Aaron Bekemeyer: Thin Blue Line of Police Unions

Aaron Thomas Bekemeyer, Lecturer on History, Harvard University. Professor Aaron Bekemeyer discusses the complicated history of police unionization. How police balanced their role as union busters and political enforcers with their desire for higher wages and retirement/pensions led to contradictions in messaging. After both World Wars, American society changed in various ways and policing took on new meanings, in response to reformist challenges to political machine corruption and later the…

Adam Malka: Rise of Baltimore Police

Adam Malka is an Associate Professor of U.S. History at the University of Oklahoma. Professor Malka discusses his book "The Men of Mobtown" exploring how the free black population of the antebellum South came to be controlled and policed. We explore the roles and expectations of white citizens and how black freedom came to define criminal behavior.

Alex Reinert: 8th Amendment Debate

Alex Reinert is the Max Freund Professor Litigation and Advocacy at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Prof. Reinert discusses his article "Reconceptualizing the Eighth Amendment: Slaves, Prisoners, and 'Cruel and Unusual' Punishment." Prof. Reinert talks about "the law of slavery" and how little we have travelled from the 1870s to today when it comes to the understanding of "cruel and unsual" punishment as the standard of imprisonment.

Alexandra Natapoff: Misdemeanor System

Alexandra Natapoff, Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is an award-winning legal scholar and criminal justice expert. Professor Alexandra Natapoff discusses her book, Punishment without Crime. How America's Misdemeanor justice system targets the innocent, taxes the poor, and generates revenue for the public and private sector. We discuss why people plead guilty to low level infractions and how that impacts minority and at-risk populations.

Alexandra Urakova: Gift Giving in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Alexandra Urakova discusses her article, ""I do not want her, I am sure": Commodities, Gifts, and Poisonous Gifts in Uncle Tom's Cabin." Professor Urakova sees gift giving in Uncle Tom's Cabin as a disruption within the sentimental context of the narrative. Topsy and Orphelia, Eva and Tom, and Shelby and St. Clare are all complicated and compromised in the act of gift giving or receiving, especially by what it means to give the gift of an enslaved person.…

Alexis Hoag: Race and the Death Penalty

Alexis Hoag, Practitioner in Residence at Columbia Law School’s Holder Initiative, discusses the systemic racial issues at the heart of our Judicial system. Professor Hoag is an anti-death penalty advocate who recently published, "Valuing Black Lives: A Case for Ending the Death Penalty" and argued before the Ohio Supreme Court advocating for Glen Bates.

Alison Skinner-Dorkenoo: The Water We Swim In: An Examination of Systemic Influences on Our Attitudes

This talk will make the case that systemic forms of oppression are maintained and reinforced through subtle patterns of thought and behavior, and present some paths through which those systems can be challenged. Dr. Skinner-Dorkenoo has been an assistant professor at the University of Georgia since the fall of 2019.

Allison Skinner-Dorkenoo: Microaggressions

Dr. Skinner-Dorkenoo is an assistant professor at the University of Georgia. Dr. Allison Skinner-Dorkenoo discusses her article, "How Microaggressions Reinforce and Perpetuate Systemic Racism in the United States." She defines what microaggressions are and how they support White superiority. Through subtle and slight processes microaggressions protect and reinforce the "othering" of people of color with environmental exclusions, treating people of color as second class, and…

Alys Weinbaum: Slavery and Surrogacy

Alys Weinbaum, professor of English at the University of Washington, discusses her book, The Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery. Professr Weinbaum examines how the legal and cultural impact of Atlantic slavery defined slave reproduction and enslaved women as “biocapital.” This form of racialized capitalism changed human reproduction from kinship to “breeding.” How this ideology remains four centuries later in the emerging markets for female egg harvesting to the multimillion dollar international…

Amanda Frost: Citizenship Stripping

Amanda Frost is the Ann Loeb Bronfman Distinguished Professor of Law and Government at American University in Washington, D.C. Amanda Frost discusses her book, "You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers." Beginning with Reconstruction, American citizenship began a contested and trouble road toward full protection of "birthright citizenship." What it meant to be a citizen varied for immigrant groups depending on racism, economics, and…

