New World Law & Order: Profile, Protest and Social Justice

Recent political protests worldwide highlight the seemingly endless struggle between government interests in preventing crime, maintaining public order and protecting national security balanced against negatively impacting individual civil liberties and minority communities. This series of symposia will address the current state of race relations and policing within the broader context of the criminal justice system. The goal is to foster an open dialogue on how law enforcement serves and protects communities, the tension between minority communities and local police, and the public's response to social injustices particularly against minorities through political protest movements. Promoting interdisciplinary and international perspectives, this series should provoke and encourage constructive discussion on these critical societal issues.

The first lecture on February 23 will be a panel discussion of legal practitioners examining race-based policing and its effectiveness in light of public safety concerns and infringement of individual rights. The second lecture will be held on March 13 with panelists analyzing the national security and immigration enforcement policies of Muslim surveillance in the U.S. and Japan. The final lecture, held on April 5, will focus on the public's global outcry to social injustices taking the form of protest movements in the age of online and social media.

Dates:  February 23, March 13 and April 5, 2017

Time:  19:00-21:00 for each Lecture. Doors open at 18:30.

Venue:  Temple University, Japan Campus, Student Parliament Lounge (Access)

Capacity:  120 (first come, first serve basis)

Cost:  Free and open to the public.

Registration:  (This form is currently private and cannot be viewed by the public.)

Notes:

  • CLE Credit: No CLE credits will be provided for this event.
  • This event will be held in English.

 Symposia 1: Racial Profiling Under the Color of Law

 Symposia 2: Muslim Surveillance in the Name of National Security

 Symposia 3: #vivalarevolucíon: New Millennium Political Protests

Symposia 1

Topic:  Racial Profiling Under the Color of Law

Date:  Thursday, February 23

Time:  19:00-21:00

Is racial profiling an effective law enforcement tool, an unequivocal infringement on civil liberties, or something in between? Law enforcement has wide latitude in determining how to seek out, deter, and stop crime. One of the more controversial tools in the enforcement community is the use of race as a key factor for who to stop and question about the lawfulness of his or her conduct. Laws such as Arizona's Anti-Immigrant Act or New York's Stop and Frisk policy have at their core racial profiling for crime prevention. They are constantly under challenge by civil rights group for their disparate impact on communities of color. In today's politically-charged climate, where fatal shootings of both suspects and police have ignited civic demonstrations, mobilized civil liberties groups, and engaged government oversight agencies, the question remains: are profiling practices effective or do they criminalize race - sometimes fatally - under the appearance of keeping the peace? Panelists will address the provocative question of race-based policing, weighing its effectiveness against concerns for public safety and individual rights.

Speakers

Catherine L. Pugh

Attorney and Adjunct Professor of Law
Temple University School of Law, Japan Campus (Profile)

Catherine Pugh specializes in criminal defense law, with an emphasis on civil rights and police misconduct litigation. Upon law school graduation, she was one of only ten Honors Hires for the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Ms. Pugh worked in the Special Litigation Section, specializing in "pattern and practice" investigations and litigation for: abuse under the color of law; violations of constitutional rights of the institutionalized; and, abuse of juveniles in confinement. Ms. Pugh received the Scriba Regis Award from the California Western School of Law, and was nominated for The American Society of Legal Writers Scribes Award, for her Comment, "What Do You Get When You Add Megan Williams to Matthew Sheppard and Victim Offender Mediation? A Hate Crime Law Prosecutors Will Actually Want to Use." Before arriving in Japan, Ms. Pugh was a Trial Attorney for the Maryland Office of the Public Defender.

F. Frederic Fouad

Attorney and Adjunct Professor of Law
Temple University School of Law, Japan Campus (Profile)

F. Frederic (Ric) Fouad's law practice spans 25 years and combines Japan-focused commercial matters with extensive pro bono work. Ric began his career at Jones Day. He has also served in-house at Taisei Corporation (Tokyo, Japan), Lexington Corporation (Tokyo, Japan and Memphis, TN), and Spartus Capital Management (New York, NY). He was a 2009-2010 Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, and he presently serves on the advisory boards of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College and the International Honors Program of World Learning, in Brattleboro, VT. Ric also heads Protect The Hersheys' Children, Inc., a child welfare advocacy group.

