2013 Speakers

Police States, Prison Nations

Wednesday, Nov. 13

Keynote Speaker
Paul Butler, professor of law, Georgetown University Law Center

Paul Butler is one of the nation’s most widely consulted scholars on issues of race and criminal justice.  He is the author of Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice, which received the Harry Chapin Media Award, and he has published numerous articles in leading scholarly journals.  In addition, he frequently offers commentary in the New York Times and other publications.  His provocative work has been the subject of much attention in the academic and popular media, and it has been profiled on “60 Minutes,” “Nightline,” and many evening news programs.  Prior to joining Georgetown’s faculty he was Associate Dean for Faculty Development and the Carville Dickinson Benson Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School, where he was awarded the Professor of the Year award three times by the graduating class.  As a former federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, Professor Butler’s prosecutions included a U.S. Senator, three FBI agents, and several other law enforcement officials.   He also served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, prosecuting drug and gun cases.

 

Thursday, Nov. 14

Keynote Speaker
Enjoy a video recording of Professor Rodríguez’s talk here.
Dylan Rodríguez, professor and chair of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Riverside

Dylan Rodríguez is a scholar-activist who has published and spoken widely about racial genocide, state violence, civil rights, social identity, and liberation.  He is the author of two books: Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime (2006) and Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition (2009).  In addition, his scholarly writing has appeared widely in a range of academic journals, and he has contributed chapters to many anthologies and edited collections.  A central concern animates his work: How do people inhabit racial genocide—make sense of it, suffer it, and revolt against it?  His current thinking examines how the genocidal logics of social liquidation, cultural extermination, physiological evisceration, and racist terror become normalized features of everyday life, particularly in the “post-civil rights” and “post-racial” moments.

Professor Rodríguez is a founding member of Critical Resistance, a prison abolition collective, and the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, and he has worked in or alongside various social movements and activist groups. Embracing the responsibilities and obligations of a public intellectual practice, he has appeared in numerous media venues, including radio programs in Los Angeles, the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area, Montreal, and Santa Barbara.