Andres Resendez: Native American Slavery

Andrés Reséndez is a professor of history and author who grew up in Mexico City and currently teaches at the University of California at Davis. Professor Resendez discusses his book, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. Prof. Resendez discusses pre-Colonial enslavement among the native people of North America and the Caribbean. How the Spanish invasion changed native societies, altered slavery, and decimated entire populations. Also discussed is how the…

Andrew McKevitt: Gun Rights and Consumerism

Professor Andrew McKevitt talks about his book, “Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America.” America’s gun culture was not an inevitable outcome of the Second Amendment and Professor McKevitt explains why. Framing America’s obsession with guns as essentially a consumerist market, not unlike another other collectible or commodity, Prof. McKevitt uncovers one potential origin – post-War European military surplus. Professor Andrew McKevitt is the John D. Winters Endowed…

Antonia Hylton: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

Antonia Hylton discusses her book, Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum. Ms. Hylton’s extensive research into Crownsville Hospital in Maryland, a segregated asylum that was both hospital and prison, serves as physical example of racist systems and black resistance. Tracing the history of Crownsville was difficult since so many of the official records were destroyed and those that remained were in rough shape. She turned to oral history of those nurses and staff that worked there to…

Atiba Ellis: Polley V. Ratcliff

Atiba R. Ellis is a Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School. Professor Ellis discusses his essay "Polley V. Ratcliff: A New Way To Adress an Original Sin?" A fascinating court case, recently resolved, involving kidnapping, slavery, and freedom which might serve as a roadmap for a type of Truth and Reconciliation style reparation. Prof. Ellis explains how the past is still alive and able to be resolved today.

Ayesha Bell Hardaway: Rise of Police Unions

Ayesha Bell Hardaway is an Associate Professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the Director of the Criminal Clinic in the Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic. Professor Ayesha Bell Hardaway talks about her 2022 article, "The Rise of Police Unions on the Back of the Black Freedom Movement." Professor Bell Hardaway discusses how police unions developed slowly over time to their rapid growth in the 1960s. How police unions transitioned from advocating for labor and wages to…

Barbara Krauthammer: Black Slaves, Indian Masters

Barbara Krauthamer, professor of history and Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Professor Barbara Krauthamer discusses her book, Black Slaves, Indian Masters, which examines the role of slavery in the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations. She explores the tensions brought these Native American tribes by missionaries, trade, and the "civilizing" project of Euro-Americans. The role of slavery as a form of assimilation which Native…

Bjorn Stillion Southard: African Colonialization Movement's Ultimate Failure

Bjørn Stillion Southard is an Associate Professor and Director of Debate at the University of Georgia. Professor Bjørn Southard discusses his book, Peculiar Rhetoric: Slavery, Freedom, and the African Colonization Movement. Prof. Southard outlines how the African Colonization Movement hoped to reach some middle ground between southern enslavers and northern abolitionists in order to solve the fears both had about a free black population in the US. While the Colonization idea was supported many…

Bradley Onishi: White Christian Nationalism

Professor Bradley Onishi discusses his book. "Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism- and What Comes Next." Prof. Onishi talks about the changing nature of evangelicalism, the rise of the religious right, and how these are reactions to a changing American culture. As the religious right focuses on political and cultural power, the movement's leaders embrace conspiracy theories and reactionary tactics which help us reframe and understand both Donald…

Browen Everill: Abolition and Ethical Capitalism

Bronwen Everill is the incoming Director of the Centre of African Studies at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Gonville & Caius College. She is the author of Not Made By Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition and Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Bronwen Everill examines how abolitionists from Europe to the United States to West Africa used new ideas of supply and demand, consumer credit, and branding to shape an argument for ethical capitalism. Prof.…

Caitlin O'Loughlin: Banned Books and Gay Erasure

For Banned Books week, join Caitlin O’Loughlin as she discusses her article, “It’s Just Filth: Banned Books and the Project of Gay Erasure.” She explains how proposed bans seek to erase queer peoples, how these bans impact teachers, and what teacher preparation programs can do to counter these acts of censorship.

