Keynote+speakers

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 **Dr. Har** **old A. McDougall ** is Professor of Law at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He was a civil rights organizer and voter registrant in his early years and served the NAACP from 1994 to 1997, as Executive Vice President of a local branch, as Washington Bureau Chief and as Senior Policy Consultant. He served on the National Governing Board of Common Cause, the Board of Directors of the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (Fulbright Scholars Program) and the Board of Trustees of the Paul J. Aicher Foundation (Study Circles Resource Center). He has consulted for the Kellogg, Kettering, and Village Foundations, and the Montgomery County, MD, County Executive’s Office.

Professor McDougall specializes in the areas of urban social and economic development, civil rights, and the workings of state, local, and federal government. He has written numerous articles, as well as two books exploring these themes. BLACK BALTIMORE: A NEW THEORY OF COMMUNITY (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993) proposes a new approach to the renovation and revitalization of community civic culture. AFRICAN CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE AGE OF OBAMA: A HISTORY AND A HANDBOOK (Lulu.com, 2010) covers “trouble spots” like racial profiling, hate crimes, discrimination against consumers, employment discrimination, voting rights, housing discrimination and discrimination in public education. It also looks at citizen action and access to local government.

Professor McDougall’s present work takes two forms, one international, and one domestic. Since a 1999 Fulbright Fellowship to the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, he has focused on sustainable development and citizen engagement in the developing world, teaching and writing in this area. Between 2003 and 2011, he taught courses on human rights and sustainable development to students at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica and at the University of the Western Cape, in South Africa. He has also given speeches on these subjects at the U.S. Educational Foundation in New Delhi, India in 2007 and at the Pro-Vice Chancellor’s annual convocation of the University of South Africa (UNISA) in Pretoria in 2008.

Locally, he has founded the “Invisible College,” a nonprofit organization teaching “public citizenship” to middle and high school students. One offshoot, a BoysII Men program, has been taught at Takoma Park Middle School in Montgomery County, MD, by Howard Law School students since 2008. A “Girls2Women” program started in 2009. His most recent publications include Reconstructing African American Cultural DNA: An Action Research Agenda for Howard University, 55 Howard Law Journal 63 (2011), and A Civic Infrastructure for the Occupy Movement (forthcoming, 2012). The former considers culture as an element of problem-solving. The latter looks at how “base communities,” linked together, might empower citizens to engage in ongoing dialogue with business and government.


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Please click here to read Harold's thoughts on and discuss the //Invisible College//.

 **Dr. Katherine Lambert-Pennington** is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Memphis and NERCHE 2011 Ernest A. Lynton Award Recipient.

Dr. Lambert-Pennington’s research in Australia explored the ways in which changing racial ideologies, Aboriginal policies, and public perceptions of Aborigines have created a predicament of culture for urban Indigenous people, who often do not look, act, or live in ways that the state (i.e. policy makers/deliverers) and popular imaginaries expect or demand. Her sustained interaction with Kooris in La Perouse has resulted in varied roles, including doctoral student, participatory volunteer, participant-observer, formal and informal interviewer, archival researcher, photographer, videographer, kin, and friend. In the US, Dr. Lambert- Pennington is part of a multi-disciplinary research team currently engaged in two projects focusing on the dynamics of power and inequality in neighborhood redevelopment processes. Several questions drive this research: What happens when marginalized groups talk back to city government and developers? How can participatory action research (PAR) create avenues for cultural critique and the development of empirically-based, community derived solutions? What can anthropology, and the anthropologist, contribute to neighborhood revitalization efforts? Both the South Memphis Revitalization Action Plan Project (SoMe RAPP) and the Vance Avenue Collaborative (VAC) draw on a multi-disciplinary team of faculty and students from the University of Memphis in collaborations with community stakeholders, primarily residents and local institutional leaders to produce redevelopment plans for these neighborhoods that are driven by local voices and visions. Over the course of these projects, the team has worked with community advisory committees to involve over 1,000 residents in key stakeholder interviews, door-to-door surveys, and community meetings. In South Memphis, this work has catalyzed neighborhood residents and institutions to come together to advocate for the adoption of the comprehensive plan by Memphis City Council (it was adopted March 2010) and to work toward implementation of the revitalization of their neighborhood. Moving from research to action, the team has been involved in the creation and start up of the South Memphis Farmers Market.


 * To access materials from this session please click on the file link(s) below: **



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