Program

9:00 am - 10:00 am
Barnard Hall Lobby
Registration

10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Julius Held Auditorium, 3rd floor Barnard Hall
Panel: Is Democracy Democratic?

What is the state of democracy in the United States? Here, panelists from varied disciplines, from academics to artists, politicians and policy makers, discuss how we can succeed in making wider political participation a reality in the United States, and how gender, race, and class impact the realities of who votes and whose votes are counted.

Participants include:

Liz Krueger, New York State Senator, Chair of Minority Program Development and ranking Democratic member of the Senate Standing Committee on Housing, Construction and Community Development.
Christine Marie Sierra, Professor of Political Science, University of New Mexico
Sally Kohn, Director of the Movement Vision Project of the Center for Community Change
Signe Wilkinson, Pulitzer Prize-winning Editorial Cartoonist at the Philadelphia Daily News
Nancy Abudu, staff counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project in Atlanta, GA
Lori Minnite (moderator), Assistant Professor of Political Science at Barnard College

12:00 - 1:30 pm
Various locations on campus
Lunchtime Workshops

Fixing our broken political system can seem like a daunting task. What can we do, as activists, feminists, and individuals, in order to make equal opportunities for participation a reality in our own communities? Representatives from these local and national organizations share their strategies for speaking out against racism, sexism, war, and inequality, and describe the successes and challenges they've encountered in their work to build more inclusive coalitions for political change. Whichever workshop you choose to attend, you'll have the opportunity to communicate and collaborate with others and find out more about the movements for social justice and political representation that are taking place both here in New York City and nation-wide.

Workshop organizations include:

ART (Activist Response Team), a New York based artist's collective that coordinates anti-war and anti-violence protest actions using visual and artistic displays
Code Pink, a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end the war in Iraq and encourage the redirecting of resources into healthcare and education
Make the Road New York, a Brooklyn-based community organization promoting economic justice and democratic accountability to low-income people
The White House Project, a national, nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization that aims to advance women's leadership in all communities and sectors, up to the U.S. presidency

We regret that Vandana Shiva, who was scheduled to lecture at 1:30, will be unable to attend this year's conference due to illness. Please note that the keynote lecture by Lani Guinier has been moved to this time slot.

1:30 - 3:00 pm
Julius Held Auditorium, 3rd floor Barnard Hall
Keynote: Expanding Democracy

Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Lani Guinier is a civil rights lawyer and scholar, and a leading expert on possibilities for revitalizing voting in the United States and creating a truly democratic electoral process. She is the author of numerous books, most recently The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy (with Gerald Torres, 2002). The first black woman to gain tenure at Harvard Law School, Guinier was Assistant Counsel and Head of the Voting Rights Project for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the 1980s and worked in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department in the late 1970s. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Sacks-Freund Teaching Award from Harvard Law School Class of 2002, the 1995 Margaret Brent Woman Lawyers of Achievement Award, the Champion of Democracy Award, and eight honorary degrees.