Jane Taylor

New Zealand Attorney

Ben Karp

ICAS Fellow and a founder of the Eliezer Society
Temple University, Japan Campus (Profile)

Ben Karp is an ICAS Fellow, who holds degrees in English, history and African American Studies from Goucher College and Yale University. He is a founder of the Eliezer Society, described by Time Magazine as an organization which has "attracted some of the world's most influential speakers," and has worked on political campaigns, including as a finance chair of Senator Cory Booker's first campaign for mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Ben came to Japan in 2002, establishing a jewelry distribution business, developing points of sale at Mitsukoshi and other major Japanese department stores. He has also worked in Tokyo as a business consultant and guest taught and lectured on a range of subjects, and has published articles and been quoted in The Asahi Shimbun/International Herald TribuneThe New York TimesThe Washington Post, and The Daily Beast.

Moderator

Kyle Cleveland, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of ICAS
Temple University, Japan Campus (Profile)

Kyle Cleveland is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Temple University, Japan Campus (TUJ), and the Associate Director of TUJ's Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, for which he was the founding director. Through ICAS he co-organizes lecture series, the internship program, and produces special symposia on Japanese youth politics and popular culture. As the university's faculty director of study abroad and honors programming, he has developed academic curricula for study abroad and international honors programs. His teaching and research interests are in political sociology, ethnicity, globalization and Japanese cultural studies; he is currently working on a project on the political implications of the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

Symposia 2

Topic:  Muslim Surveillance in the Name of National Security

Date:  Monday, March 13

Time:  19:00-21:00

As the world faces the persistent threat of terrorism, nation-states are grappling with how to combat terrorism and ensure the security of citizens and sovereign borders. The 9/11 attacks brought on the "War on Terrorism," and with it a sharp rise in anti-Muslim sentiments. Governments are making sweeping changes to domestic and foreign policies, including instituting surveillance programs targeting Muslims, closing borders to refugees, extreme vetting of Muslim immigrants, and most recently, President Trump's order barring travelers of Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. The justification for these hard-line policies falls under the guise of national security. This panel debates the merits of government policies aimed at the surveillance of Muslims in the U.S. and Japan, and examines the legalities of such instrumentalities. In this lecture, the panel weighs the impact of Muslim profiling on guaranteed civil liberties against fighting terrorism and protecting national security.

Speakers

Lawrence Repeta

Professor of Law
Meiji University

Lawrence Repeta is a professor of law at Meiji University, an Asia-Pacific Journal associate, a director of the Japan Civil Liberties Union, and a member of the Washington State Bar Association. He is author of "Limiting Fundamental Rights Protection in Japan – the Role of the Supreme Court," in Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan, edited by Jeff Kingston (Routledge, 2014), "Reserved Seats on Japan's Supreme Court," (Washington University Law Review, 2011) and other writings on Japan's constitution and legal system.

Sebastian Maslow

Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Law, Tohoku University, Japan

Since 2014 Sebastian Maslow is Assistant Professor in political science at the Graduate School of Law, Tohoku University, Japan. Before his appointment at Tohoku University he taught at the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. His research focuses on the domestic dynamics of Japan's foreign and national security policies. He work appeared in Asian Survey, amongst other academic journals and he is the co-editor of Risk State: Japan's Foreign Policy in Age of Uncertainty, published by Routledge in 2015. In addition, he is a frequent commentator on East Asian and Japanese security affairs in the English language media.

Junko Hayashi

Attorney
Partners Law Firm, Tokyo

Junko Hayashi was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. She received her Juris Doctor from Waseda University in 2011. She is a member of the Tokyo Bar Association and a member of the Legal Team Against Illegal Investigation Towards Muslims.

Moderator

Masaki Kakizaki

Assistant Professor
Temple University, Japan Campus (Profile)

Assistant Professor Kakizaki is a political scientist who teaches courses on Middle East politics, foreign governments, and international politics at Temple University, Japan Campus. He also offers a capstone seminar on social movements and contentious politics at TUJ. Prior to joining TUJ in 2013, he held teaching positions at the University of Utah and Westminster College in the United States. His key areas of research are political participation and political culture in the Middle East with a geographical emphasis on Turkey. His current research project focuses on how popular participation in protests and demonstrations has spread in Turkey and what factors explain the rise and fall of protest participation. He has previously published articles on nuclear energy politics, anti-war movements, and party politics of Turkey.

