Conferences

Education & Opportunity: A forum on the Kerner Commission Forty Year Report

On Friday, October 3, 2008, the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) - an affiliate of the Center for Comparative Studies on Race and Ethnicity - and the Eisenhower Foundation will co-sponsor a daylong forum at Stanford to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Kerner Commission report and to bring attention to issues of educational inequality.

The initial report was released in March 1968, in response to the wave of civil disorders around the nation between 1963 to 1967. The report was written by the bipartisan National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, convened by President Lyndon Johnson.

The Commission (which became known as the Kerner Commission, after then-Illinois Governor Otto Kerner) believed that it was "time to make good the promises of American democracy to all citizens - urban and rural, White and Black, Spanish-surname, American Indian, and every minority group." Forty years later, the Eisenhower Foundation, which periodically updates the commission findings, has released a preliminary report on the status of civil disorder today. The report is titled, What Together We Can Do: A Forty Year Update of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders: Preliminary Findings.

The Stanford forum - "Education & Opportunity: A forum on the Kerner Commission Forty Year Report" - will feature plenary sessions and a townhall meeting. The event is free but registration is required. Invited participants include:

Karen Bass, California State Assembly
Prudence Carter, Stanford University
Alan Curtis, Eisenhower Foundation
Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University
Christopher Edley, University of California, Berkeley
Kris Gutierrez, UCLA
Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Gary Orfield, UCLA
Dorothy Steele, Stanford University.
Amy Stewart Wells, Teachers College
Guadalupe Valdes, Stanford University

To register, please visit conference website at http://edpolicy.stanford.edu. For more information, contact bmckenna@stanford.edu.

Kerner Excecutive Summary (pdf, 133kb)

Embracing Diversity: Making and Unmaking Racial, Ethnic and Cultural Difference in the 21st Century

Our 10th anniversary conference will revolve around a number of sessions that will focus on research and policy-related issues, including the following: the challenge to Brown vs. the Board of Education presented by the recent Supreme Court ruling, the struggles of immigrants in the U.S. and in other receiving nations, religious diversity, identities, and conflict, and processes of cultural discourse and production around racial difference. conference website

November 1, 2007, McCaw Hall, Arrillaga Alumni Center
November 2, 2007, Annenberg Auditorium

Feminicide = Sanctioned Murder: Race, Gender and Violence in Global Context

The conference will examine the murders and disappearances of women in Mexico, Guatemala and Canada that are occurring on an epidemic scale, and interrogate closely the gender, class, sexual and ethnoracial components of this violence against women. The aim and purpose of the conference is to stop the violence and map out ways to bring about justice. conference website

May 16-19, 2007, Tresidder, Oak West, Stanford University

Race, Inequality, and Incarceration

An intellectual summit addressing the causes, meanings, and effects of racial disproportion in the American criminal justice system with a focus on massive incarceration and racial disproportion in American prisons and jails.

April 11, 2007, The Bechtel Center, Stanford University

Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age: A Public Forum on Race-Based Drug Design

The free public panel discussion “Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age: A Public Forum on Race-Based Drug Design” will address the use of race in the creation of genomic-based therapeutics and the implications for a broader understanding of difference among populations. The forum will be introduced by CCSRE’s director Lawrence D. Bobo, moderated by Sandra Soo-Jin Lee and include panelists that approach the issue from a variety of disciplines: Sally Haslanger (Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT), Marcus Feldman (Biological Sciences, Stanford), Jonathan Kahn (Law, Hamline University), Duana Fullwiley (Society, Human Development and Health, Harvard) and Rick Kittles (Molecular Virology, Immunology & Medical Genetics, Ohio State).

Over the past two years the Research Network “Revisiting Race and Ethnicity in the Context of Emerging Genetic Research” has brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to reflect on the “genetic turn” in scholarship on human genetic variation and the implications for the study of “race” and ethnicity. These discussions are culminating in a collection of papers, entitled, “Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age” and the authors are gathering at a conference held prior to the Race-Based Drug Design public panel.

The forum is held in Levinthal Hall at the Stanford Humanities Center ( maps and directions) on Tuesday, January 10 th, 2006 from 4 to 6pm with a reception to follow. Presented by the Research Institute of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and co-sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center , the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, the Center for Law and the Biosciences, the Program in Ethnics in Society, and the Center on Ethics .

printable event poster (pdf)

Policing Racial Bias Project Initial Conference

Policing Racial Bias Project

The primary goal of the Policing Racial Bias Project is to develop partnerships among social psychologists and law enforcement agencies to share information and generate new knowledge on the influence of racial bias in policing. The project is made possible through a partnership between Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca, San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong, San Mateo County Sheriff Don Horsley, and Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt from Stanford University.

