Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Michelle Alexander on New Racism and the Criminal Justice System

On Wednesday, February 1, between 10am and noon, Michelle Alexander will discuss her work. According to Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now! her book, The New Jim Crow, "argues that although Jim Crow laws have been eliminated the racial caste system it set up was not eradicated and now racial control functions through the criminal justice system."

I'm eager to see how Professor Alexander ties the policing and incarcerating institutions of state to the ideological institutions, especially universities. How do institutions of higher education serve an ideological control function that benefits the ruling classes? How do class relations influence policies and conditions at universities and prisons? What role do we, as faculty, play in this? What role do non-faculty administrators/managers play?

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