Featured Events

Wednesday, February 8, 6-8 p.m.

OFFICE OF THE PROVOST
presents

THE NOBEL PRIZES EXPLAINED

Join us as we discuss the Nobel Prize and prize winners from the past year, highlighting the scholarly excellence of Hofstra’s faculty and the societal impact of the 2022 Nobel Laureates.

Literature – Sabine Loucif, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures
Economics – Constantine Alexandrakis, Associate Professor of Economics, Chair
Peace – Linda A. Longmire, Professor of Global Studies and Geography
Medicine or Physiology – Robert V. Hill, Associate Professor of Science Education
Chemistry – Yalan Xing, Associate Professor of Chemistry
Physics – Gregory C. Levine, Professor of Physics and Astronomy

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Light refreshments to be served.

Hofstra University Office of the President
and the
Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, School of Education
in collaboration with the Hofstra Cultural Center
present

The Real World of College:
What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be
with Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023
4:30 p.m.
The Helene Fortunoff Theater
Monroe Lecture Center, South Campus

For more than 10 years, Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner conducted and analyzed in-depth interviews with more than 2,000 students, alumni, faculty, administrators, parents, trustees, and job recruiters across 10 disparate institutions (nine undergraduate, non-vocational schools, and one undergraduate, engineering school as a comparison). Their findings, based on rigorous data collected before the pandemic, challenge assumptions and characterizations in the media, especially in terms of how students understand the purpose of college, what worries them, and how they think about their futures. In the book, Fischman and Gardner introduce new ways to conceptualize the college experience, including four mental models for the college experience and how these differ across constituencies and schools. They also introduce a new measure, Higher Education Capital (HEDCAP) — what they believe should be the outcome of college — which describes the ability to attend, analyze, reflect, connect, and communicate on issues of importance, as well as the conditions under which HEDCAP increases and when it does not. Importantly, they also discuss the two major problems students confront on the college campus: issues of mental health and three types of alienation — which emerged before the pandemic began. Based on their data, Fischman and Gardner offer specific recommendations to institutions and individual stakeholders —how to help students become less transactional and more transformational about learning.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 6:30-9:30 p.m.

SUMMER OF SOUL
Film Screening and Discussion
In commemoration of Black History Month

Summer of Soul premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award. It has since been named “Best Documentary” at the 2022 Academy Awards.

This powerful and transporting documentary — part music film, part historical record — was created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture, and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1969, just 100 miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). The footage was largely forgotten — until now. Summer of Soul shines a light on the importance of history to our spiritual well-being and stands as a testament to the healing power of music during times of unrest, both past and present. The film includes concert performances by Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, Mavis Staples, The 5th Dimension, and more.

The screening will be followed by a discussion facilitated by

Rodney F. Hill, Chair and Associate Professor of Radio, Television, and Film and Executive Producer, Marie Therese Guirgis.

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Presented by Hofstra Cultural Center, the Department of Radio, Television and Film and The Lawrence Herbert School Of Communication.

Tasseli McKay is a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology at Duke University. For 10 years, she worked on the Multi-Site Family Study of Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering, a mixed-method longitudinal study of 2,000 families affected by incarceration. Her most recent book, Stolen Wealth, Hidden Power: The Case for Reparations for Mass Incarceration (2022), contends that the steep direct costs of mass-scale imprisonment are far overshadowed by its hidden costs and harms, many of which have been kept out of sight by women’s labor. Her current research focuses on the complicated relationship between the most common forms of violence—those that occur within families—and the government forces that we deploy in the name of public safety.

4:30 p.m.
Banned Books: To Read or Not to Read

In commemoration of Black History Month and Civil Rights Day

Join in a panel discussion on whether to read or not to read. The panel will not only focus on how banning books is detrimental to students’ learning and identities, but is also a breach of the first amendment and one's overall concern for social justice.

Panelists include:
Theresa A. McGinnis, PhD, Professor, Literacy Studies; Director, MSED, MA & AC Programs in Literacy Studies, Hofstra University

Oddette Williams, PhD Candidate in Literacy Studies at Hofstra University; Director of Curriculum, Academy Charter School, Hempstead, NY

Susan Gottehrer, Executive Director of the NYCLU-Nassau Chapter

Jackson Gomes, YA Internship Coordinator, Brooklyn Public Library

Moderated by Alan Singer, PhD, Director, Secondary Education Social Studies, Teaching Learning Technology, Hofstra University

Presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center and the Department of Specialized Programs in Education

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

6:30 p.m.-8 p.m.
Long Island Divided
A Newsday Investigation

Join us for a discussion and update regarding Newsday’s investigation on housing discrimination on Long Island. Our discussion will focus on the three-year investigation that uncovered widespread evidence of unequal treatment by real estate agents on Long Island. We’ll address the impacts on communities and discuss what’s been done since.

Panelists include: Olivia Winslow, Newsday Reporter
Keith Herbert, Newsday Assistant Managing Editor for Investigations
Martine Hackett, PhD, Associate Professor of Health Professions, Hofstra University

Moderated by Dr. Christopher W. Niedt, Associate Professor of Applied Social Research, Department of Sociology, and
Academic Director of The National Center for Suburban Studies
at Hofstra University

Presented by the Center For Civic Engagement and the Hofstra Cultural Center.

The Helene Fortunoff Theater
Monroe Lecture Center, South Campus

Thursday, February 23, 6:30 p.m.

When We All Stand: Artists’ Civic Responsibility

A  panel discussion examines the collective power of the arts to address complex issues in society, its ability to chart a path for social change, the role of the artist as activist and their impact on local communities and nationwide. The artists included in the panel are Molly Crabapple, For Freedoms, Miguel Luciano, Michele Pred, and Sophia Victor. Each take a stand and call out injustices through their art and activism on issues such as immigration, gender, reproductive rights, mass incarceration, voting rights, racial bias, and gun violence. Using James Baldwin’s essay, The Creative Process as a talking point, artists will explain how their art and activism help “make the world a more human dwelling place.”

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center and the Hofstra University Museum.

Thursday, February 23, 11:20 a.m.-12:45 p.m.

SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME
Film Screening and Discussion
In commemoration of Black History Month

Facilitator: Dr. Linda A. Longmire, Professor of Global Studies and Geography

Slavery by Another Name "resets" our national clock with a singular astonishing fact: Slavery in America didn't end 150 years ago with Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Based on Douglas A. Blackmon's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, the film illuminates how in the years following the Civil War, insidious new forms of forced labor emerged in the American South, persisting until the onset of World War II.

• From the book jacket:
Based on a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Slavery by Another Name unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude. It also reveals the stories of those who fought unsuccessfully against the re-emergence of human labor trafficking, the modern companies that profited most from neoslavery, and the system's final demise in the 1940s, partly due to fears of enemy propaganda about American racial abuse at the beginning of World War II.

Slavery by Another Name is a moving, sobering account of a little-known crime against African Americans, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Presented by Hofstra Cultural Center and the Department Of Global Studies and Geography.

Wednesday, March 8, 11:20 a.m.-12:45 p.m.

