Discussion Focused on Anti-Colonialism and Justice takes place October 3
UMass Dartmouth's Crime and Justice Studies Program will host a panel discussion on Anti-Colonialism and Justice this Thursday, October 3 at 3:30 p.m. in the Grand Reading Room at UMass Dartmouth's Claire T. Carney Library. South African freedom fighter, judge, and award winning author Justice Albert "Albie" Sachs will be in attendance as a special guest respondent.
After more than two decades in exile, Justice Sachs returned to South Africa as an agent of justice, peace, and equality. In his 15 years on the Constitutional Court of South Africa, Justice Sachs helped move South African justice forward in the legal recognition of human rights. During his service, the court abolished the death penalty and overturned laws criminalizing homosexuality. In 2002, he was part of the ruling that ordered the government to distribute drugs that prevent transmission of HIV. In 2005, Sachs wrote the opinion in Home Affairs v. Fourie, which legalized same-sex marriage in South Africa.
Panelists include:
* Assistant Professor Eric Larson: Dr. Larson will begin by speaking about the Crime and Justice Studies project, and how it offers a valuable framework for thinking about anti-colonialism and justice. He will then discuss a counterpoint to Justice Sachs' work in South Africa. He'll present his research on race and the contradictions of liberal democracy in Mexico in the last couple decades -- and what it meant for the pursuit of anti-colonial justice.
* Associate Professor Viviane Saleh-Hana: Dr. Saleh-Hanna will discuss the foundational and White supremacist fallacies of a justice haunted by European slavery and colonialism. She will present on historic memory and the violence of "justice" pursued through a colonial and criminal justice system and highlight how apartheid is the inevitable end result of a historic and ensuing Racist-Imperialist-Patriarchy.
* Dr. Susan T. Krumholz: Dr. Krumholz, Chair of the recently created Department of Crime and Justice Studies, will talk about the role of the Constitutional Court as well as alternative forms of justice, such as the Equity Courts and the South African Truth and Reconciliation process.
* Assistant Professor Tammi Arford: Dr. Arford will serve as moderator and take part in the discussion. Her broad areas of scholarly interest are deviance and social control; critical criminology; penology; alternatives to incarceration; knowledge, power and resistance; gender; and social/criminological theory.