Protestors carrying placards at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in New York City in Nov. 2014.
During Black History Month, a roundtable discussion will be held at Drexel University on Friday, Feb. 20 from 6 – 8 p.m. to examine police violence against African Americans, the criminal justice system and community responses. The event will be held in Drexel's MacAlister Hall, 2019-2020 (3250 Chestnut St., Philadelphia). It is sponsored by Drexel’s Office of Equality and Diversity.
Panelists will discuss how each of their disciplines, including the humanities, social sciences and law, sheds light on acts of violence committed by the police against African Americans and how scholarship can help us understand the ways in which African American communities respond to this problem.
The discussion will be moderated by André Carrington, PhD, and will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience. The event is intended for Drexel students, faculty and staff, but all members of the community are welcome.
Participants will include:
- André Carrington, PhD, assistant professor of English in Drexel’s College of Arts and Sciences
- Rose Corrigan, PhD, associate professor of law in Drexel’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law and associate professor of politics and director of the women’s studies program in the College of Arts and Sciences
- Lallen Johnson, PhD, assistant professor of criminal justice in the College of Arts and Sciences
- Kevin Egan, PhD, director of Drexel’s Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry
- Khadijah Costley-White, PhD, assistant professor of journalism at Rutgers University
The Twitter hashtag #BlackLivesMatter became widespread on social media following the shooting death of black teen Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in 2012. It has also been used widely by activists and the general public following the death of black teen Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, where months of protests brought these issues to national attention. This roundtable aims bring a greater focus to the historical dimension of contemporary problems like police brutality and racial profiling in order to understand where they come from and where we go from here.