After a painful year of protest and a global pandemic, the world is reemerging with a clearer understanding of the broad and complex picture of systemic racism and the need for action. This year’s season not only highlights historical and contemporary cases of discrimination, but it celebrates efforts to dismantle oppression in the quest for justice.
UNL Faculty Discussion
September 1, 2021Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia
November 2, 2021Anna Deavere Smith
February 9, 2022Forum Youth Panel
March 22, 2022Walter Echo-Hawk
April 6, 2022UNL Faculty Discussion
September 1, 2021 - 7:00 p.m."Global and Historical Moments of Reckoning with UNL Faculty"
Partnership with UNL's College of Arts & Sciences
This kickoff event will include faculty from the departments of History and English, the Humanities in Medicine Program, and the Center for Great Plains Studies to focus on different groups and periods of racial reckoning and action.
Ng’ang’a Muchuri, "Perspectives from Africa"
Diedre Cooper Owens, "Race, Gender, and Women’s Health"
Will Thomas, "American Families Challenging Slavery"
Margaret Jacobson, "Indigenous Reckoning Around the World"
Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar and Clinical Professor of Law at Penn State Law
November 2, 2021 - 7:00 p.m.Title TBA
Partnership with the Nebraska College of Law
Wadhia is Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar and Clinical Professor of Law at Penn State Law in University Park. Her research focuses on the role of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law and the intersections of race, national security and immigration.
Anna Deavere Smith
February 9, 2022 - 7:30 p.m.A Conversation on Race and the Arts, Moderated by Sändra Washington
Partnership with the Lied Center for Performing Arts
Smith is a dramatist and actress who has been credited with creating a new form of theater. She has, for four decades, used theatre and movies to reveal the effects of inequality and discord on American communities.
Forum Youth Panel
March 22, 2022 - 7:00 p.m."Performative Activism: Youths Reckoning with Racial Justice"
Partnership with the University Honors Program
Activists within the UNL and Lincoln communities come together to discuss racial justice. What they’ve done, what they do, and how to move forward.
Walter Echo-Hawk
April 6, 2022 - 7:00 p.m."Reckoning and Reconciliation on the Great Plains"
Partnership with the Center for Great Plains Studies
Echo-Hawk is President of the Pawnee Nation Business Council. He is an author, attorney, and and well-renowned legal scholar. A Pawnee Indian with a BA, Political Science, Oklahoma St. Univ. (1970) and JD, UNM (1973), he practices law in Oklahoma.
Lectures are streamed online at http://enthompson.unl.edu, and are available on Lincoln City and Education TV channels, and University of Nebraska–Lincoln KRNU radio 90.3 FM.
Pre-talk is delivered by an expert on the topic in the Steinhart Room 30 minutes before each event.
The E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues is a cooperative project of the Cooper Foundation, Lied Center for Performing Arts, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It was established in 1988 with the purpose of bringing a diversity of viewpoints on international and public policy issues to the university and people of Nebraska to promote understanding and encourage debate.