In September 2022, the death in police custody of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a young woman from Iranian Kurdistan who had been detained for inappropriate hejab, generated a tsunami of protests across Iran. Led by women and girls who publicly cut their hair in mourning and burned their headscarves in anger, the protests were joined by men of all ages and ethnicities. It is worth examining the structural and institutional frameworks in Iran, and in the world-system, that led to the women-led protests in September 2022 and into the new year.

Presenter: Valentine M. Moghadam, Professor of Sociology and Director of the International Affairs Program, Northeastern University, Boston. Former Director, Women’s Studies Programs, Purdue University and Illinois State University, Senior Research Fellow and Coordinator of the Research Program on Women and Development, UNU/WIDER, Helsinki (1990-95) and Section Chief, Gender Equality and Development, Human and Social Sciences Sector, UNESCO.

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Wednesday, March 8, 1:30-4:30 p.m.

Dream of Silk

A film screening and discussion of Dream of Silk. Twenty years later the director of the film, Nahid Rezaei, returns to her old high school. In her conversations with the young girls of the post revolution, she asks them to discuss their desires and ideals for their future. The dialogues not only reveal their personal feelings and desires, but are also a commentary to the social and political life in today’s Iranian society. 

Thursday, March 9, 1:30-4:30 p.m.

Sonita

Sonita is an 18-year-old female, and an undocumented Afghan immigrant living in the poor suburbs of Tehran. She is a feisty, spirited, young woman who fights to live the way she wants – as an artist, singer, and musician, in spite of all the obstacles she confronts in Iran and her conservative patriarchal family. In harsh contrast to her goal is the plan of her family – strongly advanced by her mother – to make her a bride and sell her to a new family. The price right now is about $9 thousand U.S. dollars.

Wednesday, March 15, 1:30-4:30 p.m.

Profession Documentarist

“We Iranian documentary directors have movies that can only be made in our minds. Sometimes, we tell them to each other.” This is a statement narrated by one of the filmmakers. The intimate ensemble and reflexive film is comprised of seven personal stories that had to be left untold following the Islamic Revolution in 1979. In diary style, the women raise issues that deeply impact everyday life, but are nonetheless “prohibited” in the country. The contributors also reflect on their clandestine existence during a repressive time and the importance of film as a medium of expression.

Friday, March 10, 2023, 12:30-5:30 p.m.

Hofstra Cultural Center and the
Department of Philosophy Present:

A Symposium on Amy Karofsky, A Case for Necessitarianism

This symposium brings an international group of philosophers to Hofstra to discuss Professor Amy Karofsky's recent book A Case for Necessitarianism (2021). The book defends necessitarianism, the view that absolutely nothing about the world could have been otherwise in any way, whatsoever. Most philosophers believe that necessitarianism is open to question and presume that some things could have been otherwise than what they are. Professor Karofsky argues that necessitarianism is true and the view that some things in the world are contingent is false. Join us for an afternoon of discussion and thought-provoking responses to Professor Karofsky’s arguments as we celebrate the work of one of our colleagues.

Speakers:
Simone Gozzano, Università Degli Studi Dell'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy
Stephen Maitzen, Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada
Antonella Mallozzi, Providence College, Rhode Island, United States.

Location for all Conference sessions is Room CV Starr 205.

Wednesday, March 15, 6-7:25 p.m.

Global Justice Day: The Discourse of the Veil: Beyond the Myths and Misunderstandings
In commemoration of World Hijab Day and Women’s History Month

We will discuss the meaning of hijab through personal and professional anecdotes and tackle widespread misconceptions/stereotypes surrounding Muslim women.
Organizer: Asma Azma
Moderator: Rowaida Abdelaziz

This event is part of Global Justice Day, presented by the Center for Civic Engagement.

Co-sponsored by the Hofstra Cultural Center, Rabinowitz Honors College, Center for Civic Engagement, Center for “Race”, Culture and Social Justice, and the Department of Religion.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library, South Campus

Wednesday, March 15, 11:20 a.m. – 12:40 p.m.

How Might the War in Ukraine End?: Dangers and Opportunities

The Center for Civic Engagement's Institute for Peace Studies and LI Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives present a Spring 2023 International Scene Lecture Series event. Professors Eisenberg and Fritz will discuss the state of the war in Ukraine, the role of U.S. policy and possible ways the war might end.

Discussants:
Professor Carolyn Eisenberg, Department of History, Hofstra University
Professor Paul Fritz, Department of Political Science, Hofstra University

Thursday, March 16, 1:00-2:25 p.m.

Spring 2023 International Scene Lecture Series: Israel/Palestine Conflict: What is the U.S. Role?

Phillis Bennis, Director, New Internationalism Project, Institute for Policy Studies. Her area of focus is on the Middle East, U.S. wars, and United Nations issues.

Commentator:
Professor Stephanie Nanes, Department of Political Science, Hofstra University

International Scene Series Co-Directors:
Professor Carolyn Eisenberg, Department of History,
Professor Linda Longmire, Global Studies Program,
Professor Martin Melkonian, Department of Economics,
Hofstra University

Presented in commemoration of Center for Civic Engagement’s Global Justice Day.

Thursday, March 30, 1-2:25 p.m.

Book Launch and Conversation
A History of Silence by Cynthia J. Bogard
in Commemoration of Women's History Month

Four women, unknowingly bound together by one man's violent past.
A lost love, a secret life, a mother's longing ... and a murder.

Johnny Wharton is a history professor and descendant of a Texas "planter family" — a legacy that's followed him all the way to 1985. Tough-girl Jenny (Johnny's daughter) runs away to Madison, blotting out her past with distance, drugs, and sex. Her loner lifestyle is upended by her new roommate's scary insistence on friendship. Emotionally damaged Jane (Johnny's new graduate student) gives Johnny's offer of an affair a try, thinking she might manage if it's furtive and part-time. Maddie (his lesbian colleague) is grief-stricken; her longtime Black lady love Roz left her — inexplicably. Conservatively raised Liz (Johnny's wife) is desperate to reconnect with her estranged daughter. She's beginning to realize that Johnny's past has left unspeakable scars on her family's present.

As the lives of these four women intertwine in unexpected ways, each learns the past can't be conquered until it's confronted, and its secrets revealed — and shared.

About the Author:
Cynthia J. Bogard has reinvented herself as a novelist after a successful career as a professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at Hofstra University in New York. Born and raised in rural Wisconsin, she has lived in Kuwait, Greece, Mexico, New York, and in Madison, Wisconsin, and Texas. World traveler, longtime feminist, and environmentalist, she holds Greece, mid-20th century jazz, and Mother Nature close to her heart. These days, Bogard lives with her spouse and two rescue dogs in Montpelier, Vermont. 

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, South Campus

Author's book will be available for purchased and book signing.

Presented by the Women's Studies Program, Department of Sociology and the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Tuesday, April 4, 3:30-5 p.m.

The Vietnam War: as a Generational Crisis
Book Launch and Conversation with Carolyn Eisenberg

While physically destroying large sections of North and South Vietnam , Laos and Cambodia, the Vietnam War was also a domestic crisis in the United States -rupturing relations between the generations, and affecting attitudes towards education, work and personal relationships. In this informal talk and conversation, Professor Eisenberg will discuss the generational rift and some long-term consequences.

