Dear LSA Members:
In a few weeks we will assemble in Denver, Colorado for our 2024 Law and Society Annual Meeting. Denver served as the homelands of the Apaches, Utes, Cheyennes, Comanches, Arapahoes and dozens of other nations. Their stewardship and respect for the earth preserved mountains, valleys, and plains that are the backdrop to this year’s meeting.
This year, we assemble on the 60th anniversary of the founding of LSA. This meeting convenes as conflicts and grave troubles throughout the world manifest deep pain and suffering for our members—some visible and yet so much unseen. Since we last convened in Puerto Rico, all universities in Gaza have been leveled by war and the death toll among Palestinians is staggering. Children now struggle for food. Many are starving. Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, winner of the LSA International Scholarship Prize in 2011 was arrested in April on the allegation of incitement. In response, more than 100 professors and lecturers at Hebrew University signed a letter noting, “Today it is Nadera who stands on the bench, and tomorrow it is each and every one of us.”
In Israel, members of our community yearn for the return of hostages violently abducted on October 7th. They feel despair in the wake of continued resistance among some academics to acknowledge sexual assaults that occurred on that tragic day. In Ukraine, 22,000 children have been kidnapped—torn from their families by Russian military forces. This particular tool of power and aggression is familiar to colonized communities and those that experienced human enslavement. And, there are the unseen, ignored, and forgotten. In Sudan, more than 10,000 people were killed in one city alone in the last year. The near 6 million deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) offer a powerful lesson in whose lives are centered in times of conflict. Today, six million people are internally displaced in the DRC—hundreds of thousands since January. In all these conflicts, women suffer a distinct and harrowing toll.
Unrest abroad has surfaced in many ways on our home campuses with arrests and suspensions of students.
Yet, as the conditions of our nation and world continue to motivate your research and scholarship, I am reminded that through periods of darkness also spring hope. Academic participation is integral to shaping a hopeful future. This year’s program reflects the power and reach of hope. Indeed, this year also marks the 70th year anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark decision that struck down discriminatory laws in education and launched a pivotal period in Supreme Court jurisprudence, which resulted in dismantling “separate but equal” laws. That case, based in part on an academic paper written by Pauli Murray when she was a student at Howard University Law School and brought to the Supreme Court by a group of lawyers that included her law professors, says much about the power of academic scholars and leaders to forge change.
As we prepare to gather in Denver, I extend my gratitude to the Program Committee and its co-chairs Professors Bethany Berger and Seth Davis for curating a defining program—exceptional in its reach and powerful in the spirit of hope.
My best,
Michele Goodwin