Social Justice

He was the little blonde-haired boy in the iconic picture of children being liberated from the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was one of the lucky ones who made it out alive.

In this talk, noted scholar Juana Maria Rodriguez will explore how documenting the lives of elderly sex workers in Mexico City can affect how others subjectively interpret their life stories, and how combining visual documentation with biographical narratives can alter the interpretative process. Her lecture, "The Women of Casa Xochiquetzal: Corporeal Encounters, Queer Feelings," is presented by Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in Arts & Sciences.

The historian Crystal Feimster will deliver the annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture.

On February 3, 2015 at 6 p.m. in the Graham Chapel, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Residential Learning, Jill Stratton moderated a discussion on “Marriage Equality and the GOP” by a panel featuring Meghan McCain, Gregory T. Angelo and Fred Karger.

This two-part discussion, titled “Creating Inclusive Access to Education, Training & Technology,” featured leaders from various sectors addressing how to create more equitable access to education, training and technology in our community.

LeVar Burton of "Roots" and "Reading Rainbow" fame talked about “The Power of Storytelling” in Graham Chapel for the Assn. of Black Students' annual Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration.

For this presentation, Ahmed will demonstrate how and why diversity is “in use” as a word and as a concept to help understand how universities are shaped by patterns of use that often go unnoticed.

“Having undergone experiences so bizarre, crushing, ugly, they couldn’t be included in the film “Roots,” they would have burned holes through the foil in the television. Today, we are upwards of 30 million. How have we survived? I suggest the literature. I believe it’s available to all of us to encourage us to survive…and to thrive…and to thrive with some passion, compassion, humor and style.”

The Nov. 10, 2019 finale of the Blacks in America: 400 Years Plus trilogy, featured Karine Jean-Pierre, NBC and MSNBC Political Analyst. This event, a University Libraries’ Mary Curtis Horowitz Lecture for Civic Engagement and Social Policy, was part of a three-part trilogy to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Africans in the United States.

Melvin Oliver’s long and distinguished career has been devoted to understanding and addressing the complex factors that contribute to deep racial disparities in wealth. On Wednesday, Sept. 16, he will give a talk on “Income and Wealth Inequality.” The lecture will be held at 4:30 p.m. in Anheuser-Busch Hall, Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom.

Eddie Glaude, theJames S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and frequent MSNBC contributor, offered reflections on difficult truths about race and the moral crisis at the heart of American democracy.

On November 30, 2021 St.Louis-born performing artist and civil rights activist Josephine Baker became the first woman of color to be inducted into France’s Pantheon.

On September 30, 2014 scholar and author Patricia Williams gave a talk on "Love in the Time of Identity Wars: Anatomy of Short Lives." This presentation was the first of three Williams delivered as the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities Lecture Series speaker.

“The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that’s wrong with the world.”

This statement from physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer serves as shorthand for the mission statement of Partners In Health (PIH), the organization he helped found three decades ago to advance the belief that health is a human right.