Carolyn Eisenberg, professor of History, Hofstra University is the author of Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the wars in Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press).

Sponsored by the Hofstra University Department Of History.

Hofstra Hall Parlor, South Campus

Wednesday, April 12, 11:20 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.

Earth Day: Nipi (Water): Advancements in Earth Law for Rights of Water

An emerging area of law known as Earth Law is growing rapidly around the world to protect the rights of Water – rivers, lakes, wetlands, Ocean and more. This talk explores these new advancements and also situates them within the larger movement for Climate and Water Justice being led by Indigenous Peoples.

Organizer: Philip Dalton, Director of Center for Civic Engagement

Speaker: Kelsey Leonard, PhD
School of Environment, Resources,
and Sustainability in the Faculty of Environment University of Waterloo, Canada

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Presented by the Center for Civic Engagement.

In collaboration with the National Center for Suburban Studies; Office of the Provost; Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Herbert School of Communication; Rabinowitz Honors College; Office of Equity and Inclusion; Center for”Race,” Culture and Social Justice; Department of Writing Studies and Rhetoric; Department of Sociology and the Office of Intercultural Engagement and Inclusion.

Wednesday, September 28, 4:30 p.m.

The Annual Critical Spiritualities Lecture
with
MARY ZIEGLER
Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law
University of California, Davis

Canary In The Coalmine: What It Means To Lose A Constitutional Right

The reversal of Roe v. Wade was decades in the making, but the fight to undo abortion rights changed more than the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution. Mary Ziegler will discuss the ways that the battle to end the right to choose changed the way our democracy works and consider what comes next in struggles over reproduction in America.

Co-sponsored by the Hofstra Cultural Center and the Department of Religion.

Presented in collaboration with the Hofstra School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, School of Health Professions and Human Services, Rabinowitz Honors College, Department of Philosophy, Department of Political Science, Peter S. Kalikow Public Policy and Public Service Program, Program in Jewish Studies, Program in LGBT Studies, Program in Women’s Studies, and the Joseph G. Astman Distinguished Scholar Fund for the Hofstra Cultural Center.

The Helene Fortunoff Theater
Monroe Lecture Center, South Campus

Tuesday, September 20-Thursday, September 22, 2022

The second annual Presidential Symposium, Solutions for a Sustainable Tomorrow will take place this fall during the third week of classes . Over the symposium's three days, faculty and invited guests from all academic areas and disciplines at Hofstra University will explore the University's role in promoting sustainability both on and off campus. Panel discussions over three days will consider ways to make the Hofstra campus more sustainable, how Hofstra and Long Island can address and adapt to climate change, the role of government regulation in promoting sustainability, how Hofstra can support efforts to meet local housing, community health and mental health needs, and how education can better prepare people for the challenges of the climate crisis in classrooms on campus and in public schools, and through local media.

Before, during, and after the three days of panel discussions, we will also host local sustainability service projects, a hike to explore Long Island's ecology, a farmer's market, and a "taste of the neighborhood" dinner, all to encourage student and faculty participation in local projects and with local organizations.

For more information and to RSVP, visit hofstra.edu/ps22.

Monday, September 19, 11:20 a.m. -12:45 p.m.

Interrogating Hate: Antisemitism, Islamophobia and Racisms in the European Union and at Home?

This event will kick-off a three-year grant to Hofstra University from the European Union that will examine the European Union's activities in the areas of anti-discrimination and hate crime policy. Areas of exploration will include gender, antisemitism, Islamophobia, LGBTQ rights, racism, and Roma exclusion. We will explore how these issues manifest themselves in Europe and in the U.S., what policy initiatives and abilities the European Union has in these areas and what lessons we may learn here in the U.S. Faculty members will share their expertise in these areas and future speakers will engage more deeply in these topics.

Speakers:
Sally Charnow, Professor and Chair of History
Carolyn Dudek, Professor and Chair of Political Science
Paul Fritz, Associate Professor of Political Science
Santiago Slabodsky, The Robert and Florence Kaufman Endowed Chair in Jewish and Chair in Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of Religion Hofstra University

Advanced registration is required.

Wednesday, October 12, 11:20 a.m.-12:45 p.m.

The Challenge of Islamophobia in Europe

Farid Hafez, visiting Professor of International Studies at Williams College, will examine how Islamophobia manifests itself in Europe, and how the European Union has addressed Muslim hate. This presentation is part of a three-year grant to Hofstra University from the European Union that will examine the European Union's activities in the areas of anti-discrimination and hate crime policy. Areas of exploration will include gender, antisemitism, Islamophobia, LGBTQ rights, racism, and Roma exclusion. We will explore how these issues manifest themselves in Europe and in the U.S., what policy initiatives and abilities the European Union has in these areas, and what lessons we may learn here in the U.S.

Speaker: Farid Hafez
Visiting Professor of International Studies at Williams College

Presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center, European Studies and the Erasmus + Jean Monnet Grant. Co-funded by the European Union.

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Oro de indias: El arcano caudal del idioma quechua presented by Odi Gonzales

A dual presentation by Quechua scholar Odi Gonzales (New York University). Born in Cusco (Peru), Odi Gonzales is an award-winning poet, translator, researcher of Andean Oral Tradition, and professor in Peru and the United States. In 1992, he won the César Vallejo National Poetry Award, and the Poetry Prize from the National University of San Marcos (Lima). Gonzales is the author of seven poetry collections, several scholarly books, most recently Nación Anti. Ensayos de antropología lingüística andina (2022) and Quechua-Spanish-English Dictionary (2018). Since 2008, Gonzales teaches Quechua Language and Culture, and Andean Linguistic Anthropology at New York University.

Presenter: Odi Gonzales
Award-winning Poet, Translator and Researcher of the Quechua and Andean Languages and Oral Tradition

2:40-4:05 – Oro de indias: El arcano caudal del idioma quechua
El carácter oral de la lengua quechua ha preservado relevantes aspectos semántico-gramaticales que marcan gran diferencia con las lenguas escriturales como el español o el inglés. La lengua quechua fue configurada desde la perspectiva humana, no de la máquina; no es proclive a la retórica ni a los conceptos, prescinde de sinónimos; se caracteriza por locuciones precisas, únicas y con tendencia a las acciones concretas. 

4:20-5:45 – Language and Thought: The Binary Magnitude of the Quechua Language
In the Andean thought, Andean cultural categories are not expressed through prepositions, premises, axioms, inferences, syllogisms, or conclusions (metalanguage) like in Western culture. Andean philosophy is rooted in the language itself (object-language, the language of every day) through concrete forms: the suffixes. In this presentation, I contend that empathy language-thought is the essence of the oral Quechua language.

Advanced registration is required.

October 26, 2022 @ 9:40 a.m.–7:25 p.m.
Day of Dialogue 2022: Our community. Our world. Our election.
Presented by the Center for Civic Engagement

In the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections, a lot is at stake. Midterm elections often see the party out of power in Congress reclaim seats. While the President's party has polled poorly, numbers have tightened in recent months following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that reversed a woman's federal right to an abortion recognized since the 1973 Roe w. Wade decision. Meanwhile, additional local and national issues are demanding our attention. Election denialism threatens faith in the integrity of U.S. elections. Russia's war against Ukraine threatens Europe's access to energy as winter months approach. Unions grow in popularity. Inflation and national action to abate it threaten the quality of life for millions, while pulling affordable housing further out of reach for many. Water resources are depleted in Western states as the northern hemisphere faces one of its warmest years in recorded history.