On September 23 and 24, 2004 an initial conference was attended by researchers and agency representatives from across the country. The researchers presented data on recent studies of race and policing as well as proposed new studies to be conducted jointly with police departments. Agency representatives offered the researchers valuable insights into the conditions and constraints officers are placed under during training and while on duty.

The two day conference was sponsored by National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, Research Institute of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Center for Social Innovation, and the Office of the President at Stanford University.

For more information about the conference or project go to http://policingproject.stanford.edu/ or send an email to policingproject@psych.stanford.edu

Community, Diversity and Excellence: Celebrating Stanford’s Minority Alumni conference
(April 30 – May 2, 2004)

CCSRE played a central role in the Community, Diversity and Excellence: Celebrating Stanford’s Minority Alumni conference held in the spring. The Stanford University Board of Trustees established the Task Force on Minority Alumni Relations to ensure that alumni of color recognize they are valued members of the Stanford community. The Task Force organized the Community, Diversity and Excellence conference to provide a forum for the discussion of diversity issues and to celebrate what is currently happening at Stanford. Many of the Center’s chairs, directors and affiliated faculty participated in the panel sessions held during the weekend. Claude Steele (Psychology), Al Camarillo (History), Paula Moya (English), and David Palumbo-Liu (Comparative Literature), along with Dean Robin Mamlet, examined demographic trends and the role Stanford plays with respect to diversity issues and academic offerings. Later in the weekend Claude Steele (Psychology) also shared his theoretical analyses and experimental work on how group stereotypes can impair performance, and how subtle social factors affect both intellectual performance and academic identities.

The director of the CSRE undergraduate program, Paula Moya (English), moderated a discussion with CCSRE affiliated faculty members Michele Birnbaum (English), Cherrie Moraga (Drama), and Hazel Markus (Psychology) on social and group interaction and the role perceptions play in mixed race identity. The former CCSRE director Al Camarillo (History) used South Central Los Angeles as a case study for examining ethnic and race relations in his lecture entitled New Racial Frontier in Urban America: Ethnic and Race Relations in Minority-Majority Cities. Other CCSRE contributions included John Baugh’s (Education) discussion on how his experiences of calling landlords about rental properties lead to research on linguistic profiling as it relates to housing discrimination. And Gordon Chang (History) moderated a session that drew parallels between the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the current challenges faced by Arab Americans in a post 9/11 America. Even the building CCSRE calls home opened its doors for a reception with a special exhibit on “Learning Expeditions” hosted by the director of African and African American Studies, John Rickford, and his staff.

Some CCSRE Advisory Board members also participated in the Minority Alumni weekend activities. Former Stanford president Richard Lyman joined the current University president and two other emeritus presidents in a discussion of their commitment to diversity. And Victor Arias and Andy Camacho hosted a Mariachi Benefit Concert featuring Grammy-nominated Mariachi Sol de México and America’s first all-female Mariachi, Reyna de Los Angeles.

For a conference program or further information:
http://minoritytaskforce.stanford.edu/conference/index.shtml

Colorblind Racism?: The Politics of Controlling Racial and Ethnic Data?
(October 2 & 3, 2003)

The conference brought academics, advocates and journalists together to examine the potential impacts of Proposition 54, the "Classification by Race, Ethnicity, Color or National Origin Initiative,” which appeared on the California statewide recall ballot on October 7th, 2003. Also known as the “Racial Privacy Initiative,” the measure would have limited state and local governments from collecting racial and ethnic data compromising studies on disparate medical treatment, incarceration rates, loan approvals for blacks and whites, and school funding and achievement for various groups of citizens.

Sponsors:
Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism, University of Southern California
Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University
Equal Justice Society

Co-Sponsors:
Bay Area Black Journalists Association
California Coalition for Civil Rights
Center for the Teaching and Study of American Cultures, University of California, Berkeley
Center for Biomedical Ethics, Stanford University
Center for Social Justice, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley
Center for the Teaching and Study of American Cultures, University of California, Berkeley
The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University
Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of California, Berkeley
Poverty and Race Research Action Council

Conference Program

Articles about the conference:

AlterNet.org
Thursday, September 18, 2003
"Colorblind Racism"
by Sally Lehrman

AlterNet.org
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
"Race and Healthcare"
by Sally Lehrman

AlterNet.org
Monday, October 6, 2003
"Why Race-Based Data Matters"
by Sally Lehrman

Los Angeles Times
Sunday, October 5, 2003
"Proposition 54; Who Needs Data on Race? The Schools, for One"
by Jeannie Oakes and John Rogers

The Stanford Daily
Tuesday, October 7, 2003
"54's Impact on Health"
by Barbara Koenig

Stanford Report
Wednesday, October 8, 2003
"Proposition 54 Fuels Three Days of Race Relations Debates on Campus"
by Lisa Trei

Affirmative Action and Higher Education: Before and After the Supreme Court Rulings on the Michigan Cases
(CCSRE national Advisory Board panel discussion on January 17th, 2003)

Larry Bobo, Professor of Sociology, Harvard University Inclusion's Last Hour?

