Events

September 1, 2017 at 5:15 pm

Constitution Day 2017 | Rights in the Penal Democracy, Sept. 28

Dr. Naomi Murakawa, standing in front of bookshelf

Dr. Naomi Murakawa

Ohio University recognizes Constitution Day 2017 with Dr. Naomi Murakawa delivering the Constitution Day lecture on “Rights in the Penal Democracy” on Thursday, Sept. 28, at 5 p.m. in the Athena Theater on Court Street.

The Center for Law, Justice & Culture also encourages all to attend a Meet and Greet with Murakawa on Thursday, Sept. 28, from noon to 1 p.m. in the Center for Law, Justice & Culture, Bentley 001. Students are especially encouraged to attend. Pizza and refreshments will be provided.

Murakawa is Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University.

Her Constitution Day lecture will focus on how and why police brutality and racial profiling are continuing in the United States, three years since the launch of the Black Lives Matter movement.

She will analyze why reforms like police-worn body cameras and de-escalation trainings fail — and are likely to only perpetuate racialized state violence.

This event is free and open to the public and hosted by the Center for Law, Justice & Culture and the Office of the Vice President and Provost.

Murakawa studies the reproduction of racial inequality in 20th and 21st century American politics, with specialization in crime policy and the carceral state. She is the author of the groundbreaking book The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America (Oxford University Press, 2014), which traces the historical trajectory of race and imprisonment from the 1940s to the present and, in the process, radically reshapes our understanding of why America has such a disproportionately large prison population.

Murakawa’s work has appeared in Law & Society ReviewTheoretical CriminologyDu Bois Review, and several edited volumes.

She has received fellowships from Columbia Law School’s Center for the Study of Law and Culture, as well the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Research Program.

Prior to joining African American Studies at Princeton, she taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington.

Murakawa received her B.A. in women’s studies from Columbia University, her M.Sc. in social policy from the London School of Economics, and her Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.

Murakawa is co-chair of the 2017 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting Program for the Politics and History Section.

Please contact CLJC Director Haley Duschinski for more information.

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