This program of discussions was developed by Hofstra undergraduates and faculty. Join us. Voice your opinions. Listen to others express theirs. Learn and get energized before the November 8th midterm elections!

Presented by the Center for Civic Engagement

Various locations on campus

Advance registration is required. For detailed information on the day's events and to RSVP, visit news.hofstra.edu/event/day-of-dialogue-2022/

Junk Science: A Conversation with Innocence Project Attorney M. Chris Fabricant

M. Chris Fabricant presents his book Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System (Akashic Books, 2022) – an insider's journey into the heart of a broken, racist system of justice and the role junk science plays in maintaining the status quo. As director of strategic litigation at the Innocence Project, Fabricant leads the Strategic Litigation Unit, whose attorneys use the courts to address the leading causes of wrongful conviction, including eyewitness misidentification and the misapplication of forensic sciences. He has over a decade of criminal defense experience at the state and federal, trial, and appellate levels with The Bronx Defenders and Appellate Advocates.

Advance registration is required

Join us for a film viewing and discussion of Two Distant Strangers with the Africana Studies Program. Two Distant Strangers is a 2020 American short film written by Travon Free and directed by Free and Martin Desmond Roe. The film examines the deaths of Black Americans during encounters with police through the eyes of a character trapped in a time loop that keeps ending in his death. Two Distant Strangers won the award for Best Live Action Short Film at the 93rd Academy Awards, marking distributor Netflix’s first win in the category.

Presented by Marta Tienda, Maurice P. During ’22 Professor of Demographic Studies
and Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs
Princeton University

The United States is the most demographically complex nation in the world, but does diversity undermine social cohesion? In its 2003 decision permitting narrowly tailored consideration of race in college admissions (Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 328-29), the U.S. Supreme Court opined that diversity is a compelling state interest. But what does that mean, exactly? This lecture will describe the changing ethno-racial composition of the U.S. population and discuss social, economic and political implications of these changes by focusing on higher education, where access has become contested terrain. I interrogate whether and how diversity undermines cohesion on college campuses. I also provide evidence about diversity and social cohesion by drawing on evidence about intermarriage, voting behavior and attitude surveys signaling acceptance of others.

Following November’s election a Long Island Press headline read, “Red Wave Brings Political Sea Change to Long Island.” Democrats narrowly held the governorship in New Jersey while surprisingly losing that same office in Virginia. Here on Long Island Republicans swept nearly every election. Following recent elections, we’ve heard people talk of red waves and blue waves. Was this a red wave?

Join Hofstra Professors Philip Dalton (Rhetoric and Public Advocacy and Center for Civic Engagement); Mary Anne Trasciatti (Labor Studies and Rhetoric and Public Advocacy); and Rosanna Perotti (Political Science), as we discuss this election and its meaning as we look forward to next year’s midterms.

William Howell will reflect upon the rise of populism in American politics and its implications for presidential power, the capacity of government to solve public problems, and the need for institutional reform.

William G. Howell is the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at the University of Chicago, where he holds appointments in the Harris School, Department of Political Science, and College. Currently, he is the chair of the Department of Political Science, director of the Center for Effective Government, and co-host of Not Another Politics Podcast. Dr. Howell has written widely on separation-of-powers issues and American political institutions, especially the presidency. He currently is working on research projects on separation of powers issues, the origins of political authority, and the normative foundations of executive power.

Hofstra faculty members present their recent and ongoing publications and engage critically and theoretically with new scholarship focused on “race,” culture, and social justice.

Dr. Jonathan Lightfoot
Co-Director, Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice
Associate Professor of Teaching, Learning and Technology

Privileging “Race” at Centers and Institutes in Higher Education: A Study of the Landscape
Centers and institutes have become an increasingly important part of the higher education landscape. This research takes a closer look at centers and institutes in the United States of America that focus on issues of “race,” culture and social justice to determine the value they bring to their host institutions. They offer an opportunity to produce and share interdisciplinary research and bypass the restrictions often inherent within the traditional departmental design. Removing structural barriers that limit creativity and innovation can broaden ideological perspectives and address larger policy problems towards the greater public good. Qualitative determinations of value will hopefully inspire more colleges and universities to establish or increase support of centers and institutes that seek to challenge issues of “race” and racism and the intersectional social injustices they engender. 

Presented by the Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice, Center for Civic Engagement and the Hofstra Cultural Center.

featuring

Frederick K. Brewington, Esq.
Civil Rights Attorney

Mark C. Niles
Professor of Law
Hofstra University Maurice A. Deane School of Law

The presentation will focus on the roots of the civil rights movement in the United States which began after the Civil War with the 13th Amendment, and the creation of Black Codes and the 1871 passage of the KKK Act. The KKK act is federal legislation enacted as an attempt to enforce the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution – an amendment aimed at protecting all citizens from state laws that enabled discrimination against people of color. Since that time, vigilantism against people of color has continued in various forms, from lynchings, to so-called “stand your ground laws,” to citizens arrests. Both Niles and Brewington, will discuss the history and local implications of the vigilante phenomenon in our society and its impact overall, particularly on people of color.

This article and video below features Frederick Brewington regarding desegregation in a Malverne school that he eventually attended.

https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2022/02/07/malverne-school-desegregation-black-history-month-fred-brewington-dr-martin-luther-king-jr/

Presented by the Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice, Center for Civic Engagement and the Hofstra Cultural Center.

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Read The Hofstra Chronicle News Story

Professor Jamel Coy Hudson teaches courses on rhetoric and public advocacy at Hofstra University and Baruch College at City University of New York. He specializes in the study of social justice movements & gives lectures on Dr. King's and Minister Malcolm X's liberationist traditions. #BlackHistoryMonth

Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Axinn Library, South Campus

Presented by the Hofstra Muslim Student Association in collaboration with Hofstra NAACP, Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice.

Trita Parsi is an award-winning author and the 2010 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. He is an expert on US-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign policy, and the geopolitics of the Middle East. He has authored three books on US foreign policy in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran and Israel. In 2021, he was named by the Washingtonian Magazine as one of the 50 most influential voices on foreign policy in Washington DC, and preeminent public intellectual Noam Chomsky calls Parsi “one of the most distinguished scholars on Iran.”

Speaker: Trita Parsi, Vice President, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

Series Co-Directors: Dr. Carolyn Eisenberg, Dr. Linda Longmire and Adjunct Associate Professor Martin Melkonian, Hofstra University

Presented by the Center for Civic Engagement’s Institute for Peace Studies, Hofstra Cultural Center and Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternative.

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On February 24th, Russia invaded Ukraine and started what could be the largest war in Europe since World War II. Over half a million people have already fled for safety as fierce fighting continues to expand across Ukraine. What are the roots of this conflict? What role has the US and NATO played in the lead-up to the invasion?  And what response seems most humane and constructive going forward?

