Register and receive the zoom link here: https://bit.ly/37mSFE5

Monday

NSJ Conference on Racial and Intersectional Critiques of National Security

Panel: Gender, World Peace, Armed Conflict, and UNSCR 1325: Where Were We, Where Are We, and Where Do We Go from Here?

12 pm-1 pm EST: Register and receive the zoom link here: https://bit.ly/37mSFE5

Increasing attention on the impact of women on international peace and security took a major leap forward when the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 in 2000. However, the promise of real change has been fleeting. This panel will briefly discuss the history that led to UNSCR 1325 and then some of the reasons that it has not delivered the transformation it initiated. The panel will identify reasons for the lack of progress, including the treatment of women as a homogenous group, the focus on women as victims (particularly in armed conflict), and the lack of support for low level organizations who are working toward change. The panel will end by proposing ideas about how to move forward in order to bring about the anticipated impact on world peace.

Speakers: Professor Eric Jensen (Moderator), Professor of Law at Brigham Young University Law School; Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Regents Professor and Robina Professor of Law, Public Policy & Society at the University of Minnesota Law School; Elizabeth Griffiths, Post Graduate Student, Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland; Dr. Natalia F. Hudson, Associate Professor of Political Science & Director of the Human Rights Studies Program, University of Dayton; Major Heather Tregle, U.S. Army JAG Corps, Professor of Law, U.S. Naval War College; Captain Sara Jarman, U.S. Army JAG Corps.

Tuesday

NSJ Conference on Racial and Intersectional Critiques of National Security

Watching Immigrants

2 pm-3 pm EST: Register and receive the zoom link here: https://bit.ly/37mSFE5

NSEERS, the New York Police Department’s Demographics Unit, and the precursor to the NSA call records program. These systems, arguably among the 21st century’s largest and most controversial surveillance programs, have something else in common: They were built and deployed to watch immigrants. Indeed, with ICE and CBP agents outnumbering DOJ, DEA, and ATF officers, it can be fairly said that our federal, post-9/11 security state is premised on the idea that immigrants are dangerous. Who gained from this idea? Who lost? And where has this idea left us twenty years after September 11, and mere months after the insurrection of January 6? In this lecture, Alvaro Bedoya, founding director of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, will probe these questions and offer a different vision for the future of 21st century national security.

Speaker: Professor Alvaro Bedoya, Founding Director of the Center on Privacy & Technology, Visiting Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

Wednesday

NSJ Conference on Racial and Intersectional Critiques of National Security

Race & the Reimagining of National Security Law

12 pm-1 pm EST: Register and receive the zoom link here: https://bit.ly/37mSFE5

National security law has often neglected race, viewing it as part of domestic politics but irrelevant to foreign relations. But race is fundamental to the very idea of the “nation” to be protected. How does centralizing race cause us to revisit standard assumptions of national security law? This lecture recenters race in national security and revisits legal doctrine, from judicial deference on national security policy to the response to “domestic terrorism” in the wake of the Capitol invasion.

Speaker: Professor Shirin Sinnar, Stanford Law School

Thursday

NSJ Conference on Racial and Intersectional Critiques of National Security

Race, National Security, and Immigration Law: A Historical Perspective

12 pm-1 pm EST: Register and receive the zoom link here: https://bit.ly/37mSFE5

Immigration law constructs and perpetuates racist imaginaries of national security, while at the same time, migration status and national security lenses can be used to obscure race. This talk will delve into the historical role of immigration law in framing the racialized immigrant as a national security threat, from the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to the current day. The nation is currently experiencing grave threats to its security from climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and white nationalist groups. Faced with these existential challenges, it is curious that migrants of color have been the subject of such intense focus when it comes to national security. This talk will unpack the legal foundations of the nation’s security gaze in hope that we may learn from that history.

Speaker: Professor Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & I. Herman Stern Research Professor, Temple Law School

Friday

NSJ Conference on Racial and Intersectional Critiques of National Security

Race, National Security and the Call to End America’s Endless Wars

12:30 pm-1:30 pm EST: Register and receive the zoom link here: https://bit.ly/37mSFE5

The racial justice uprisings of last summer drew attention to the ways in which counter-insurgency techniques from America’s wars abroad have infused aspects of policing at home, from the reliance on SWAT teams to control marginalized communities to the brutal repression of unarmed protesters in the name of “reclaiming” urban centers. The mutually constitutive relationship between militarized policing at home and imperial interventions abroad underscores the urgent need to reimagine national security both domestically and internationally. More recently the ginger treatment of rioters during the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th was a potent reminder of the racialized character of American conceptions of violent extremism and counterterrorism. Against this backdrop, how might advocates, organizers and scholars connect the dots between the summer’s calls to defund the police, progressive demands to end this country’s endless wars and public pressure to address the threat of white supremacism? In this talk, Professor Bâli, founding faculty director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law, will explore these questions and consider how conceptions of our collective security may be reframed around restraint abroad and democratized to prioritize protecting rather than repressing communities of color at home.

Speaker: Professor Asli Ü. Bâli, Professor of Law & Faculty Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights, UCLA Law School

(Image Credit: Staff Sgt. Kaily Brown, U.S. Army)