(Photo provided)
September 30, 2022
Racial justice champion Elizabeth Hinton to give SIU’s Morton-Kenney lecture
CARBONDALE, Ill. — Elizabeth Hinton, a renowned professor of law and African American studies at Yale University, will deliver the Morton-Kenney Public Affairs Lecture at Southern Illinois University Carbondale on Thursday, Oct. 6.
Hinton is one of the nation’s leading experts on poverty, racial inequality, urban unrest and criminal justice reform. She has also conducted extensive research on racial unrest in Cairo, Illinois.
She will present. “Cairo on Fire: State Violence, Black Rebellion, and the Ongoing Struggle for Democracy in America" at 6 p.m. in the Student Center Ballroom B. The lecture is free and open to the public.
One of the nation’s leading experts on poverty, racial inequality, urban unrest and criminal justice reform, Hinton will discuss these topics at 6 p.m. in the Student Center Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.
“Professor Hinton is one of the leading authorities in the United States on a number of the issues that command — and demand — our attention: race, injustice, poverty, urban unrest, crime and policing,” said John T. Shaw, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute.
“She combines rigorous scholarship with a dynamic and charismatic speaking style. She has been a respected, even a revered, teacher wherever she has taught. The waiting list to get into Professor Hinton’s classes is very long.”
She presented a virtual discussion that examined racial inequality and urban unrested hosted by the Paul Simon Institute in March 2021.
Hinton is an associate professor in the Department of History and the Department of African American Studies, with a secondary appointment as professor of law at Yale Law School. Prior to those appointments, Hinton taught at Harvard and the University of Michigan. She has an undergraduate degree from New York University and a master’s degree and doctorate in history from Columbia University.
She is the author of two highly acclaimed books: “From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America” and “America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s.”
The Morton-Kenney Public Affairs Lecture Series is presented by the institute and SIU’s political science program, which is within the College of Liberal Arts. The lecture occurs in the spring and fall of each academic year.
The late Jerome Mileur, an SIU alumnus, established the series in 1995 in honor of two of his political science professors — Ward Morton and David Kenney — who inspired him as a student. Originally from Murphysboro, he was a professor emeritus in political science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.