Panelists:
Carolyn Eisenberg, Professor of History
Paul Fritz, Associate Professor of Political Science
Igor Pustovoit, Adjunct Professor of Comparative Literature, Languages, and Linguistics
Benjamin Rifkin, Professor of Comparative Literature, Languages, and Linguistics

Moderated by:
Philip Dalton, Associate Professor of Writing Studies and Composition

Sponsored by Center for Civic Engagement.

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

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Join us for a night of poetry with King Yaw. Yaw Osafo-Kantanka Kyeremateng is a Ghanaian artist residing in Accra, Ghana. Yaw is a writer, educator, and activist who connects to his audience through poetic story-telling on topics related to racial identity, family and immigration. Yaw finds joy in being a professional laugher and a rooted dancer with specialty in Afrobeats and West African tribal dance. On stage, Yaw becomes his stories, channels language through time and space to give the audience a cathartic experience. Reception to immediately follow in C.V. Starr Lobby.

The Helene Fortunoff Theater
Monroe Lecture Center, South Campus

Presented by The Rabinowitz Honors College in collaboration with the Hofstra Cultural Center, Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice, Africana Studies Program, Office of IEI and the African Students Association

Tom Hasegawa was born in Los Angeles in 1938. The issuance of Executive Order 9066 by President Roosevelt after the onset of the Pacific War led to the loss of a thriving restaurant business in Little Tokyo that the Hasegawa family was running and the whole family was forcibly relocated in the Tule Lake internment camp in northern California. In this event, he will talk about his youthful days in the camp and the family’s journey to the mid-West and eventually to Long Island.

Tom Hasegawa received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago, majoring in Biology. After graduating college, he took a teaching job at a high school on Long Island. He has given many talks on his days in the Tule Lake camp and his experiences in Chicago after the end of World War II for various organizations and schools.

Sponsored by the Department of History and the Asian Studies Program and the Hofstra Cultural Center.

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Event is FREE and open to the public. Advance registration is required. Registrants will be sent an email with zoom link prior to join event.

A panel discussion from multiple perspectives about the importance and use of hand-drawing in numerous academic disciplines, particularly in this technological era. Focusing on topics such as observation and seeing, communication of ideas, visual problem solving, among others.

Moderator: Edward M. Segal, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Engineering, Hofstra University

Panelists:
Katherine Chan, MSFE/Senior Associate, Walter P. Moore
Mark Fiedler, Fiedler Marciano Architecture
Robert V. Hill, Associate Professor, Department of Science Education, Director, Anatomical Gift Program, Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell
James Lee, Chair and Professor, Fine Art, Design, Art History department, Hofstra University
Jason D. Williams, Donald E. Axinn Distinguished Professor in Ecology and Conservation, Department of Biology, Hofstra University

This is event is made possible with the support of the Hofstra University Museum of Art and the Hofstra Cultural Center in collaboration with The Alice Sawyer Award.

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

RONALD H. LINDEN is professor emeritus of Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh where he served as director of the European Studies Center and director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies. At the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War in Europe, Dr. Linden was director of Research for Radio Free Europe in Munich. His publications focus on the international relations of Europe, Russia and Turkey and his most recent research has been on the impact of Chinese trade and investment in Europe.

Presented by European Studies Program in collaboration with the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Virtual Event

“How has wheelchair basketball impacted college campuses? Hofstra University fielded the second collegiate wheelchair basketball team in the U.S. and the first on the East Coast.  Players on the Rolling Dutchmen included a Paralympian, an education professor, a member of the student activist group PUSH (People United in Support of the Handicapped), and the Vietnam War activist Ron Kovic.  Wisconsin-Whitewater won multiple national championships, and Rolling Warhawks went on to coach leading collegiate programs.  This presentation will address the impact of disability sports on individual athletes and on a wider community.” 

Craig M. Rustici will briefly outline the history of wheelchair basketball at Hofstra, and Ronald J. Berger will present his sociological analysis of the elite wheelchair basketball program at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, an inquiry he has elaborated in two books: Hoop Dreams on Wheels: Disability and the Competitive Wheelchair Athlete (Sociology Re-Wired) and Wheelchair Warrior: Gangs, Disability, and Basketball. 

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Presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center and the Disability Studies Program.

Event is FREE and open to the public. Advance registration is required. Registrants will be sent an email with zoom link prior to join event.

Wednesday, March 16, 1-2:30 p.m. (Common Hour)
The Secret Life of Sex Workers: A Dialogue About Financial Independence, Legality, Marginalization and Sexual Empowerment

Virtual Event

Sawyer Eason, Worker-Owner of Bluestockings Book Cooperative; Bassist of COP/OUT; Head of Brooklyn Transcore
Social Worker and Organizer; Sex Worker

Jared Trujillo
Policy Counselor for New York Civil Liberties Union; Steering committee member for Decrim, NY; Board Member of New York State Defenders Association; Former public defender

Jill McCracken, PhD
Co-Director & Co-Founder of Sex Worker Outreach Program (SWOP), Behind Bars; Professor of Women's & Gender Studies- University of South Florida; Founder & Project Director of Adolescent Sexual Health Education and Research (ASHER) Project

Al Mercedes
Worker-Owner of Bluestockings Book Cooperative; Educator for Harm Reduction; Activist and Business Owner
Sex Worker

Currently, we experience a rapid growth of research done in the intersection of mining and modelling of complex networks. In this talk I will present a few problems from this intersection and show how random graphs was used to design the tool. There are two main reasons to include random graph models in mining complex networks. One may use random graphs to produce synthetic graphs with known ground truth. Or, the null-models can be used to test whether a given object exhibits some “surprising” property that is not expected on the basis of chance alone. Applications include community detection, link prediction and anomaly detection, among others.

In his talk Michael Naydan will contextualize why the Ukrainians are fighting so ferociously for their freedom based on a history of trauma caused by the Tsarist Russian, Soviet, and Putin regimes that all targeted the suppression and destruction of the Ukrainian language and culture. He will delve into support for Ukraine throughout the world through art and other clever strategies. He will also discuss the psychological role of visual satire and memes in helping to promote the Ukrainian war effort and as a counter to Putin’s aggressively expansionist policy of “russkii mir” (the Russian world), which constitutes a replay of the tsars’ sixteenth-century gathering of lands Putin perceives to be historically Russian in the twenty-first.   

Michael Naydan is Woskob Family Professor of Ukrainian Studies and Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at The Pennsylvania State University and works primarily in the fields of Ukrainian and Russian literature and literary translation. He has published over 50 articles on literary topics, more than 80 translations in journals and anthologies, and more than 40 books of translations and edited volumes.

Presented by the Department of History in collaboration with the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Event is FREE and open to the public. Advance registration is required. Registrants will be sent an email with zoom link prior to join event.

Afro-Peruvian music dates back to colonial times, and later in the 19th century it reached its peak, expressing its uniqueness in typical dances such as the Marinera, festejo, landó, tondero, zamacueca, and contrapunto de zapateo. Araceli Poma, “Huevito” Lobatón, and Yuri Juarez offer us the best of the Afro-Peruvian heritage through a workshop with songs and dances alluding to the great black culture of Peru.

