Saturday, October 5 | 10:15 - 11:30 AM
Irvine Auditorium
About this Session: What is the impact of the current administration’s policies on ethnic and religious minorities, LGBTQ+ rights, and other protections of various diverse communities? Our plenary session will explore the current civil rights landscape and its impact on diverse communities and our democracy as a whole. Conference Opening remarks by Dr. Amy Gutmann.

Recommended Reading:
The Indian Law That Helps Build Walls

Maggie Blackhawk

Assistant Professor of Law

Maggie (McKinley) Blackhawk (Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe) (On Research Leave Spring 2020) researches and teaches in the fields of constitutional law, federal Indian law, and legislation. Her recent projects examine the ways that American democracy can and should empower minorities, especially outside of traditional rights and courts-based frameworks. She is particularly interested in those formal legal institutions that empower minorities to govern and engage in lawmaking—petitioning, lobbying, distributed sovereignty, &c.—and how those institutions might be harnessed to better mitigate constitutional failures, like colonialism and slavery. Her research has been published or is forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and Cambridge University Press. Her empirical projects have been supported by the American Political Science Association, the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, among others.

Along with Laura Edwards (Duke, History) and Naomi Lamoreaux (Yale, History & Economics), she is leading a multi-year project for the Tobin Project’s Institutions of Democracy Initiative on Rethinking the History of American Democracy. She also serves as President of the AALS section on Legislation and Law of the Political Process and as Senior Constitutional Advisor to the President of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.

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Iván Espinoza-Madrigal C'01

Iván Espinoza-Madrigal is the Executive Director of Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR). Iván has filed and won dozens of life-changing and law-changing cases on a wide range of civil rights issues, including racial justice, immigrants' rights, and LGBT/HIV equality. Under his leadership, LCR has become a hub for litigation, advocacy, and resistance in response to the current climate. Previously, he worked at Lambda Legal, MALDEF, and Fried Frank LLP. Iván clerked for Judge Eric Clay in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and Judge Ronald Ellis in the U.S. District Court, SDNY. The National LGBT Bar Association has recognized him as one of the Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40, and the Boston Business Journal included Iván in its "Top 40 Under 40" list. The Boston Globe has recognized him as one of Boston’s 100 Most Influential People of Color. A summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, he received a Juris Doctor from NYU School of Law, where he was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar. Iván recently received the Boston Bar Association’s Beacon Award, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Martin Luther King Award in Social Justice. 

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LaShawn R. Jefferson

LaShawn R. Jefferson is the Deputy Director of Perry World House, Penn’s global policy research center and its hub for global engagement. Through her work in international nongovernmental organizations and philanthropy, Jefferson brings to Perry World House over two decades of legal and policy advocacy, strategic planning, and research and writing expertise on women’s international human rights. She joined Perry World House after almost seven years at the Ford Foundation, where she worked to advance women’s human rights globally and in the U.S. For fourteen years, she held several leadership positions at Human Rights Watch, a global human rights organization, where she led their women’s rights research and advocacy work, providing strategic and intellectual guidance to the work on women’s international human rights, crafting and executing long-term advocacy strategies, and representing HRW at the highest level of national and international fora. She is the author of many reports on a variety of issues confronting women around the world, and has written op-eds and articles that have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and The International Herald Tribune. She received a BA from Connecticut College and an  MA in International Relations and Latin American Studies from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

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Mary Yee GCP'90 GED'03 GED'05 GRD'18

Mary Yee is an educational researcher and community activist. Born in Rutland, VT, she grew up in Boston Chinatown as the child of first-generation working-class Chinese immigrant parents. In Philadelphia, she has worked extensively with immigrant and refugee communities for over 35 years. A founder of Asian Americans United (AAU) an organizing and advocacy organizations, she is currently a board member of the Asian Arts Initiative (AAI). As a former officer of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation, she was involved in community struggles to oppose the destruction of Chinatown by large public works projects such as the Vine Street Expressway and the Phillies baseball stadium. Before working in the central administration of the School District of Philadelphia, Dr. Yee collaborated with the Education Law Center to remediate a civil rights class action filed on behalf of limited English proficient Southeast Asian refugee students. Subsequently, she worked for over a dozen years in various district capacities to provide equitable opportunities for students and families. As Director of Family Engagement and Language Equity Services, she created the infrastructure for translation and interpretation services and partnered with community-based organizations across the city to engage families in their children’s education. Dr. Yee holds an A.B. degree from Princeton University and two master’s degrees from Penn. Having recently earned an Ed.D from Penn’s Graduate School of Education, she now pursues research interests, which include educational issues in immigrant communities, community and youth activism, university-community partnerships, and the interrelationship between health and educational disparities.