Event Archive: 2020-2021
Did you miss a Clough Center event? Explore our archive below for past event information and visit our YouTube page for videos of recent conferences and lectures.
FALL 2020 LECTURES & CONFERENCES
The 2020 Elections: A Clough Center Conversation
Moderated by Vlad Perju, BC Law School, Director of the Clough Center
Monday, November 23, 2020 | 12:00PM-1:00PM | Panel Discussion, Webinar
Registration is required. Zoom link will be sent before the day of the event.
Free and open to the public.
Speakers:
David Hopkins
BC Professor of Political Science
His research and teaching interests include American political parties and elections, the U.S. Congress, voting behavior, public opinion, media and culture, and research methods. His book Red Fighting Blue: How Geography and Electoral Rules Polarize American Politics (Cambridge University Press) explains how the rise of the culture war, in combination with winner-take-all elections, has produced a regionally divided electorate and an ideologically polarized party system in the United States. Paul Pierson of the University of California, Berkeley described Red Fighting Blue as “path-breaking” and “brilliant,” while Alan Abramowitz of Emory University wrote that “anyone interested in understanding American politics in the 21st century will find David Hopkins’ analysis of the geographic underpinnings of our polarized politics to be extremely helpful." Red Fighting Blue was rated "essential” and named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine.
R. Shep Melnick
Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. Professor of American Politics and co-chair of the Harvard Program on Constitutional Government, BC Professor of Political Science
He is the author of The Transformation of Title IX: Regulating Gender Equality in Education, (Brookings, 2018), Between the Lines: Interpreting Welfare Rights (Brookings,1994), and Regulation and the Courts: The Case of the Clean Air Act (Brookings, 1983), as well as many articles on courts, agencies, and public policy. In 2012 he received the American Political Science Association Law and Courts Section’s “Lasting Contribution” award. He received his BA and PhD from Harvard, and taught at Harvard and Brandeis before moving to Boston College. He has also been a Research Associate at Brookings, President of the New England Political Science Association, and an elected member of the NH House of Representatives.
Kay L. Schlozman
J. Joseph Moakley Endowed Professor of Political Science at Boston College
Among her professional activities, she has served as Secretary of the American Political Science Association and as chair of the APSA’s organized section on Elections, Public Opinion and Voting Behavior. She is the winner of the APSA’s 2006 Frank Goodnow Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession of Political Science; the 2016 Samuel Eldersveld Career Achievement Award; and the American Political Science Association’s 2018 Warren E. Miller Lifetime Achievement Award, which honors an outstanding career of intellectual accomplishment and service to the profession in the field of elections, public opinion, and voting behavior. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Author Meets Critics:
Oliver Wendell Holmes: Willing Servant of an Unknown God
by Catharine Wells
Monday, November 16, 2020 | 6:00PM | Panel Discussion, Webinar
Registration is required. Zoom link will be sent before the day of the event.
Justice Holmes was a pivotal figure in American law. On the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and on the Supreme Court of the United States, he was a towering figure, writing many important opinions that are an integral part of the legal canon we study in the Twenty First Century. Unfortunately, his importance to American Law has led scholars to disregard the depth of his philosophical and spiritual views. This book explores these views and describes the intellectual context that formed them. The result is a fuller picture of the man and of the possibility he poses of leading a meaningful life in the profession of law.
Join the Clough Center for a talk with Catharine Wells, Author and Professor of Law at Boston College.
Panelists include:
Margaret Jane Radin, Henry King Ransom Professor of Law, Emerita, at the University of Michigan Law School
Scott Brewer, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Gregg Fried, Professor of Philosophy, Boston College
Free and open to the public.
Register for Webinar
In Congress We Trust?
Enforcing Voting Rights from the Founding to the Jim Crow Era
With Franita Tolson
Friday, November 13, 2020 | 12:00PM-12:55PM | Webinar
Registration is required. Zoom link will be sent before the day of the event.
Please join Professor Mary Bilder and Professor Dan Farbman as they welcome Franita Tolson, Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs and Professor of Law at USC Gould School of Law, to discuss her forthcoming book and the election.
Following the discussion will be a Q&A session.
Free and open to the public.
Register for Webinar
"We The People" in Putting America First
RACE, RELIGION, AND THE MEASURE OF AMERICAN PROGRESS
Thursday October 29, 2020 | 6:00PM | Webinar
Registration is required. Zoom link will be sent before the day of the event
Join the Clough Center for a virtual lecture and Q&A Session with Dr. Nichole Renée Phillips.
In a now classic and eponymous essay, W.E.B. Du Bois offers his interpretation of the meaning of progress. Yet, what he identifies as (American) progress is marked by paradox and irony. “We the People” is an enduring symbol for U.S. nationality and peoplehood. This lecture explores this constitutional and civic concept as metaphorical for American national identity and exceptionalism. It also questions it as a steadfast ideal for American progress especially from Du Boisian and contemporary black and white racialized perspectives on nationhood while considering its strength for redeeming a racially polarized America.
Free and open to the public.
Who's the Bigot? Learning from Conflicts over Marriage and Civil Rights Law
A Panel Discussion with Linda McClain
Tuesday, October 20, 2020 | 6:00PM | Webinar
Registration is required. Zoom link will be sent before the day of the event
Linda McClain
Robert Kent Professor of Law
Boston University School of Law
Other Panelists Include:
Katharine Young (BC Law)
Kim Rubenstein (University of Canberra)
Daniel Kanstroom (moderator) (BC Law)
Free and open to the public.
Register for Webinar
Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, & Insisted on Equality for All
A Conversation with Professor Martha Jones
Friday, October 16, 2020 | 12:00PM-1:00PM | Webinar
Registration is required. Zoom link will be sent before the day of the event
Please join Professor Mary Bilder and Professor Dan Farbman as they welcome Martha S. Jones, the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University.
