Putting immigrant rights advocate Amy Gottlieb, scholar Douglas Thompkins, and journalist Jordan Flaherty in conversation, this round-table discussion focuses on the intersections of incarceration, immigration policies, and the practices of the carceral state. The panel discussion will be moderated by Rosemary Hicks, Visiting Scholar at the Bard Prison Initiative.
Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans and a television producer with Al Jazeera. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience, and his award-winning reporting from the Gulf Coast has been featured in a range of outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, Mother Jones, and Argentina’s Clarin newspaper. He has appeared as a guest on a wide range of television and radio shows, including CNN Morning, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Headline News, Democracy Now, RT, NPR’s News and Notes, Keep Hope Alive With the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and even the Alan Colmes Show on Fox News. He is author of the book Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six.
Amy Gottlieb is the Program Director of the American Friends Service Committee Immigrant Rights Program in Newark, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the rights of immigrants and refugees through legal services, community organizing, and advocacy. Amy also recently worked as a Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor in the Cardozo Immigration Justice Clinic and is currently an adjunct professor of Immigration Law there. Amy graduated from Rutgers Law School – Newark in 1996, where she has taught immigration law as an adjunct professor. She is past chair of the steering committee of the Detention Watch Network, and is a board member of La Fuente and Houses on the Moon Theater Company.
Rosemary R. Hicks is a Visiting Scholar at the Bard Prison Initiative. She received a doctorate in Religion from Columbia University in 2010 and was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Humanities at Tufts University from 2010-2012. Hicks’ research examines how racial and religious minorities–particularly Muslims–have historically navigated U.S. Protestant-derived norms and Protestant-dominated institutions, and she has published in Religion, American Quarterly, the Journal of Islamic Law and Culture, and the Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion, among other places.
Douglas Thompkins is Assistant Professor of Sociology at John Jay College. He has done extensive research into the culture of violence within the prison community and the relationship between institutional social control policies and prisoner reentry. He is principle investigator on the research part of the CUNY’s Black Male Initiative, and works closely with students interested in conducting original research. He is currently conducting research which looks at barriers to successful reentry and the growth of the “Reentry Industry”; and, research investigating reasons for lower rates of participation in traditional social institutions such as education, by Black men, compared to other groups. He is a member of the Advisory Committee for the Prisoner Reentry Institute, serves on the Board of Directors for the Fortune Society, and is an Advisor to the Public Safety Initiative run by the Lifers Organization at the state prison in Graterford, PA. Professor Thompkins spent time in state prison and is a former member of a Chicago street gang.
This event is free and open to the public.
Fencing in God? – Religion, Immigration, and Incarceration is a semester-long series of events focused on the ways in which religion and mobility intersect with immigration and incarceration. Throughout the Spring 2013 term, the IRCPL will present three public lectures and three related film-screenings intended to facilitate and encourage long-term discussions around the topics of religion, immigration, and incarceration.