Author, Legal Scholar Michelle Alexander To Speak At Bradley

Michelle Alexander, highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, legal scholar, and author of the best-seller "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," will speak at Bradley University on February 12.

Alexander's lecture on "Colorblind Racism in the American Judicial System" will begin at 7 p.m. in the Michel Student Center ballroom. It is free and open to the public.

A panel discussion addressing the question "Where do we go from here?" will follow. Panelists are Dr. Marwin Spiller, Associate Dean of Social Sciences, ICC; the Honorable James E. Shadid, Chief Judge, United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois; and Reverend Carole Hoke, President, Peoria Chapter of the National Interfaith Alliance.

Alexander holds a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University. Prior to joining the Kirwan Institute, she was an associate professor of law at Stanford Law School, where she directed the Civil Rights Clinics. 

Her book has received rave reviews and has been featured in national radio and television media outlets, including NPR, The Bill Moyers Journal, the Tavis Smiley Show, and C-Span Washington Journal, among others. 

For several years, Alexander served as the Director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California, where she helped to lead a national campaign against racial profiling by law enforcement. While an associate at Saperstein, Goldstein, Demchak & Baller, she specialized in plaintiff-side class action lawsuits alleging race and gender discrimination. 

She is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University. Following law school, she clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the United States Supreme Court, and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The lecture is sponsored by Bradley's Sociology Club, Student Activities Budget Review Committee, Intellectual and Cultural Activities Committee, Prelaw Center, Office of the Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Garrett Multicultural Center, Activities Council, Black Student Alliance, Students United for Change, Department of History, Department of Sociology and Social Work, and Illinois Central College.