Thursday, March 23, 2006
Code of the Street: Violence and the Inner City Poor
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

Issue in Context
In an attempt to explain why many urban youths are prone to commit acts of violence and aggression, Dr. Anderson has identified a common set of street mores, termed the “code of the street.” Often termed “street justice,” the code allows individuals to command respect in society and alleviates the problems of inner city violence by relying on a strategy of deterrence. Often, the threat of implied violence is used to avoid the use of actual violence

The code reaches beyond the limits of the law, and helps residents gain a sense of security and belonging. The concept of “street justice” provides an alternative method for afflicted inner-city areas to manage their own problems in the face of an increasingly ineffectual police force.

About the Speaker
Elijah Anderson is the Charles and William L. Day Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences and a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the director for the Philadelphia Ethnography Project, associate editor of Qualitative Sociology, and a member of the board of directors of the American Academy Read more

Wednesday, February 8
Indigenous Australia: A Contemporary Snapshot
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Issue in Context
Indigenous Australians, commonly called Aborigines, form one of the oldest surviving cultures in the world. Native art, music, a strong faith, and family systems are key characteristics of the rich aboriginal culture, from the didgeridoo to dreamtime to fire-stick farming. Believed to have arrived in Australia about 40,000 years ago, there were 350-750 distinct groups with different dialects and languages when English colonists arrived in the eighteenth century.

Settlers did not value the native customs and values and gradually forced simulation across the country. Massive dispossession of traditional lands, disease and direct violence caused a 90 percent population decrease of Aborigines between 1788 and 1900. The population plummet eventually leveled as communities developed resistance to diseases and adapted to their circumstances. However, many of the tribal cultures and languages had been lost. Their traditional nomadic lifestyle was no longer viable with the increase of appropriated land, and many Aborigines worked on farms, paid for their labor with food, clothing and other basic necessities. They were not legally Australian citizens, and could not vote. Further family and cultural damage occurred from the Australian government’s Read more

Wednesday, November 16, 2005
The First September 11: The Tragedy of U.S. Moral Ambivalence Toward Democracy and Torture in the “Condor Years” in Latin America
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Issue in Context
When Americans hear the term 9/11, few associate it with the September 11, 1973 overthrow of Chile ‘s democratic government that marked the onset of cooperation between the United States and military regimes in Latin America. During the next decade, Washington turned a blind eye to the conduct of military regimes in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil that perpetrated horrific human rights abuses against both violent revolutionaries and defenders of democracy. In the name of combating the spread of communism, the United States backed a secret campaign to liquidate Latin American dissidents who sought asylum in other countries, “Operation Condor.” The Operation’s spies entered neighboring Latin American countries to track, monitor, and kill political adversaries. The most notorious Condor assassination took place in Washington, DC, in September 1976, when agents planted a car bomb that killed Chile’s former foreign minister Orlando Letelier and an American woman.

About the Speakers
John Dinges is a former foreign correspondent to Latin American countries and author of three Read more

Tuesday, November 15, 2005
2005 Morgan Lecture
The Age of Genocide
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

Issue in Context
Genocide is defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as the deliberate and systematic destruction,“in whole or in part of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

During World War II, Winston Churchill stated that the world was facing “a crime without a name.” In the wake of the Holocaust, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish legal scholar, sought to formulate a term that could encompass the killings, the objectives, and the methods of the Nazis against the Jewish population of Europe. Lemkin coined the word “genocide” from the Greek “genos” (race or tribe) and the Latin suffix “cide” (to kill). Lemkin’s struggle for the universal recognition of international law defining and forbidding genocide brought about the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Remembering the Holocaust, American leaders such as Jimmy Carter and George Bush, Sr. promised that “never again will the world fail to act in time to prevent this terrible crime,” but the history of the 20th century proved that genocide happened again and again across the globe. Read more

Wednesday, November 2, 2005
Race, Class, and Violence in America: Building Coalitions for Change
Stern Center, Great Room 7:00 P.M.

Issue in Context
Between 1973 and 1994, the poverty rate for children in young families has doubled. Meanwhile, violent crime committed by youths has increased more than 78% in the past six years. According to statistics, shortly after the year 2050, the white majority in America will dissipate. This information is used on hate websites to negatively influence and scare young people into believing America is not the country it once was. It is clear that coalition building is more important than ever if the current younger generation is to have any hope for a successful future.

Thirty years ago, white residents of a Boston neighborhood, known as Southi, pelted school buses carrying black students with rocks and tomatoes. This area of south Boston had the highest concentration of impoverished whites in America in the 1970’s; Southie also represented the face of racism in the northeast. Mob murders, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, and frequent funerals for young people were rampant. Few insiders then or now have spoken out about this aspect of Boston.

Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in Southie Read more