Professor Jones is the author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (2020) and Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018), winner of the Organization of American Historians Liberty Legacy Award for the best book in civil rights history, the American Historical Association Littleton-Griswold Prize for the best book in American legal history, and the American Society for Legal History John Phillip Reid book award for the best book in Anglo-American legal history.
Free and open to the public.
Cover art credit: Charlie Palmer
The Case for Masks
Presentation by Dean Hashimoto, MD, JD
Associate Professor, Boston College Law School
Chief Medical Officer, Workplace Health and Wellness, Mass General Brigham
Wednesday, October 14, 2020 | 2:00PM-3:00PM | Webinar
Registration is required. Zoom link will be sent before the day of the event
Free and open to the public.
Democracy Reform: What is it? Why do we need it?
Good Governance Project, Inaugural Kick-off Panel
Thursday, October 1, 2020 | 12:00PM-1:30PM | Webinar
Registration is required. Zoom link will be sent before the day of the event
Moderator: Vincent Rougeau, Dean of BC Law
With Panelists:
State Senator Jamie Eldridge, Senate chair of
Judiciary Committee & Vice-chair of Election Laws Committee
Zach Wamp, Former member of U.S. Congress from Tennessee. Advisor to Issue One, and Co-Chair of the ReFormers Caucus
Jeff Clements, President of American Promise,
Former MA Asst. AG & partner at a major Boston firm
Sara Eskrich, Executive Director of Democracy Found Former Madison, WI city councilor
Free and open to the public.
The Equal Rights Amendment: A Constitution Day Conversation
Friday September 18, 2020 | 12:00 PM | Webinar
Registration is required. Zoom link will be sent before the day of the event
Please join Professor Mary Bilder as she welcomes Professor and Dean Julie Suk and Professor Katharine Young to discuss the Equal Rights Amendment. Professor Suk is author of the just published, We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment. Professor Young is the editor of the Public Law of Gender (Cambridge University Press, 2016) (with Kim Rubenstein).
Julie Chi-hye Suk is Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Liberal Studies and Dean for Master’s Programs at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is also a Florence Rogatz Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School.
Katharine Young is Professor of Law at Boston College Law School. She is the editor of The Future of Economic and Social Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and the author of Constituting Economic and Social Rights (Oxford, 2012).
Mary Bilder is Founders Professor of Law at Boston College Law School and the author of the forthcoming, The Lady and George Washington: Female Genius in the Age of the Constitution.
Free and open to the public.
SPRING 2021 LECTURES & CONFERENCES
**Event Cancelled**
"Who's the Bigot?" Panel Discussion with Linda McClain
March 18th, 2020 | 4:00 PM | Barat House
Linda Mcclain
Robert Kent Professor of Law
Boston University School of Law
In Who's the Bigot?, the eminent legal scholar Linda C. McClain traces the rhetoric of bigotry and conscience across a range of debates relating to marriage and antidiscrimination law. Is "bigotry" simply the term society gives to repudiated beliefs that now are beyond the pale? She argues that the differing views people hold about bigotry reflect competing understandings of what it means to be "on the wrong side of history" and the ways present forms of discrimination resemble or differ from past forms. Furthermore, McClain shows that bigotry has both a backward- and forward-looking dimension. We not only learn the meaning of bigotry by looking to the past, but we also use examples of bigotry, on which there is now consensus, as the basis for making new judgments about what does or does not constitute bigotry and coming to new understandings of both injustice and justice.
Other Panelists:
Hernandez Stroud (BC Law)
Katharine Young (BC Law)
Kim Rubenstein (Australian National University, joining via video)
Moderator: Daniel Kanstroom (BC Law)
Book will be sold at a discount at the event
**Event Cancelled**
Constitutional Reform in Chile
March 31st, 2020 | Barat House
**Event Cancelled**
"Regulating AI: Strategies, Techniques, and Actors"
April 6th, 2020 | 12PM | 10 Stone Ave
Professor Amadeo Santosuosso, University of Pavia
**Event Cancelled**
Patrick Smith Discussion
April 7th, 2020 | Noon | 10 Stone Ave
**Event Cancelled**
"Mediation, Human Rights and the Global Rule of Law"
April 8th, 2020 | Noon | Barat House
Victor Schachter, Foundation for Sustainable Rule of Law Initiative
**Event Cancelled**
Constitutional Law in Poland
April 14th, 2020 at 4PM
Speakers: Professor Miroslaw Wyrzykowski and Professor Wojciech Sadurski
**Event Cancelled**
"We the People" in Putting America First: Race, Religion, and the Measure of American Progress"
April 21st, 2020 | Noon | 10 Stone Ave
Nichole Phillips, PhD
Past Events
Executive Power in Comparative Perspective with Russel Miller
Thurs, Feb 13, 2020 | Luncheon at Noon | Barat House
Details to follow.
Please RSVP at this link by Feb 11.
Free and open to the public.
Secession as a Human Right with Timothy William Waters
Wed, Feb 5, 2020 | Luncheon at Noon | 10 Stone Ave.
Political commonsense says fixed borders are a good idea. But what if borders are actually a problem -- what if they cause instability, injustice and violence? Despite what globalization theorists might imagine (or hope), borders and states aren't going away -- so we should think hard about if have the right ones, and how to change them if we don't. In this talk, which draws on my recent book, I examine the assumptions behind the current global order's suspicion of new states and border changes, and argues for the justice -- and practicality -- of a more flexible norm: an international right of secession.
Please RSVP at this link by Feb 3rd.
Free and open to the public.