Join us in the close of Women’s History Month with a documentary viewing and discussion showing the fight in America's school boards by our own Hofstra student, Amudalat Ajasa. The documentary looks particularly at the town of Carmel, Indiana, and their struggle over the introduction of diversity, equity and inclusion in the classrooms. A battle has erupted over those that welcome the changes and others that view it as "leftist indoctrination of their children," or the introduction of critical race theory in schools.

Read The Hofstra Chronicle News Story

In 1847, Spain occupied and incorporated the Chafarinas Islands, just off the Moroccan coast, into its carceral circuit in the Straits of Gibraltar; the tiny archipelago joined existing nodes of confinement in Cádiz, Melilla, Ceuta, and Vélez de la Gomera. In this talk, I will focus on one group of Cubans who were forcibly sent to Chafarinas at the end of the second of Cuba’s three independence wars, the “Little War”, in 1880. This deportee group was largely comprised of Afro-Cubans (many of them previously enslaved) and included significant numbers of women and children. I study the confluence of processes of racialization and discourses of family and sentimentality. The Afro-Cubans, I argue, sought to mobilize those discourses for their ends, a phenomenon that would ultimately pit the Spanish against the British empire, exemplifying the fraught interactions and intersections of diverse colonial spheres.

Presenter: Susan Martin-Márquez, Professor of Cinema Studies/Spanish and Portugese/Comparative Literature
Rutgers University, New Brunswick

105 Breslin Hall, South Campus

Presented by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program.

For more information, email Professor Benita Sampedro Vizcaya at benita.sampedro@hofstra.edu.

Vienna Carroll and The Folk will join us for a performance and talk back as she walks down memory lane inviting us all into forgotten history, weaving personal and found stories with rousing song and images. Ms. Carroll will be joined by band members Keith Johnston, guitar and backing vocals; Stanley Banks, bass; and Newman Taylor Baker on washboard.

Vienna Carroll’s rich soulful sound takes you back to her Black church roots. Her passion and masterful storytelling light a fire in your soul. She interweaves old songs and forgotten stories of Black heroes to serve up Black history with a Serious Groove. Vienna formalized her studies of early Black music at Yale University with a BA in African American Studies. Her influences are Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Nina Simone and her early church experiences.

European Union (EU) member states, like several countries across the globe including the US, have experienced a rise of populism and other forces to undermine democracy. The EU is an institution premised upon democracy, but what mechanisms can it employ to keep countries on the democratic path? This presentation will focus on democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland and the role the EU has had to try to bring these countries back into the democratic fold.

Presenter: Dr. Carolyn Dudek, Professor and Chair, Political Science Department

featuring

Sophia Sobko (she/they) is a queer Soviet Jewish cultural organizer, scholar, educator and artist, born in Moscow and now based on Lisjan Ohlone land in Oakland, CA. Sophia is currently a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley, where she is completing her dissertation on Soviet Ashkenazi Jewish negotiations of racial assimilation in the U.S. She is the founder and a stewarding member of Kolektiv Goluboy Vagon, and a founding artist with Krivoy Kolektiv.

Santiago Slabodsky is a sociologist of global knowledge who holds the Florence and Robert Kaufman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and directs the JWST program in the Department of Religion. In addition he serves in the faculty of three area studies programs: Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, and European Studies. Dr. Slabodsky writes about intercultural encounters between Jewish and Global South social theories and political movements.

In 2014 protests erupted in Kyiv against then-President Yanukovych.  These protests, focused on Maidan Square, led to the collapse of his government; Yanukhovych himself fled the country, going to Russia. During the protests and shortly after, the government of the Russian Federation sent unmarked vehicles with Russian troops not in uniform into Crimea and the Donbas region, beginning what would become an 8-year war, culminating in the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa’s extraordinary documentary film, Maidan, tells the story of the protests of the Ukrainian people against their own government because they wanted their country to be aligned with the west, not with Russia. 

Wertheim is a historian of the United States in the world and analyst of contemporary American grand strategy. He is a Senior Fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is also a Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Center for Global Legal Challenges at Yale Law School. He specializes in U.S. foreign relations and international order from the late nineteenth century to the present. In his book, Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy (2020), he reveals how U.S. leaders made a sudden decision to pursue global military dominance, which they had previously regarded as unnecessary at best and imperialistic at worst.

Speaker: Stephen Wertheim
Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Series Co-Directors: Dr. Carolyn Eisenberg, Dr. Linda Longmire and Adjunct Associate Professor Martin Melkonian, Hofstra University

Presented by the Center for Civic Engagement’s Institute for Peace Studies, The Peter Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency, Hofstra Cultural Center and Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives.

Pilar Gonalons, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

Onika Shepherd-Bernabe, Political Director 1199 SEIU, Long Island

In 1946, the Caribbean Islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique ceased to be colonies and became French overseas departments, with a representation in the national assembly comparable to that of any mainland department. While the change of status of the two islands was mostly perceived as a positive development, the people of Guadeloupe and Martinique have a specific history and identity that is distinct from that of the French metropolitan population. To this day, many feel misunderstood and discriminated against. The current sanitary crisis with Covid-19 has brought underlying conflicts to the surface and let to a movement for cultural validation in the French Caribbean that is worth exploring and discussing. #HofNoHate

Professor Sabine Loucif teaches French and Francophone Studies in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and she is an active member of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, the Africana Studies Program and the Women’s Studies Program at Hofstra.

Presented by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program.

Breslin Hall 209, South Campus

For more information, email the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Porgram at LACS@hofstra.edu.

Presenter: Alicia Campos Serrano,  Universidad Autónoma of Madrid (Spain)

During the last years of Spanish rule over African colonies, from the late 1950s to the 1970s, new forms of colonial government and semi-colonial autonomy were deployed. They resulted into the brief and unequal incorporation of these territories into the Spanish nation, a project which did not prevent uneven decolonization processes in Spanish Africa, with dissimilar consequences: from the effective independence of Equatorial Guinea to the forced integration of Western Sahara into a neighbour state within the Maghreb. This presentation analyses the trajectory of postcolonial relations between Spanish and African rulers, and it inquires into the possibility of granting citizenship status to old colonial subjects and their descendants.

Presented by the Department of the Romance Languages and Literatures, the Africana Studies Program and the European Studies.

For more information visit https://www.hofstra.edu/latin-american-caribbean-studies/

Professor of English, Ohio Dominican University

Dr. Abala, is an African woman writer, Editor-in-Chief of Kenya Studies Review and author: The Dreamer (nominated for the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature, 2017), Haughty Boys of Ngoroke, Moody Mood and Red Round Ball, Drum Bits of Terror, A Fallen Citadel (a poetry collection), Jahenda, the Teenage Mother, The Disinherited and Move on, Trufosa. Her poems have been translated into Russian,  and many have appeared in multiple anthologies—I Can’t Breathe, Musings During a Pandemic, Kistretch Journal, Out of Depths: Poetry of Poverty, Courage, and Resilience, Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories and Poems from East Africa, A Thousand Voices Rising: An Anthology of African Poets, and Reflections: An Anthology by African Women Poets.

Ms. Melkonian will discuss the role of the anti-nuclear and disarmament movement in moving the United States and Soviet Union back from the brink of nuclear war in the 1980’s. She will outline the lessons learned and their relevance to the current Ukraine and Russia crisis, given the risk of use of nuclear weapons.  

