Staff and faculty members and students will return from the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday Monday to a week of free, public events underscoring the social and political justice efforts of the civil rights leader.
The week culminates next Friday with an all-day conference exploring the impact of international law on local communities. Michel Shehadeh, a Palestinian American who gained notoriety as one of the "Los Angeles Eight" will be the keynote speaker Friday.
The Hon. Barry Loncke, a retired judge from California Superior Court, will start off the week on Tuesday with the talk "Commitment to Community." The free event runs noon to 1 p.m. in the King Hall moot courtroom. Loncke plans to reflect on his experiences with the justice system, especially during the Civil Rights era.
At 6 p.m., week organizers will show the film A Time to Kill, based on John Grisham’s novel and starring Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey. There will be a discussion session about breaking down racial barriers afterward.
Campus faculty members and area law enforcement officials and attorneys will conduct special discussion panels noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday in the moot courtroom.
On Wednesday, Associate Dean Kevin Johnson is set to moderate a panel that examines racial profiling in California during the session: "Driving While Black or Brown."
Thursday’s panel will focus on "Remembering History," and will revisit the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the relationship of that internment to the detainment of middleastern Asians and Muslims post-Sept. 11.
Thursday’s activities will also include a keynote address by Eva Paterson, the executive director of the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights. Her lecture, "Re-inspiring the Dream," is set to begin at 6 p.m. at the University Club conference center.
The week is predominantly student organized. "Our law students really have gone out of their way to pay appropriate tribute to Dr. King, for whom the law school building is named," Johnson said. "Moreover, the students devote their law school and professional careers to the principles for which he stood."
The week concludes with the UC Davis Journal of International Law and Policy’s annual symposium. This year’s event, "Borders, Migration and Trade: The Impact of International Law and Policy on Local Communities," starts at 8:30 a.m. in the moot courtroom.
Shehadeh, the regional direcor of the American-Arab Antidiscrimination committee will deliver the keynote address.
In 1987, Shehadeh was charged, along with six other men of Palestinian descent and a Kenyan woman, with being a member of a group that "advocated the economic, international and governmental doctrines of world communism." Members of the "Los Angeles Eight," charged under the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, continue to fight cases brought against them.
Shehadeh earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in public policy and administration from CSU, Long Beach.
The symposium includes three panel discussions: "Economics of Trade" at 9:45 a.m., "Culture and Community" at 1 p.m. and "International Law and Domestic Policy" at 3 p.m.
Also, a fundraiser featuring the sale of bookmarks of Thurgood Marshall – the first African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court – will run 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday in the King Hall basement.