Today marks the start of “Homeland ‘insecurity: Race, Immigration and Labor in Post-September 11 North America,” a symposium to discuss the effect of Sept. 11 on immigration policy and perceptions of race and ethnicity.
Roberto Lovato, a writer for Pacific News Service, will deliver the keynote address at 7 p.m. today in Room 175 of the Knight Law Center. Lovato’s essays on issues of race and immigration have appeared in the L.A. Times, the Nation and several other publications.
Following the keynote address, University Law Professor Steve Bender will moderate a roundtable discussion titled “Re-burdening the White Man (and the Rest of Us): National Security and Race Viewed from within the Empire.”
The event features a number of distinguished scholars from across the nation, as well as regional community activists and University professors, including Bender, Associate Professor of Geography Shaul Cohen and Sokhom Tauch, director of the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization in Portland .Ward Churchill, the former head of the department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the symposium, but his appearance was canceled at the beginning of last term.
Churchill’s appearances at other college campuses were canceled because of controversial essays he wrote following the events of Sept. 11.
The symposium will host three panel discussions on various topics Friday in Room 175 of the Knight Law Center at 10 a.m.
— Moriah Balingit