An internationally renowned lawyer, writer, activist and professor who has been instrumental in establishing laws that protect women will speak at Alma College as this year’s Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar and Women’s Month keynote speaker.
An internationally renowned lawyer, writer, activist and professor who has been instrumental in establishing laws that protect women will speak at Alma College as this year’s Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar and Women’s Month keynote speaker.
Catharine MacKinnon will present “Trafficking, Prostitution, and Inequality” at 7 p.m. tonight (Thursday), in the Dow Science Center, Room L-1. No ticket is required, and admission is free.
“She is a powerful and important voice in the area of human rights; her presentation promises to be compelling,” says Joanne Gilbert, professor of communication at Alma College.
“Dr. MacKinnon is not only a renowned and prolific legal scholar, she also has been responsible for groundbreaking legislation on sex discrimination and civil rights in the highly contested areas of sexual harassment, pornography and rape as a tactic of war,” says Gilbert.
Representing Bosnian women survivors of Serbian sexual atrocities, MacKinnon established legal recognition of rape as genocide and won $745 million for them at trial. She also works with Equality Now, an international Non-Government Organization (NGO), promoting sex equality worldwide. In addition, she is the special gender advisor to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
She also worked with Andrea Dworkin to expose pornography as civil rights violations, says Gilbert.
MacKinnon will interact with students during her Alma visit.
“My students will have the special opportunity to interact with Dr. MacKinnon in class, attend her presentation and read literature about these issues,” says Gilbert, whose students are preparing for the visit by reading “Half the Sky,” a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn that documents the abuse of women and girls worldwide.
MacKinnon, the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, has a law degree and Ph.D in political science from Yale University.
Her books include “Sex Equality”; “Toward a Feminist Theory of the State”; “Only Words”; “Sexual Harassment of Working Women”; “Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws”; and “Are Women Human?”
The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program makes available distinguished scholars who visit colleges and universities with Phi Beta Kappa chapters. Alma College is among the 10 percent of all colleges and universities in the nation to hold membership in the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious undergraduate honors organization.