Ward Connerly's Efforts to Undermine the University of Michigan Decisions

Moderator: Eva Paterson, Executive Director, Equal Justice Society
Ismael Ahmed, Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services
Ellen Buchman, Leadership Conference for Civil Rights
Maya Harris, Director, Racial Justice Project, ACLU of Northern California
Ed Lee, Californians for Justice
David Mermin, Lake, Snell, Perry & Associates
Linda Parker, Director, Michigan Department of Civil Rights
Heaster Wheeler, Executive Director, Detroit NAACP

PLENARY 1: Political Frameworks: How Conservatives Have Shaped America's Agenda / Roots of Present-Day Bias

Our opening Plenary will set the stage for the two following days by grounding the audience in a deepened understanding of how conservatives have shaped law, public policy, scholarship and media, and influenced how society thinks and talks about race. It will provide the context for the need to “dismantle the intent doctrine” and “heal racial wounds” by describing the strategic dismantling of civil and human rights in law and society.

Moderator: Kary Moss, Executive Director, ACLU of Michigan
Lee Cokorinos, Capacity Development Group
Trevor Coleman, Michigan Department of Civil Rights
George Curry, National Newspaper Publishers Association
Angela Dillard, New York University
Olati Johnson, ACLU

PLENARY 2: Legal Frameworks: The Law of “Intent” and Its Consequences

The constricted “intent doctrine” that permeates antidiscrimination law deprives many of redress for discrimination.  The doctrine requires plaintiffs to prove the near-impossible: a decisionmaker's specific intent to discriminate.  If a plaintiff cannot overcome this hurdle, the law will not recognize the discrimination he or she has experienced, even though some form of discrimination has come into play.  The “intent” standard is ineffective to remedy continuing racial inequality and disparity because it fails to reflect how a large part of discrimination actually occurs.  The doctrine views discrimination as an isolated, individual phenomenon resulting from the specific and identifiable “intent” or bias of a sole actor or set of actors.  This panel will discuss the areas of law affected most by the Intent Docrtrine, including Equal Protection and Title VI, Employment Discrimination, Plaintiff's cases, §1981, and how actual cases are currently being handled.

Moderator: William McNeill, Managing Attorney, Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center
Rachel Godsil, Professor of Law, Seton Hall Law School
Oren Sellstrom, Staff Attorney, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area
Thomas Saenz, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund

PLENARY 3: Social Science Reframing: Social Cognition Theory/Social Psychology/Critical Sociology

Substantial empirical and theoretical work in cognitive social psychology and critical sociology offers new progressive formulations for antidiscrimination law.  This impressive body of research has confirmed that much of society's racism is not a series of unconnected, intentional acts, but is a collective, historically-influenced, institutionalized and and often subconscious process.  According to these studies, all of us have cognitive biases that influence how we perceive and make decisions about other people. We will hear from prominent social scientists about this work and its implications.

Moderator: Richard Lempert, Professor of Law and Sociology, University of Michigan
Patricia Gurin, Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies, University of Michigan
Jennifer Richeson, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College
Claude Steele, Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, Stanford University; Director, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University
David Wellman, Professor of Community Studies, UC Santa Cruz; Research Sociologist, Institute for the Study of Social Change, UC Berkeley

PLENARY 4: Legal Reframing: Using Social Science Research in the Legal Arena

This extensive empirical and theoretical social science work explained in the previous Plenary shows that the current law ignores much of what we understand about how the human mind works.  The “ intentionalist” view of discrimination and the law linked to it thus misunderstand the actual cognitive dynamics of discrimination.  Many of these powerful studies and theories, however, are not being fully utilized on the front lines of the political debate or in courtrooms by civil rights advocates. This plenary will seek to s ynthesize law and social cognition theory to show that the law is based on faulty assumptions about how discrimination occurs. It will also investigate how to integrate social science/psychology concepts into cases through expert witnesses, evidence, legal arguments, and other strategies.

Moderator: Susan Serrano, Research Director, EJS
Sheila Foster, Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law
Richard Lempert, Professor of Law and Sociology, University of Michigan
Jory Steele, Project Attorney, Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center
Thomas Henderson, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

PLENARY 1: Reframing the Debate: Race, Media and Public Opinion

From the perspective of journalists, pollsters and advocates this panel will examine how race is portrayed in the media and how that projection affects both public opinion and social justice advocacy. Panelists include representatives of advocates who are trying to craft messages to address race discrimination and racial healing in a powerful, effective and progressive way; pollsters who gauge and analyze public opinion, including on divisive racial issues like California's Propositions 209 and 54, and journalists who face a variety of obstacles as they cover race issues on a daily basis.

Moderator: Victor Merina, Institute for Justice and Journalism, USC Annenberg School for Communication
Melvin Claxton, Detroit News
Diane Feldman, President, Feldman Group, Inc.
Celinda Lake, Lake Snell Perry & Associates
Eva Paterson, Executive Director, Equal Justice Society

PLENARY 2: Redefining Legal Justice: The Power and Problems of 'Racial Healing'

Our last plenary will explore models of racial healing and discuss case studies of reconciliation/racial awareness work. The panel will explore the role of law and legal process in promoting racial healing from various group perspectives and using varying approaches.

Moderator: Rico Oyola, Project Assistant, EJS
Eric Yamamoto , Professor of Law, University of Hawai`i Law School
Rebecca Tsosie, Professor of Law, Arizona State University College of Law
Robert Westley, Professor of Law, Tulane University School of Law

Lunch, Film and Discussion: Theory in Action

Chris Johnson, National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights
Maninder Kahlon, Senior Program Manager, Level Playing Field Institute