Washtenaw Faces Race is an all-volunteer, inter-racial, interdisciplinary group who consciously and consistently work to dismantle racial hierarchy and promote racial equity in area institutions within Washtenaw County.
Democracy and the American Reality
Peter Hammer, J.D., Ph.D. A professor at Wayne State University Law School since 2003, Peter Hammer is the director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights. The Keith Center is dedicated to promoting the educational, economic and political empowerment of underrepresented communities in urban areas and to ensuring that the phrase "equal justice under law" applies to all members of society. Professor Hammer has spent more than 20 years engaging issues of human rights, law and development in Cambodia. He was a founding board member and past president of Legal Aid of Cambodia, an organization providing free legal services to Cambodia's poor. Professor Hammer spent eight years on the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School. He was the first openly gay professor ever to be considered for tenure at the law school and the first male in the living memory of the institution to be denied tenure. To learn more about Professor Hammer, visit https://law.wayne.edu/profile/ar7084 What's Happened to Our Faith in Democracy?
La'Ron Williams, B.F.A. Nationally acclaimed and multiple award-winning storyteller La’Ron Williams presents programs that are specifically designed to promote diversity, foster community building, encourage peaceful conflict resolution, and teach a host of pro-social skills. For business organizations and non-profits, he presents diversity workshops that help participants to understand the nature of “invisible” bias and to move beyond the emotional stumbling blocks that prevent them from taking collective responsibility for creating a just and equitable society. La’Ron is a member of the Racial and Economic Justice Task Force of the Ann Arbor based Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, and is a founding member of “Washtenaw Faces Race”, an all-volunteer, inter-racial, interdisciplinary group who consciously and consistently work to dismantle racial hierarchy and promote racial equity in local institutions within Washtenaw County. |
America and the Democratic Ideal
Howard Brick, Ph.D. Professor Howard Brick received his BA, Masters, and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He currently is a Professor of History in the school of LSA at University of Michigan. He is the Louis Evans Chair in U.S. History and is the director of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. His current activities include co-editing an American Thought and Culture series and a test covering Independent Marxism and Revolutionary Intellectuals in the 60s, co-authoring a test about American Thought and Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century, and writing a test about American Social Theory and the History of Global Change. His teaching and research interests include 20th Century United States social and political history, American intellectual and cultural history, the history of social theory and the social sciences, world/global history, contemporary social, cultural, and literary theory, and the history of labor, socialist, and radical movements. To learn more about Professor Brick, visit: https://lsa.umich.edu/history/people/faculty/hbrick.html Democracy or Plutocracy?
Vincent Hutchins, Ph.D. Professor Hutchings' general interests include public opinion, elections, voting behavior, and African American politics. He recently published a book at Princeton University Press entitled Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability: How Citizens Learn About Politics, that focuses on how, and under what circumstances, citizens monitor (and consequently influence) their elected representative's voting behavior. In addition to this project, Professor Hutchings also studies how the size of the African American constituency in congressional districts can influence legislative responsiveness to Black interests. The most recent product of this research was published in the Journal of Politics. Finally, he is also interested in the ways that campaign communications can "prime" various group identities and subsequently affect candidate evaluations. This study examines how campaign communications can subtly---and not so subtly---prime voter's racial (and other group-based) attitudes and subsequently affect their political decisions. Research from this project, co-authored with Professor Nicholas Valentino and Ismail White, has been published in the American Political Science Review. Professor Hutchings, and collaborators Ashley Jardina, Rob Mickey, and Hanes Walton, are currently exploring how different news frames can diminish or exacerbate tensions among Whites, Blacks and Latinos. To learn more about Professor Hutchings, visit: https://lsa.umich.edu/polisci/people/faculty/vincenth.html |
Contributors
Without these people, the Washtenaw Faces Race Rescuing Democracy Conference would not have been possible.
For more information about Washtenaw Faces Race, click here!
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