Caitlin Rosenthal: Capitalist Management of Slavery

Caitlin Rosenthal discusses her book, "Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management," won the Simpkins Award of the Southern Historical Association as well as the first book prize of the Economic History Society. It was also featured as a "Five Books" best book in economics for 2018. The book explores the development of business practices on slave plantations and uses this history to understand the relationship between slave plantation management, violence, and innovation

Cameron Fields & Hannah Drown: Cleveland's Promise

Hannah Drown has been with The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com since 2014. During her five years as the Facebook Live news reporter, she covered breaking news, crime, entertainment and a number of other topics through on-the-scene broadcast reporting. Prior, she worked on the Cleveland’s Best team and launched a gluten-free lifestyle column. Cameron Fields has written for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer since 2020, when he started as a general assignment reporter covering COVID-19,…

Carissa Byrne Hessick: Plea Bargaining Bad Deals

Carissa Byrne Hessick, Anne Shea Ransdell and William Garland "Buck" Ransdell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law. Professor Carissa Byrne Hessick discusses her book, "Punishment Without Trial," and how plea bargaining has overtaken the criminal justice system. While our rights to a jury trial, evidence, and confronting our accusers are all written into the Constitution by the Framers, American criminal prosecution relies upon the…

Carole Emberton: Violence, Reconstruction, and Redemption

Carole Emberton, Associate Professor of History at University at Buffalo, discusses her book Beyond Redemption: Race, Violence, and the American South After the Civil War. Contrasting Freedmen and Ex-Enslavers, Reconstruction and Redemption, and white and black violence, Professor Emberton explores how the Post-Civil War South struggled to reform itself. The role of black and white veterans, election violence, and the rise of paramilitary groups all converged to create a turbulent and dangerous…

Christina Aushana: Role-Playing in Police Trainings

Christina Aushana discusses her article “Inescapable Scripts: Role-Playing Feminist (re)visions and Rehearsing Racialize State Violence in Police Training Scenarios.” Professor Aushana talks about participating in Police Academy Scenario Training as an actor. By participating in the police role-play training, she was able to witness and document a genre of performance wherein training officers, patrol officers, and recruits' stage, rehearse, and revise racial (re)visions together, infusing…

Christopher Span: Book Learning and Slave Education

Christopher Span, Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discusses his work, “Sam’s Cottonfield Blues” and “Quest for Book Learning: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom.” He discusses why literacy was so feared by white enslavers and crucial to slaves. Detailing how slaves subverted the rules to learn to read while enslavers punished those who did. Prof. Span’s own family provides a powerful example of the rhythm and style of…

Christopher Willougby: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools

Christopher Willoughby is a historian of Atlantic slavery, U.S. medicine, and racism and a Visiting Assistant Professor of History of Medicine and Health at Pitzer College. Christopher Willoughby, a Visiting Assistant Professor of History of Medicine and Health at Pitzer College,talks about his book, Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools. Professor Willoughby discusses the origins of racialized medicine as was taught in Antebellum Medical Schools. Exploring how…

Christopher Willoughby: What Modern Medicine Gained from Slavery

Medical science in antebellum America was a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be useful as experimental subjects, as cadavers, and for use in the training of medical students. Professor Willoughby will discuss how false beliefs defined American medicine and how the impact is still being felt today. Christopher D.E. Willoughby is an Assistant Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He…

Christy Lopez: Police Reform and Carceral Logic

Christy Lopez draws on her work as a Deputy Chief in the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice to talk about Pattern or Practice Investigations with in police departments. How these investigations begin, how they work, and what their outcomes may be, are all unpacked by Professor Lopez. Additionally, Prof. Lopez describes her formulation of “carceral logic” and how it informs police reform efforts.

Cristina Beltran: Migrant Suffering and White Democracy

Cristina Beltrán is an associate professor in New York University’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Cristina Beltrán discusses her book, "Cruelty as Citizenship How Migrant Suffering Sustains White Democracy." Prof. Beltran explains the how Herrenvolk Democracy is useful in understanding White Supremacy and how it transformed into White Democracy. By exploring whiteness as a political and legal project as well as political, White Standing extends beyond racialized…