States, how state policies shape citizenship, and the political causes and consequences of the growth of the criminal justice system in the United States.

Her newest book with Amy Lerman, Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control, is concerned with the effects of increasing punishment and surveillance in America on democratic inclusion, particularly for the black urban poor. She is also the author of Frontlash: Civil Rights, the Carceral State, and the Transformation of American Politics (under contract with Cambridge), which uncovers a connection between the movement for civil rights and the development of punitive criminal justice. Weaver is also the co-author of Creating a New Racial Order, which explores how multiracialism, immigration, the genomics revolution, and generational changes are reshaping the racial order in the United States (with Professors Jennifer Hochschild and Traci Burch).

Weaver’s research has been supported by fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Brookings Institution. She is currently regional leader of the Scholars Strategy Network, member of the Executive Session on Community Corrections, and co-leader of SPIRE (the Symposium on the Politics of Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity). She has previously worked for the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This is a Val R. and Madge G. Lorwin Lectureship event and is part of the Wayne Morse Center's Public Affairs Speaker Series.

Media, Democracy and Technologies: Possibilities and Challenges

As some democratic governments, many autocracies, drug and human cartels, and terrorist groups are attacking professional journalists and independent citizen journalists in increasing numbers, we will explore the possibilities and challenges that media and technology offers in such environments. Join us for a morning symposium to discuss how journalists and citizens may work together in the service of public interest and how technology may help us achieve new ways of reporting events and creating new narratives that push for and strengthen democracy globally.  Speakers will include:

Danny O’Brien is the International Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Madeleine Bair is the Curator of the YouTube Human Rights Channel at Witness. Gabriela Martínez is an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication and the 2014-15 Wayne Morse Resident Scholar at the University of Oregon. Endalk Chala is the co-founder of Ethiopia’s Zone-9 Bloggers. Tewodros Workneh is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon.

Lessons in Leadership

Featuring Kerry Tymchuk, executive director of the Oregon Historical Society. Part of the Public Affairs Speaker Series.

His Own Received Him Not: Jimmy Carter, Progressive Evangelicalism, and the Religious Right

Featuring Randall Balmer, Dartmouth College; part of the Public Affairs Speaker Series.

Collective Memory: The Role of Media Makers

A public lecture by Gabriela Martinez, 2014-15 Wayne Morse Resident Scholar and associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon.

 

Dr. Gabriela Martinez is an associate professor in the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication and the associate director of the UO Center for the Study of Women in Society. Martinez will discuss her current project, Media, Democracy and the Construction of Collective Memory.   The project explores the role media and content producers play in shaping collective memories and what it means to "construct" collective memories and historical memories through the production of media.   The project asks: How does media production address human rights violations? How does it promote social change? How does media production strengthen democratic practices? She examines these questions across nations, including Peru, Guatemala and Mexico. Sponsored by Media Studies at the School of Journalism and Communication and the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics.

 

The Internet’s Own Boy Screening

Film screening of The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz.

It is the story of programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz, who took his own life at the age of 26.

The Revolt of the Cities: Transforming Urban Politics

Featuring Harold Meyerson, editor-at-large of The American Prospect and weekly columnist for The Washington Post. In 2009, he was named one of "the most influential commentators in the nation" by The Atlantic Monthly. He serves as a vice chair of National Political Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America. Part of the Public Affairs Speaker Series.

Reinventing Public Service Education and Research

Featuring Jonathan Koppell, dean of the College of Public Programs and professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University. His books include World Rule: Accountability, Legitimacy and the Design of Global Governance (University of Chicago Press, 2010) and The Politics of Quasi-Government: Hybrid Organizations and the Dynamics of Bureaucratic Control (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Typewriter to Twitter: An NPR Reporter’s Journey

Featuring NPR Correspondent Howard Berkes. Sponsored by KLCC with support from the Wayne Morse Center. Howard Berkes has focused on investigative reports for NPR for the last four years. Before that, he was NPR's rural affairs correspondent. He has covered topics ranging from the Olympics to Native American issues, the militia movement, Neo-Nazi groups, nuclear waste, the Unabomber case, air pollution, the Montana Freemen standoff, polygamy, the Mormon faith, western water issues, mass shootings, and coal mine safety issues.  

Garrett Epps Book Celebration

Join us for remarks and a book signing by Garrett Epps. Featuring Epps' recent books American Epic: Reading the U.S. Constitution and American Justice 2014: Nine Clashing Visions on the Supreme Court. 

Discussion on Measure 88

Measure 88 provides Oregon resident “driver cards” without requiring proof of legal residence in the United States. Jeff Stone, executive director of Oregon Association of Nurseries, will be speaking in favor of the measure. Mark Callahan, former U.S. Senate candidate from Oregon, will be speaking in opposition to the measure. Light refreshments will be served. Free and open to the public. Arranged and organized by the Wayne Morse Law Fellows. Cosponsored by ACS, MLSA, OUTLaws, and LALSA.

Surveillance, Suppression, and Secrecy

Featuring Nadine Strossen, former president of ACLU.

Nadine Strossen is a professor of law at New York Law School. She served as president of the ACLU from 1991-2008 and is a member of the ACLU's National Advisory Council. She was named as one of the “The 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America” twice by the National Law Journal. She is both a scholar and practitioner in the areas of constitutional law, civil liberties, and international human rights.

This is the keynote address for the Val R. and Madge G. Lorwin Lectureship. Part of the Wayne Morse Legacy Series sponsored by the Oregon Historical Society, the World Affairs Council of Oregon and the University of Oregon. Cosponsored by the Oregon Country Fair, KLCC, and ACLU.

Line of Fire: Cartooning's Political Impact

Featuring Jack Ohman, editorial cartoonist for the Sacramento Bee. Held in conjunction with the exhibit of Wayne Morse’s political cartoons in the Knight Library, running from the end of September through November. The event will be followed by a viewing of the cartoon exhibit at 6:30 p.m. in the Browsing Room of the Knight Library. in the Browsing Room, Knight Library.

Jack Ohman was the youngest cartoonist to ever be nationally syndicated at age 19, and his work now appears in more than 300 publications nationwide. He is the recipient of many awards; most recently he won first place for editorial cartooning in the 2014 Best of the West journalism contest.