Speaker: Lee Cokorinos, Institute for Democracy Studies

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Lee Cokorinos is research director at the Institute for Democracy Studies (IDS) in New York, where he coordinates the institute's strategic research programs in law, reproductive rights, and religion. He is the author of the recently published landmark study on the right wing organizations that have waged the legal and political campaign against affirmative action, The Assault on Diversity: An Organized Challenge to Racial and Gender Justice, just published by Rowman & Littlefield.

Mr. Cokorinos has also edited and contributed to the IDS investigative newsletter, IDS Insights, is the author of the IDS report Antifeminist Organizations: Institutionalizing the Backlash, and co-authored the IDS briefing papers The Federalist Society and the Challenge to a Democratic Jurisprudence; Priests for Life: A New Era in Antiabortion Activism; The American Life League Enters Mexico: Recruiting Anti-Choice Activists for U.S. Right-wing Goals; and The Global Assault on Reproductive Rights: A Crucial Turning Point, prepared for the 2000 Beijing + 5 United Nations conference.

A former research consultant with the Public Policy Institute of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Cokorinos has also published path-breaking research on the Promise Keepers men's movement, and edited PK Watch for the Nation Institute's Center for Democracy Studies. He received his M.Phil. in Political Science at Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and has been a lecturer in International Political Economy at Fordham University. He also directed the Southern African Literature Society in Botswana, and has conducted extensive research on southern African politics.