Margaret Melkonian is the Director and a co-founder of the LI Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives. She is Downstate Chair of Peace Action New York State (PANYS). She coordinated the Peace Fellows Program at Hofstra University, which began in the spring of 2013 to 2019.The LI Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives is a community partner of Hofstra’s Center for Civic Engagement.

Event is FREE and open to the public. Advance registration is required.

Registrants will be sent an email with zoom link prior to join event.

Presented by the Hofstra University Department of History And The Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives in collaboration with the Hofstra Cultural Center

Kim Kelly is an independent journalist, author, and organizer based in Philadelphia, PA. She has been a labor columnist for Teen Vogue since 2018, and her writing on labor, class, politics, and culture has appeared in The New Republic, the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Baffler, The Nation, The Columbia Journalism Review, and Esquire. She has also worked as a video correspondent for More Perfect Union, The Real News Network, and Means TV. Previously she was the heavy metal editor at VICE’s Noisey, and a leader in the VICE Union. She is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World’s Freelance Journalist Union, an elected councilperson for the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE).

Fight Like Hell is a definitive history of the labor movement and the people who risked everything to win necessities like fair wages and access to employment, a safe workplace, disability, and discrimination protections, and the eight-hour workday. Here, figures like “first lady of the coal mines” Ida Mae Stull, Latino farmworkers’ heroine Maria Moreno, queer Black civil rights icon Bayard Rustin, pioneering sex worker's rights activist Margo St. James, Ford whistleblower Suzette Wright, and the indomitable Mother Jones get their due. Kim Kelly’s publishing debut is both an inspiring read and a vital contribution to American history, offering a transportive look at the forgotten heroes who’ve sacrificed to make good on America’s promises.

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Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Presented by The Center for Study of Labor and Democracy and Labor Studies Program in collaboration with the Center for Civic Engagement and Long Island Jobs with Justice.

Presented by Kristal Brent Zook, Professor of Journalism, Media Studies and Public Relations, Hofstra University

This talk will look at several recent high-profile cases involving faculty members of color, as well as student protests documenting racial injustice on campuses nationwide. Professor Kristal Brent Zook has published work on race, women, culture, and social justice featured in dozens of magazines, newspapers, and digital outlets, including The New York Times and The New Yorker, where she recently wrote about #BlackintheIvory.

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

For more information, call 516-463-6585 or email RaceCultureSocialJustice@hofstra.edu.

Stephen F. Knott is a professor in the National Security Affairs Department. Prior to accepting his position at the War College, Knott co-chaired the Presidential Oral History Program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. His books include Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency, Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance That Forged America and Rush to Judgment: George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and His Critics. His most recent book is The Lost Soul of the American Presidency: The Decline into Demagoguery and the Prospects for Renewal. He is currently at work on a book on the presidency of John F. Kennedy.

Moderated by:
Meena Bose, Executive Dean for Public Policy and Public Service Programs, Hofstra University
Richard Himelfarb, Professor of Political Science, Hofstra University

Presented by the Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs and The Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Join the conversation on social media #HofstraVotes #KalikowPanel

Read the Hofstra Chronicle News Story

Opening and Keynote Address
Charles M. Blow

New York Times Journalist, CNN commentator and Former Presidential Visiting Professor at Yale University.

Mr. Blow is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times best-selling memoir, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, which won a Lambda Literary Award and the Sperber Prize and made multiple prominent lists of best books published in 2014. People magazine called it “searing and unforgettable.” His second book, The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto, was named a “most anticipated book” by the San Francisco Chronicle, O, the Oprah Magazine, Time Out, Town and Country, and Literary Hub

Toni and Martin Sosnoff Theater
John Crawford Adams Playhouse, South Campus

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Danielle N. Boaz, Ph.D., J.D.
Assistant Professor
University of North Carolina at Charlotte and  Practicing Attorney

Dr. Boaz will speak on the legal challenges faced by adherents of widely practiced religions of the African diaspora in the 21st century, including Santeria, Vodoun, Candomblé, Palo Mayombe, Umbanda, Islam, Rastafari, and Obeah. Examining laws, court cases, and human rights reports, Dr. Boaz argues that the historic persecution of these religions persists into the present day as restrictions on religious freedom, constituting a pervasive but under-acknowledged form of discrimination at the intersection of law, race, and religion.

In collaboration with the Rabinowitz Honors College; Departments of Anthropology; Comparative Literature, Languages and Linguistics; English; Global Studies and Geography; History; Philosophy; Political Science; Romance Languages and Literatures; and Writing Studies and Rhetoric. Programs in Africana Studies, Jewish Studies, and Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Nichola D. Gutgold is a professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State Lehigh Valley. An internationally recognized scholar on the rhetoric of women in non-traditional fields, her research has been featured in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, US News and World Report, the Los Angeles Times, as well as international press outlets. Dr. Gutgold’s newest book is  Electing Madam Vice President: When Women Run Women Win is available for purchase at http://tiny.cc/0fnjuz. 

Presented by the Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs and The Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency and the Department of Political Science.

Guthart Theater, Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Join the conversation on social media #HofstraVotes #KalikowPanel

A lecture by Myisha Cherry, PhD, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University of California, Riverside, in which she will discuss Rage Renegades: A Message to Allies from her new book The Case for Rage: Why Anger is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle (Oxford University Press, November 2021).

Rage Renegades refers to allies with rage at racial injustice. They are rage renegades because although their privilege and place in a white-supremacist society is meant to guarantee that they will be complicit or engage in racism as a way to maintain racial domination, they instead show outrage at such a society. In doing so, they rebel against a racist system that was designed to benefit them exclusively. But rage renegading can also go wrong when it reinforces the same white supremacy that the rage aims to challenge. In this talk, I’ll describe four ways in which this misdirection can happen as well as provide some suggestions for how to steer clear of it. 

Presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center and the Department of Philosophy.

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Join us for the riveting story of the migrant labor camps in Suffolk County from their inception during World War II, through their heyday in 1960, and culminating with their steady decline towards the end of the 20th century. Author Mark A. Torres will discuss the history of the camps, the factors that led to their decline, and the heroic efforts of critics who fought to improve the lives of migrant workers on Long Island’s East End during this period.

Presented by Hofstra Labor Studies and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) program in collaboration with Long Island Jobs with Justice.

Read the Hofstra Chronicle News Story

Michael Moss, an investigative journalist, talks about his reporting on the processed food industry that earned him a Pulitzer Prize and led to his writing a pair of New York Times bestselling books. His work has been likened to a detective story in the way that he crawls through the underbelly of this $1 trillion enterprise to reveal just how the food giants got us to become so dependent on their products, and stands as an urgent indictment of that same industry given the enormous hidden cost to our health. You may never look at potato chips or Cheetos or Hot Pockets the same way again.

Speaker: Michael Moss Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author of Hooked, Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit our Addictions

Presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center and the Hofstra Food Studies Program

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

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Shavonne F. Smith, Director of the Shinnecock Environmental Department, will discuss the effort to protect the Shinnecock shoreline on Long Island through collaboration with federal agencies, non-profits, and community volunteers.

