17 – 18 September 2025
San Francisco State University has a proud tradition of organizing conferences for Constitution and Citizenship Day, a national holiday that commemorates the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. The conference provides multiple opportunities to reflect critically on the past, present, and future of constitutional rights, freedoms, citizenship, democracy, equality, and justice.
Keynote Speakers
This year’s event will feature two keynote speakers:
Jonathan Gienapp
Jonathan Gienapp will present "Constitutional Originalism and History." He is Associate Professor of History and Law at Stanford University and an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer. Professor Gienapp's first book, The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era (2018), explores how understandings of the U.S. Constitution transformed during the decade following its ratification. It won the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize from Harvard University Press and the Best Book in American Political Thought Award from the American Political Science Association. His second, Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique (2024), addresses originalism’s engagements with history. He has published work in the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Early Republic, Law and History Review, Constitutional Commentary, and The Boston Globe. Gienapp is currently working on a book that explores the forgotten history of the Constitution’s Preamble.
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers will present "Rethinking Gender, Slavery, and the Constitution." She is Chancellor's Professor and Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, and an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer. She is the author of They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (2019), which won the Lapidus Center Harriet Tubman Prize, the Southern Association for Women’s Historians’ Julia Cherry Spruill Prize, the Southern Historical Association’s Charles S. Sydnor Award, the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic’s Best Book Prize, the Organization of American Historian’s Merle Curti Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History. Jones-Rogers is currently at work on two new projects. Her second book, “Women of the Trade,” reorients our understanding of the British Atlantic slave trade by centering English, African, and Afro-English women, free and captive. Her third, “Women, American Slavery, and the Law,” will examine the relationship between gender and the evolution of American slave/property law in both the North and the South.
Schedule
Wednesday, 17 September
Early American Legal Histories
Moderator: Jessica Breiteneicher Elkind (History)
- Sarah Crabtree (History) — “To Sir with Love: Voluntary Expatriation in the Early Republic”
- Eva Sheppard Wolf (History) — “Rights Language and Slavery Before the Constitution”
Civil Servants and Public Interest Lawyers: Old Threats and New Challenges
Moderator: Mark Leinauer (Political Science)
- Paul DeAngelis (Paralegal Studies) — “The 2024 California Justice Gap Study: Access to Lawyers and Paralegal Studies”
- M. Ernita Joaquin (Public Administration) — “The Administrative State is Dead: Long Live the Administrative State”
Building an Oral History and Community Archive on the 1968-69 Black Student Union and Third World Liberation Front Student Strike at San Francisco State University
Moderator: Grace Yoo (Ethnic Studies)
Roundtable Participants: Tiffany Caesar (Africana Studies), Chrissy Lau (Asian American Studies), Tianna Andresen (Ethnic Studies), Shivani Modha (Ethnic Studies), Sean Nguyen (Ethnic Studies), Sydney Jackson (History)
Native American Law
Moderator: TBA
- Amy Casselman-Hontalas (American Indian Studies) — “Breaking Rank: Decision-Making and Judicial Behavior in Indian Law Cases on the Roberts Court”
- TBA
Keynote Presentation by Jonathan Gienapp — “Constitutional Originalism and History”
Welcome: TBA
Moderator: Marc Stein, SFSU History Department
Biography: Jonathan Gienapp is Associate Professor of History and Law at Stanford University and an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer. Professor Gienapp's first book, The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era (2018), explores how understandings of the U.S. Constitution transformed during the decade following its ratification. It won the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize from Harvard University Press and the Best Book in American Political Thought Award from the American Political Science Association. His second, Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique (2024), addresses originalism’s engagements with history. He has published work in the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Early Republic, Law and History Review, Constitutional Commentary, and The Boston Globe. Gienapp is currently working on a book that explores the forgotten history of the Constitution’s Preamble.
Thursday, 18 September
New Developments in Academic Worker Organizing
Moderator: Tanya M. Hollis (Labor Archives & Research Center)
- Brad Erickson (Liberal Studies) — “High-Participation Bargaining: Raising the Stakes”
- César Rodriguez (Race and Resistance Studies — “The Worker Campaign to Close Empty California State Prisons and Fund the California State University”
- Kurt Nutting (Philosophy) — “Academic Freedom Today: Between Austerity and Authoritarianism”
Resisting Trumpism
Moderator: TBA
- Christopher Chekuri (History) — TBA
- Anthony Robert Pahnke (International Relations) — TBA
- TBA
From the Bicentennial to the Semiquincentennial
Moderator: TBA
- Marc Stein (SFSU History) — “‘We Are The Bicentennial’: Democracy and Diversity in the 1970s”
Censuring Censorship: The Power of LGBTQ Histories
Moderator: Jen Reck (Sociology and Sexuality Studies)
- Wendy Rouse (San Jose State University History) — “Erasure and Recovery in the Queer History of the Women's Suffrage Movement”
- Gerard Koskovich (GLBT Historical Society) — “Physical Book-Burning, Digital Book-Burning and the Radical Survival of LGBTQ+ Knowledge”
- Amy Sueyoshi (SFSU Provost) — “In Bed with Queer/Trans History and Japanese American History: The Fight for Love and Community in the Trump Era”
Keynote Presentation by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers — "Rethinking Gender, Slavery, and the Constitution”
Welcome: TBA
Moderator: Marc Stein, SFSU History Department
Biography: Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers is Chancellor's Professor and Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, and an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer. She is the author of They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (2019), which won the Lapidus Center Harriet Tubman Prize, the Southern Association for Women’s Historians’ Julia Cherry Spruill Prize, the Southern Historical Association’s Charles S. Sydnor Award, the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic’s Best Book Prize, the Organization of American Historian’s Merle Curti Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History. Jones-Rogers is currently at work on two new projects. Her second book, “Women of the Trade,” reorients our understanding of the British Atlantic slave trade by centering English, African, and Afro-English women, free and captive. Her third, “Women, American Slavery, and the Law,” will examine the relationship between gender and the evolution of American slave/property law in both the North and the South.
Contact
Updated details about the conference program will be added in the coming weeks. The conference coordinator is Marc Stein, Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Professor of History (marcs@sfsu.edu). The sponsors are the College of Liberal & Creative Arts, the History Department, and the Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Chair in U.S. History.
Accessibility
The conference sponsors are the College of Liberal & Creative Arts, the History Department, the History Students Association, and the Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Chair in U.S. History. The Rights and Wrongs conference welcomes persons with disabilities and will provide reasonable accommodations upon request. SFSU students, faculty, and staff with disabilities who need reasonable accommodations are encouraged to contact the Disability Programs and Resource Center (DPRC), which is available to facilitate the reasonable accommodations process. The DPRC is located in the Student Service Building and can be reached by telephone (voice/415-338-2472, video phone/415-335-7210) or by email (dprc@sfsu.edu). Others who need reasonable accommodations for this event can contact Marc Stein at marcs@sfsu.edu as soon as possible so the request can be reviewed.
Acknowledgements
Grateful acknowledgement to Dean Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo for the support of the College of Liberal & Creative Arts; Laura Lisy-Wagner (Chair) for the support of the History Department; Cecilia Cao for website management; Audrey Chuck for financial administration; Academic Technology for Canvas support; and Sana Hussaini for poster design. We also acknowledge with appreciation the Pasker/Pittman families for their generous support of the Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Chair, which supports historical and legal studies at SFSU.
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