Since 1980, the population of female prisoners has increased eightfold in this country, with women of color disproportionately impacted. In her talk, Ms. Law will examine the structural inequities and injustices behind the rise in the number of incarcerated women and the recurring violation of rights women face inside prison, including lack of access to reproductive and medical health care and pervasive sexual harassment and abuse. Law will also discuss how incarcerated women are challenging ...

In her talk, Kornbluh will reveal how welfare reform is shaped by “intersectional sexism,” the gendered and racialized dimensions of legal activity that are evident, persistent, yet ignored by mainstream policy makers and Washington, D.C.-based intellectuals. Taking as her example the failed passage of a feminist welfare reauthorization bill in the early 2000s, Kornbluh will discuss why the Democratic Party resisted embracing this initiative and explore the crucial role feminist scholars and activists have to play ...

In this talk, David Marshall will illuminate contemporary debates about the value of the liberal arts and sciences and public investment in higher education by examining Enlightenment arguments for both liberal education and public education in the early American Republic, and the 19th-century Land Grant movement, which resulted in the establishment of the University of California as a “public trust” in the California State Constitution. These two Enlightenment moments resonate today as we try to ...

This talk argues that environmental justice movements are freedom struggles. Beginning with the starting point that unjust environments are rooted in racism, capitalism, militarism, colonialism, land theft from Native peoples, and gender violence, the talk frames environmental justice as particularly significant in the moment of danger that we are currently facing. It is drawn from a forthcoming book that examines activism at Standing Rock, in Flint and the Central Valley, and in the wake of ...