The J. Bonner Ritchie Dialogue on Peace and Justice is an annual conference that brings local, national, and international speakers to campus to speak about cutting-edge thinking, policy, and action regarding important global problems. The two-day event will feature invited speakers from a wide range of backgrounds and academic specializations with a mixture of nationally recognized and local scholars. Speakers and panels will address the historic roots of systemic racism and gender discrimination, current issues, and anti-racism and anti-sexism strategies and movements, with special attention to the intersections of race and gender.

Guest Speakers

George Lakey recently retired from Swarthmore College, where he was Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues in Social Change. Lakey created and managed the Global Nonviolent Action Database research project with over 1,100 case studies from almost 200 countries (nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu). In 2010, he was named Peace Educator of the Year. His tenth book is How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning (2018). Lakey has received the Martin Luther King, Jr., Peace Award, and the Paul Robeson Social Justice Award.

Shirley Jackson is chair of the Black Studies Department at Portland State University. Jackson served as department chair and founded the Ethnic studies minor at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven. Her research areas are race and ethnicity, gender, and social movements. Her current areas of research are literacy campaigns in Cuba in 1961 and in Mississippi in 1964 and an in-depth analysis of editorial cartoons in the mainstream and Black press during WWII and the Civil Rights Era. Jackson is editor of the Routledge Handbook of Race, Class, (2018).