The Helene Fortunoff Theater
Monroe Lecture Center, California Ave, South Campus

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Sweet Honey in the Rock® is a performance ensemble rooted in African American history and culture. The ensemble educates, entertains, and empowers its audience and community through the dynamic vehicles of a cappella singing and American Sign Language interpretation for members of the deaf and hard of hearing communities.

Co-sponsored by Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Hofstra University Honors College, the Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice, and the Noah Scholars program.

Funding for these programs has been provided, in part, by the Joseph G. Astman Family for the Hofstra Cultural Center

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Join Dr. Katrina Sims, Department of History and faculty-in-residence, Division of Student Affairs, Hofstra University, and Sevion McLean, Hofstra engineering student, Hofstra resident assistant and president of Xi Psi Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., for a moderated conversation.

Ibram X. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and the founding director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a CBS News racial justice contributor.

In recognition of the 100th commemoration of the Tulsa massacre, join John Whittington Franklin, senior manager emeritus for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture as he speaks about the history of the Tulsa “Black Wall Street” massacre.

Presented by the Center for Civic Engagement and the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Dr. Kevin Vallier will discuss how Americans today don't trust each other and their institutions as much as they once did. The collapse of social and political trust has arguably fueled our increasingly ferocious ideological conflicts and hardened partisanship. But is today's decline in trust inevitable or avoidable? Are we caught in a downward spiral that must end in institutional decay or even civil war, or can we restore trust through our shared social institutions? Dr. Vallier will offer a powerful counter-narrative to the prevailing sense of hopelessness that dogs the American political landscape, synthesizing political philosophy and empirical trust research, restoring faith in our power to reduce polarization and rebuild social and political trust.  

Dr. Kevin Vallier is associate professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University, where he directs the program in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law. 

The Donald J. Sutherland Lecture is named for the former Hofstra trustee who endowed this lecture series. 

In Hegemonies of Knowledge Production on African Women and Gender, Nwando Achebe details her personal journey to becoming an Africanist and gender historian. Along the way she considers questions relating to the ownership and production of Africanist knowledge: “Whose histories matter?” “Whose histories are celebrated?” “Whose histories are published?” – while highlighting several influential interpretive voices which have shaped and produced a problematic and Eurocentric canon. These voices have variously worked to interrupt and/or disrupt true understanding and knowing of African women and gender. Nwando Achebe ends her lecture by offering up her own African and gender-centered intervention into existing discourse and production of history.

Nwando Achebe is the Jack and Margaret Sweet Endowed Professor of History, and Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the College of Social Science, and a multi-award-winning historian at Michigan State University. She is founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of West African History, and co-director of the Christie and Chinua Achebe Foundation. Achebe received her PhD from UCLA in 2000. In 1996 and 1998, she served as a Ford Foundation and Fulbright-Hays Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Her research interests involve the use of oral history in the study of women, gender, and sexuality in Nigeria. Achebe is the author of six books.

Thursday, March 1, 9:35 a.m.

THE 2018 DONALD J. SUTHERLAND LECTURE presents Ilya Somin
Professor of Law
George Mason University of Law

Author, Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant of politics and government. Many people believe that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This creates a nation of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. Ilya Somin writes regularly for the Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog at The Washington Post. He is also the author of The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (2015) and coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (2013).

The Donald J. Sutherland Lecture is named for the former Hofstra trustee who endowed the annual event.

Co-sponsored by the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Thursday, April 5, 11 a.m.-12:40 p.m.

Signature Event: A Conversation with David Frum
Senior Editor, The Atlantic
Author, Trumpocracy, The Corruption of the American Republic
Speechwriter for President George W. Bush, 2001-2002

Former White House speechwriter, Atlantic senior editor, andmedia commentator David Frum explains why President Trump has undermined our most important institutions in ways even the most critical media has missed. This thoughtful and hard-hitting book is a warning for democracy and America's future.

Student Center Theater, Mack Student Center

Monday, April 9, 4:30 p.m.

Joseph G. Astman Signature Lecture Twyla Tharp: The Creative Habit

All it takes to make creativity a part of your life is the willingness to make it a habit. Creativity is the product of preparation and effort, and it is within reach of everyone. Whether you are a painter, musician, businessperson, or simply an individual yearning to put your creativity to use, join us as world-renowned choreographer and dance artist Twyla Tharp speaks about her book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, based on the lessons she learned in her remarkable 35-year career. #HofCreativity

The Fortunoff Theater, Monroe Lecture Center, California Avenue

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment In Black America

James Forman Jr., former public defender, professor, and criminal justice reformer, Yale Law School

Based on his critically acclaimed book by the same name, this talk builds on Forman’s work as a public defender, a founder of a charter school for incarcerated teens, and a law professor to outline the criminal justice crisis with both data and human stories. He leaves the audience with hope for what can be done to make a difference, and how they themselves can contribute to change.

Co-sponsored by the Monroe Freedman Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics, Criminal Justice Clinic and the Black Law Students Association, Maurice A. Deane School of Law.

Fortunoff Theater, Monroe Lecture Center (11/07/17)

THE DEFAMATION EXPERIENCE: When Race, Class, Religion and Gender Collide – A Conversation Begins

A Play by Todd Logan

Presented by Canamac Productions, the nationally acclaimed play Defamation is a riveting courtroom drama that explores the highly charged issues of race, religion, gender, class and the law with a twist: the audience is the jury. More than a play, Defamation is a unique opportunity for the community to engage in civil discourse about the most pressing social issues of our day. Through deliberations and post-show discussions, audiences engage in civil discourse that may challenge preconceived notions. Playwright

Todd Logan says, “Whether we like it or not, we still have major divides in this country. Most of us still go to bed at night in cities, communities and neighborhoods that are segregated by race, religion, ethnicity and/or class. I wanted to write a play that encourages open, honest conversation that leads to greater understanding and empathy to combat today’s prevailing trends.”

Co-sponsored by the Hofstra Cultural Center; Office of Student Leadership; Hofstra Student Government Association; Maurice A. Deane School of Law; Center for Civic Engagement; NOAH Program; and the Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice.

Fortunoff Theater, Monroe Lecture Center (10/25/17)

An Evening With Naomi Klein

From the bestselling author of No is Not Enough and This Changes Everything, award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist Naomi Klein in her most recent book, No Is Not Enough, attempts to uncover how we got to this surreal political moment. It is also an attempt to predict how, under cover of shocks and crises, it could get a lot worse, and it’s a plan for how, if we keep our heads, we might just be able to flip the script and arrive at a radically better future. Ms. Klein will also address from her book, This Changes Everything, what we think you know about global warming and the real inconvenient truth that it’s not about carbon—it’s about capitalism.

Fortunoff Theater, Monroe Lecture Center (10/09/17)

A Conversation With Masha Gessen

Join Masha Gessen, Russian-American journalist and the author of several books, among them The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, as she discusses U.S. and Russian Affairs. Ms. Gessen is an expert on Vladimir Putin and the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Fellowship, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Slate, Vanity Fair, and many other publications. Forthcoming, is Ms. Gessen’s new book, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. For more information on this speaker, please visit prhspeakers.com

Fortunoff Theater, Monroe Lecture Center (09/27/17)