Nancy Cantor, Chancellor, University of Illinois The Bush Administration is wrong

Eugene Y. Lowe, Assistant to the President, Northwestern Comments on Affirmative Action

Moderator: Claude Steele, Director of CCSRE

Further contributions to the debate on Affirmative Action:

N. Cantor: Wrong Take On Admissions (Chicago Tribune, 28 January 2003)

Negotiating the New Racial Landscape in California
(April 25-27, 2002)

The conference explored the changing demographics of the state and what this means for redistricting and voting patterns, language and bilingual education policies, equality in education, social justice, and racial representation in the media. Many of the presentations examined how housing, education, employment, health care, and a person’s general well-being are correlated with racial identity. Demographers’ project that within the next fifty years people identified currently as “minority” will comprise half of the U.S. population; the 2000 U.S. Census reports that California is the first state to reach this demographic composition. Understanding how increased diversity is negotiated in California may predict future patterns in the rest of the U.S.

Professionals from many different backgrounds contributed to the presentations and panel discussions at the conference. Angela Oh, an attorney and commissioner on the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission, participated in the dialogue on social justice and opportunity. Emerald Yeh, news anchor for KRON 4 T.V., contributed to discussions on racial representations in the media. And Lawrence Bobo, Professor of Sociology at Harvard, helped to shape an understanding of how the issues surrounding diversity in California might look in the future.

Thanks to the generous support from the James Irvine Foundation community members from across California attended this free public conference: students and professors from various universities and colleges, members of the law enforcement community, legal and political figures, individuals from school reform organizations, members of foundations and other community organizations, and staff from various media outlets.

Conference program

A New Look at Race: How Social Representations of Race Affect Visual Perception & Attention
(November 15-17, 2001)

The Research Institute of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and the National Science Foundation sponsored this national conference organized by Jennifer L. Eberhardt (Psychology, Stanford University) and James Jones (Psychology, University of Delaware).

The purpose of the conference was to explore and discuss how race is constructed in our society and the effects that those constructions have on basic-level cognitive processes. Consistent with the New Look approach that was popular within social psychology, a major focus of the conference was to examine how attitudes, values, beliefs, and desires might direct and shape visual perception and attention. Taking this approach to race is important because it may offer a better understanding of how racial categories are maintained, how social knowledge and beliefs affect low-level cognitive processes, and how conceptions of race affect the very way in which we see the world. This might also provide a better understanding of many current social problems. For example, racial profiling and police brutality might depend on the manner in which race affects visual perception. Eyewitness testimony and judicial judgments might be affected by the perception of race as well.

The Future of Minority Studies: Redefining Identity Politics
(October 19-20, 2001)

The conference was organized by Paula M. L. Moya (English, Stanford University) and faculty from Syracuse University, State University of New York, Binghamton, and Cornell University. Co-sponsored by CCSRE, the conference was the continuation of an ongoing bi-coastal collaborative research project involving universities on both coasts of the country. The "Future of Minorities" project explores the role of identity in the shaping of a progressive and intellectually rigorous vision of minority scholarship and education. Aimed at encouraging a debate among scholars on theoretical and practical issues ranging from ethics and epistemology to political theory and pedagogical practice, the project develops and defends a post-positivist realist alternative to the dominant views of identity and experience in the Humanities

The comparative and interdisciplinary aim of the conference was underscored by the scholars, from more than a dozen different schools and fields in the Humanities and Social Sciences, who participated in the event. Among these scholars were a number of Stanford faculty affiliated with CCSRE: Claude Steele (Psychology) gave a talk entitled "Stereotype Threat and Group Identity;" Renato Rosaldo (Cultural and Social Anthropology) talked about identity politics; David Palumbo-Liu discussed multiculturalism, civilization, national identity and difference from the perspective of September 11th.

Numerous symposia, reading groups, and conferences have been held since the conference at institutions as diverse as Hamilton College, SUNY-Binghamton, Cornell University, and the University of Michigan. Most recently, an intellectual retreat took place in May 2003 in Punta Cana, D.R. A forthcoming conference at the University of Wisconsin is slated for fall 2003.

More information about the project.