Social Justice

Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, speaks on global income inequality. The world's richest 62 people have as much money as the poorest half of the population, or 3.6 billion people. Over the last five years, the wealth of those 62 individuals has increased by half a trillion dollars. Byanyima advocates for policies that put wages, access to healthcare and environmental sustainability ahead of corporate profits.

Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, assistant professor and director of the masters program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University, explains how genocide is a gendered experience that targets reproductive violence and life force atrocities.

Educational historian Ethan Hutt, assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland - College Park, talks about the standard assessments for K-12 schools internationally and nationally and how they are used to make flawed comparisons and generalizations. He traces the history of educational assessment to show it wasn't always this way.

Douglas Gagnon, research associate for the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy, draws from his own research and others’ to examine the state of equal opportunity in our nation’s schools and describe what we might expect from equity-oriented education policy in the near future.

Mary Jo Bane, Thornton Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Management at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, gives a lecture at the College of the Holy Cross on the growing inequality among children based on their parents' income and education level. Bane is former Assistant Secretary of Children and Families for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Throughout American history, from the Civil War to Civil Rights, the church has been at the center of black activist movements. Karsonya Wise Whitehead, assistant professor of communication, Africana and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland and author of "Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America," explores the role of the black church in the context of American history, the recent events in Ferguson and New York, and the African American experience.

Maureen O'Connell, associate professor and chair of religion at LaSalle University, explores the community muralism movement in Philadelphia through the lens of racial justice. Over three decades, the movement has yielded 3,500 murals across the city. She highlights the collaborative process used to create the murals, often including minority communities and even prisoners, and explores how the murals tell stories that break down boundaries of racial inequality.

James Waller, an eminent scholar and activist for genocide awareness and mass killing prevention, talks about the recent history and definition of genocide, the concept of sovereignty of state that keeps nations from intervening, and the steps that can be taken by governments and individuals to stop and prevent mass atrocities.

Jorge J. E. Gracia is Samuel P. Capen Chair and SUNY Distinguished Professor in the departments of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at SUNY Buffalo. He has written and edited more than 40 books, including “Surviving Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality in the Twenty-First Century” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), “Hispanic/Latino Identity: A Philosophical Perspective” (Blackwell, 2000), and the forthcoming “Latinos in America: Philosophy and Social Identity.”

Lisa Dodson, research professor of sociology at Boston College, shares data and stories from her 2011 book "The Moral Underground: How Ordinary People Subvert an Unfair Economy." She describes a growing trend of middle managers and professionals who recognize an unfair economic system and choose to quietly bend or break rules to assist their low-wage employees.

Samuel Martinez, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Connecticut, discusses the ruling of the Dominican Republic's highest court that denies citizenship to Dominicans of Haitian ancestry and the mass expulsions of these people to Haiti. In 2005, Martinez submitted an expert affidavit in support of the landmark case of Yean and Bosico v. Dominican Republic presented before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Rev. Ismael Moreno Coto, S.J., popularly known as Padre Melo, outlines five contributing factors to the increased violence in his native Honduras, which is considered the "murder capital of the world." He is a human right defender and director of Radio Progreso, a Christian-based radio station that is a national leader in investigative reporting.

Medical anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes is the Chancellor's Professor at University of California at Berkeley and the co-founder and director of Organ's Watch, a medical human rights project that tracks the organ trafficking trade.

Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy highlights key decisions in race-based affirmative action in higher education over the past 34 years and previews the upcoming Supreme Court case Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Many observers believe the Court's ruling could effectively end the use of affirmative action in college admissions programs nationwide. Kennedy, who studies the intersection of racial conflict and legal institutions in American life, is completing a book on affirmative action.

Tamara Vukov, visiting research professor and a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy in the Department of Culture and Communication at Drexel University, talks about art and media activities in migrant justice movements such as Kein Mensch Ist Illegal (No One Is Illegal) in Germany; Sans Papier in France; and the Transborder Immigrant Tool in the U.S.

Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT, Esther Duflo explains how randomized trials of strategies to address poverty yield proven outcomes that sometimes contradict anti-poverty policy and popular thinking. She is co-author of Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty.

Author of "A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery," E. Benjamin Skinner talks about the atrocities of human bondage and slave trafficking today in Haiti, South Africa, and other parts of the world. Skinner is a fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.

Mark Warren, associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is a sociologist concerned with the revitalization of American democratic and community life. He studies efforts to strengthen institutions that anchor inner city communities - churches, schools, and other community-based organizations - and to build broad-based alliances among these institutions and across race and social class.

Pulitzer and Bancroft prize-winning author Paul Starr, co-founder and editor of The American Prospect, explores why the American people are so bitterly divided on health care policy while other wealthy western democracies are not.

Peachy Myers, White House Liaison to the Corporation for National and Community Service, speaks about her calling to community service and legislative achievements, including the passage of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. The lecture was presented by the Donelan Office of Community-Based Learning.