The US Constitution & the Battle Over Racial Equality Today

Speaker: Rogers M. Smith, H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean for the Social Sciences and Chair of the University of Pennsylvania’s Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism

The author of seven books on citizenship and equality in the United States, including one that was a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in History, Dr. Smith will address why America's political leaders avoid discussing racial policies, even as many forms of racial inequality persist and deepen. Smith argues that the United States is profoundly divided between two rival conceptions of civic equality--but that common ground may be found in the bold views of the Constitution's purposes advanced by Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.

Constitution and Citizenship Day Lecture

Co-sponsored with the Departments of Political Science, Africana Studies, American Studies, Philosophy and Public Policy, and the Office of Student Life