For the past three years, Roosevelt University has been presenting discussions on issues that vex the national consciousness as catalysts launching its new academic year. The challenges of providing effective and comprehensive health care, the struggle to insure the nation’s law enforcement agencies institute color blind policing standards, and the unflagging efforts to reform the country’s penal system were a few of the topics this year’s conference addressed.
For the past two years, The American Dream Reconsidered conference has also invited individuals whose life work or current energies bear direct impact on the lives of everyday American citizens. In 2017, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg talked about the particulars of her life and how they eventually led her to become the second woman to sit on the Supreme Court. Last night, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr. sat in similar conversation with Judge Ann Claire Williams and extended his remarks to encompass the continuing battle to secure broad and inclusive voting rights while also detailing the need to repair a hyper-politicized gerrymandering system.
Tomorrow night, September 13th, Common, acclaimed musician, actor and founder of the Common Ground Foundation will aim his thoughts on “Activism and Dissent in the Age of Polarization”.
Keenly sensitive to the conversation’s academic setting and its symbolic concentration of youth, Mr. Holder’s comments often drew from assessments of his own highly engaged youth growing up in New York and attending Columbia University as an undergraduate and as a law student. He often segued to his present role as a father of young adult children and talked extensively about his pride in his own father who instilled a sense of uniquely West Indian self-worth that has acted as an unfailing talisman throughout his life.
Stating that he considers the Voting Rights Act the “crowning jewel’ of the civil rights movement, Mr. Holder’s became increasingly impassioned as he went on to discuss the impact of the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County decision removing federal voting rights protections. His recent and ongoing work with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, trends in youth activism and the growing disaffection with current government policies make him optimistic however and causes him to believe the 2018 midterms will be see the beginning of a political correction. When asked will that mean a run for the presidency on his part, his answer clearly indicated doing so was under active consideration.
The American Dream Reconsidered
A Conference Presented by Roosevelt University
September 10 – 14, 2018
roosevelt.edu/americandream
