In response to political crises that pose ongoing threats to the fabric of American democracy, the 2020 NE/SE/SW POC conference is excited to announce this call for participation: EMERGENCY! Democracy Under Siege: Eroding Norms, Abandoning the Rule of Law, and Reemerging Racial Violence.
This year’s conference seeks to address and understand the legal and social impacts of being socially constructed and defined as not “American” in the United States… again. White Nationalism and American Nazism is on the rise, and the U.S. Department of Justice surveillance and monitoring of groups espousing these beliefs has declined. Agency regulations have been promulgated without customary administrative policy review resulting in the federal agencies being sued for violating established and long standing administrative procedures. Increased racial animosity has led to emboldened acts of racism and racial violence. From Black Church shootings, continued police shootings of unarmed persons of color, an alarming increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes and violence against the American Jewish and Islamic communities, recent killings of Latinos and immigrants in El Paso, Texas, to current immigration detention centers, to voter suppression laws springing up throughout the nation, things seem to have taken a stark turn backwards from legal and democratic gains achieved during the last century.
Date: May 15-17, 2020
Location: Houston, Texas
The Conference would consist of the following as well as other topics:
- Plenary session on democracy under siege
- Plenary session on migration
- Deans of Color Panel
- Pipeline to Law School, Profession, and Academia
- Bar Exam Performance
- Coalition building among different racial, ethnic, and gendered groups of people of color
- Works-in-progress panels
Although this is the theme and possible topics for the conference, the POC will gladly accept participation that align with the traditional topics and objectives of the conference. The HLRe (The Houston Law Review Off the Record) plans to publish a symposium issue of select papers from the conference.
During the Conference, we will explore what is our role, as faculty of color, in the institutions where we work and in the wider world, in addressing this situation? How do we navigate in a politically polarized environment? How do we support those faculty who may be especially vulnerable? We will interrogate these topics with the pursuit of figuring how to change course in a more democratic and inclusive direction both at home and abroad.
Anyone who is interested in participating, either on a panel or to present a work in progress, complete the form found on the following website: http://law.uh.edu/pocc/.