Civil Rights, Co-Sponsored by Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues

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The theme for this year's panel on civil rights is protest and resistance. Since the 2016 election, Trump’s policies and discourse have triggered significant amounts of both. Protests in defense of immigrants, LGBTQ people, women, the disabled, people of color, the elderly, environmental sustainability and justice, science, and truth itself have been organized in mass numbers. Protests have been organized in the streets, in government buildings and legislative houses, in and around airports, and at town hall meetings. These protests have in turn triggered reactions from the familiar overreactions of excessive force and mass arrests to less familiar, and sometimes shockingly unprecedented, reactions like legislative proposals to impose severe fines and jail time or to immunize vigilante violence against protestors. Against this backdrop, this panel calls for a robust reclamation and resurgence of civil rights practice, teaching, and scholarship that is intersectional, coalitional, and global in its conceptualization and execution.

Business meeting at program conclusion.