Transitional Justice in the USA Speakers Series: Part IV Panel 1

Panel 1- Do Memory Battles About Contemporary And Historical Racial Injustice In The U.S. Undermine The Right To Truth? This panel explores how local and state efforts to ban books, to forbid education about racism including through critical race theory, as well as to limit the discoverability of online information undermine the right to truth and a full accounting of racial violence both as a historical fact and of contemporary realities. Panelists will explore how this strategic attack signifies a key battle in either promoting or marginalizing a robust memory in the telling of the “American story.” The panel will ask how the outcome of this struggle for memory may shape a national narrative that justifies, or not, reparations and other forms of justice. A comparative look will share how such struggles for memory constitute a critical step in advancing the quest for a true reckoning of past wrongs. Co-organizers: Center for International Law and Policy at New England Law | Boston, The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA | School Of Law, and Memria.Org. Moderator: Louis Bickford - Co-Founder, Biografika, and CEO/Founder, Memria.org Panelists: Taifha Natalee Alexander - Project Director, Critical Race Theory Forward Project, UCLA School of Law Karlos K. Hill - Regents’ Associate Professor in the Clara Luper Department of African and African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma Nadine Farid Johnson - Managing Director of PEN America Washington and Free Expression Programs Clara Ramírez-Barat - Director of the Warren Educational Policies Program, Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide