16 – 17 September 2024
San Francisco State University has a proud tradition of sponsoring Constitution and Citizenship Day conferences, which provides opportunities to reflect critically on the past, present and future of constitutional rights, freedoms, citizenship, democracy, equality and justice.
Keynote Speakers
This year’s conference will feature two keynote speakers:
Khiara M. Bridges
Khiara M. Bridges will present “Race and the Roberts Court: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.” Bridges, a Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law, is a leading scholar of race, class, reproductive rights, and their intersections. Her scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Columbia Law Review, California Law Review, and Virginia Law Review, among others. She is the author of three books: Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization (2011); The Poverty of Privacy Rights (2017); and Critical Race Theory: A Primer (2019). Her fourth book, Expecting Inequity: Race, Class, and Reproductive Justice, is under contract with MIT Press and will be published in 2025. She is also a co-editor of a reproductive justice book series that is published under the imprint of the University of California Press. Bridges graduated as valedictorian from Spelman College, receiving her degree in three years. She received her JD from Columbia Law School and her Ph.D., with distinction, from Columbia University’s Department of Anthropology.
Rana Marie Jaleel
Rana Marie Jaleel will present “Academic Freedom and Diversity Complications.” Jaleel is an Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at UC Davis. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from New York Univ., a JD from the Yale Law School, and an MFA in Poetry from the Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor. From 2013 to 2015, Jaleel was the Center for Reproductive Rights Fellow at Columbia Law School. At UC Davis, she is a 2022-25 Chancellor’s Fellow, a 2021-24 College of Arts & Sciences Dean's Faculty Fellow, and the recipient of the 2024 Chancellor's Achievement Award for Diversity and Community. Her first book, The Work of Rape, received a 2021 Duke Univ. Press Scholars of Color First Book Award and was co-winner of the 2022 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Prize from the National Women's Studies Association. Her work also has been published by Amerasia, Critical Ethnic Studies, Cultural Studies, Social Text, South Atlantic Quarterly, and Brooklyn Law Review. A longtime member of the American Association of University Professors, she chairs Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure.
CALL FOR PAPERS, PRESENTATIONS, AND PANELS
This is an open call for papers, presentations, panels, roundtables, teach-ins, and workshops for “Rights and Wrongs: A Constitution and Citizenship Day Conference” at San Francisco State University. The 2024 event will take place on Monday and Tuesday, 16 – 17 September. The conference provides opportunities to gather, teach, and learn with colleagues, collaborators, and comrades, along with activists, advocates, students, and community members from San Francisco State, the Bay Area and elsewhere.
We welcome proposals on multiple topics related to rights, wrongs, constitutional law, legal citizenship, and social change. This year we are especially interested in presentations related to the rights of students and faculty, campus free speech and campus policing, educational censorship, academic freedom, academic labor rights, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, electoral politics, presidential transitions, presidential immunity, the 2024 presidential election and the Supreme Court, but we are broadly interested in all topics that might help us deepen our understanding of today’s debates and discussions about constitutional rights and wrongs.
Proposals (maximum 250 words) should be submitted by 13 June 2024 to marcs@sfsu.edu. We welcome individual and group submissions. For the latter, we encourage proposals that include presenters from multiple institutions and organizations. Most sessions will be scheduled for 75 minute time blocks to align with SF State class schedules; this means that two 20-minute presentations, three 15-minute presentations, or four 10-minute presentations often work best; we can supply chairs/moderators on request. We ask that all presenters plan to attend more than just their own session. Please submit short vitas/resumes for all participants.
Stay tuned for more information regarding Constitution Day 2024!
Further details about the conference program will be announced 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, the Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Chair in U.S. History, and the History Students Association.
Accessibility
The Rights and Wrongs conference welcomes persons with disabilities and will provide reasonable accommodations upon request. SF State 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.
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