Several Union faculty and students participated in the Diversity and Social Justice Project Student Conference on Social Justice at Hamilton College earlier this month. Philosophy Professor Linda Patrik accompanied the six Union presenters to the full conference. Each gave a short talk or participated in a panel discussion.
Presenters and their topics included:
Hilary Handin ’08
Faculty sponsor: Thomas Lobe, Political Science
“Women’s Reproductive Health Care Struggles in Afghanistan”
Jasmine Maldonado ’09
Faculty sponsor: Linda Patrik, Philosophy
“The Death Penalty and Its Social Ramifications”
Sara Nash ’08
Faculty sponsor: Thomas Lobe, Political Science
“Iranian Women and Their Quest for Gender Equality”
David Shulman ’08
Faculty sponsor: Kenji Tierney, Anthropology
“Access to Antiretroviral Medicine and the Social and Economic Well-being of Sub-Saharan Africa”
Ariel Sincoff-Yedid ’09
Faculty sponsor: Thomas Lobe, Political Science
“Effective Programming for Voter Education and Mobilization”
Lauren Youngman ’08
Faculty sponsor: Thomas Lobe, Political Science
“The Current Administration’s Detainee Policy Compromises National Security”
In addition, English Professor anupama jain brought students from her first-year preceptorial class on Utopias to the Saturday portion of the conference.
“We were delighted to be able to involve these students, who had just arrived at Union, in conference attendance,” said Mary Carroll, director of undergraduate research. “They seized the opportunity to see their peers present and to attend plenary lectures by nationally prominent scholars.”
A goal of the conference, Carroll said, is to bring together individuals from the four colleges in the Mellon Consortium (Colgate, Hamilton, Skidmore and Union) who are intellectually and/or practically engaged with issues that involve inequity and injustice.
The conference began with a performance by noted author, playwright and performance artist Anna Deavere Smith. Leslie Thiele of the University of Florida presented the opening plenary lecture, “You Can Never do Just One Thing; What Ecology Teaches us About Social Justice.”
“All in all," said Patrik, “it was a great opportunity for our students to present their research and to network with students from other colleges who are interested in issues of social justice.”