Speakers to be announced.
In 2008, Professor Michael Olivas of the University of Houston School of Law described Hurricane Katrina as “one of the most important and tragic events of our time, combining elements of natural disaster, human tragedy, governmental incompetence, private sector indifference, racism, and extraordinary spectacle, as well as countervailing communitarian impulses and humanitarian generosity.” Today, nearly five years after the hurricane came ashore and washed over the levees of New Orleans, the City remains at best in limbo and at worst in ruins, with entire neighborhoods virtually unchanged from the damages of the storms, large segments of the city’s poor and black population still scattered to the four corners of the country, educational, social service, and criminal justice systems in varying states of dysfunction, and racial and class fault lines first exposed in the wake of the storm still evident in the relative slow pace of recovery for poor and black neighborhoods. The Section program will explore whether and how communitarian ideals and practices can adequately respond to crises by using New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina as a case study. The program aims to bring together legal scholars, political scientists, social workers and community activists to discuss the uses and limits of private voluntarism and human generosity in the face of human and natural disasters.
Business Meeting at Program Conclusion.