Student Panel

This panel will allow students employed in the project to present their activities and reflection.

Other Speakers

Keynote 1: Debra Thompson, born near Amherstburg, moved to US and back to Canada in McGill University, Political Science. She has published many books on anti-black racism and contributes to Globe and Mail.

Keynote 2: Beverly Jacobs

Local Perspective: Diversity Committee of Windsor

Sylvia McAdam , Law

Sylvia McAdam (Saysewahum) is from the Treaty 6 lands in what is now called “Canada.” She is a direct descendant of Treaty peoples and Original peoples of these lands. Sylvia is from the nēhīyaw Nation. She has her Juris Doctorate from the University of Saskatchewan and a Bachelor’s degree in Human Justice from the University of Regina. Sylvia is co-founder of a global grassroots Indigenous-led movement called “Idle No More.” Idle No More has changed the political and social landscape of Canada as well as reached the global community to defend and protect all lands, waters, and animals.

Keynote:

Dr. Debra Thompson (McGill University, Political Science) is a leading scholar of the comparative politics of race. Her teaching and research interests focus on the relationships among race, the state, and inequality in democratic societies. Dr. Thompson has taught at the University of Oregon, Northwestern University, and Ohio University, and held a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship with the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University in 2010-2011.

Dr. Thompson’s book, The Schematic State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census

(Cambridge University Press, 2016) is a study of the political development of racial classifications on the national censuses of the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The book maps the changing nature of the census from an instrument historically used to manage and control racialized populations to its contemporary purpose as an important source of statistical information, employed for egalitarian ends, arguing that states seek to make their populations racially legible, turning the fluid and politically contested substance of race into stable, identifiable categories to be used as the basis of law and policy. The Schematic State has received three major awards from the American Political Science Association: the Race and Ethnic Politics section best book award in race and comparative politics, the Seymour M. Lipset award for the best book in Canadian politics, and an honorable mention from the International Politics and History section.

Dr. Thompson’s work has appeared in journals such as the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Social and Legal Studies, and the Cambridge Review of International Affairs. She is currently working on two book projects: the first explores the global appeal of the Black Lives Matter movement through the lens of American exceptionalism, while the second examines the puzzling persistence of racial inequality in Canada.