38th Annual Memorial Keynote Lecture

Featuring Dr. Michelle Alexander

Best-selling Author, Legal Scholar, Social Justice Advocate, and Columnist

There will also be a discussion with:

Dr. Robert Sellers, Charles D. Moody Collegiate Professor of Psychology and Education

Dr. H. Luke Shaefer, Hermann and Amalie Kohn Professor of Social Justice and Social Policy

Moderated by Mr. Stephen Henderson, host of Detroit Today and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

With a special musical performance by BLKBOK

About Michelle Alexander

Michelle Alexander brings audiences profoundly necessary and meaningful insights on the practice of mass incarceration that plagues the U.S. justice system, as well as eye-opening conversation on how we can end racial caste in America.

In her acclaimed best-seller, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle peels back the curtain on systemic racism in the American prison system, which the New York Review of Books described as “striking in the intelligence of her ideas, her powers of summary, and the force of her writing.” With equal force and candor on stage, she breaks the silence about racial injustice in the modern legal system to reveal how mass incarceration has come to replace segregation.

Michelle, a legal scholar, social justice advocate, columnist at The New York Times and visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary, explores the myths surrounding our criminal justice system from a racial and ethical standpoint, and offers solutions for combating this epidemic. Delivering an emphatic wake-up call from the “colorblind slumber” that our country has fallen under, she leaves audiences with a new perspective on the challenges facing the civil rights community and a rousing call-to-action for a multi-racial, multi-ethnic human rights movement for justice in America.