Symposia 3

Topic:  #vivalarevolucíon: New Millennium Political Protests

Date:  Wednesday, April 5

Time:  19:00-21:00

The recent wave of protests around the world reflect this generation's struggles for economic, social, and political justice. Protests are changing from unstructured acts of civic demonstration to organized movements demanding social and political revolution through outcries of "Hands Up, Don't Shoot," "We Are All Muslim," and "We Are The 99%," by way of examples. While these traditional forms of street protests have an enduring place in our societies, the advent of the internet and social media takes these movements from being isolated incidents to uniting the world on human rights issues that affect us all. These burgeoning social movements have some immediate impact; however, systemic transformation takes time and requires clear mandates for future action. The key question then becomes—how to take social and political activism from the streets to affect real change? This lecture examines these issues and analyzes the unique characteristics of social movements in the 21st century, their effectiveness, and the influence of technology to further or hinder a movement's capability to ignite change.

Speakers

David H. Slater

Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Japanese Studies and Director of the Institute of Comparative Culture
Sophia University

David H. Slater is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Japanese Studies and the Director of the Institute of Comparative Culture at Sophia University, Tokyo. His related publications include 3.11 POLITICS IN DISASTER JAPAN: FEAR AND ANGER, POSSIBILITY AND HOPE, MICRO-POLITICS OF RADIATION, an edited online collection for Cultural Anthropology (2011); Japan Copes with Calamity (edited volume with Gill Steger 2013); "Young Mothers Looking for a Voice in Post–3.11 Fukushima" in Critical Asian Studies, with Morioka and Danzuka (2014); "SEALDs (Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy): Research Note on Contemporary Youth Politics in Japan", The Asia-Pacific Journal 2015 (with O'Day, Kindstrand, Uno and Takano); "Social Media, Information and Political Activism in Japan's 3.11 Crisis" with Kindstrand and Nishimura (2016).

John Russell

Professor of Anthropology
Gifu University

John G. Russell, Professor of Anthropology at Gifu University's Faculty of Regional Studies, received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University. His research is focused on representations of race and difference in Japanese and American popular culture and mass media. He is the author of two books, Nihonjin no kokujin-kan [Japanese Perceptions of Blacks] (Shinhyōron, 1991) and Henken to sabetsu wa dono yō ni tsukurareru ka [How are Prejudice and Discrimination Produced?] (Akashi Shoten, 1995). His articles have appeared in Cultural Anthropology, positions: east asian cultures critiqueThe Journal of Popular CultureCR: The New Centennial ReviewThe Japan Quarterly and The Japan Times. He is currently researching "whitewashing," "blackwashing," xenoface, and other substitutional racial practices in American popular culture, and the discourse of black masculinities in Japan.

William Andrews

William Andrews is a writer and translator in Tokyo. He studied at King's College London and moved to Japan in 2004. His research focuses on postwar Japanese counterculture and protest movements, particularly on the left. He is the author of Dissenting Japan: A History of Japanese Radicalism and Counterculture, from 1945 to Fukushima (2016, Hurst Publishers). His articles have appeared in JacobinCounterPunchThe Japan TimesThe Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan FocusArtAsiaPacificCounterFire and more. He is currently writing a biography of the film-maker and activist Adachi Masao.

Sarajean Rossitto

Nonprofit NGO Consultant

Sarajean Rossitto has worked with nonprofit NGOs in Japan for 20 years. She has conducted trainings on specific skill sets such as project development and management, fundraising, grant proposal writing and volunteer management and taught university classes on the roles and functions of NGOs, NGO management, the Japanese nonprofit sector and international development issues. Sarajean has coordinated programs including experts in humanitarian response and HIV/AIDS in Japan. She has taught at TUJ in the Conted school as part of the NGO mgt program since 2003. She has taught courses on NGOs, nonprofit management and international development at TUJ in Continuing Education dept since 2003, at Tsuda International Training Program since 2007 and at Sophia University since 2013.

Sarajean has also assisted corporations develop effective community engagement, CSR and philanthropy programs. Before 2005, when she began working as an independent consultant, Sarajean spent four years coordinating the bilateral exchange of nonprofit professionals between the US and Japan for Japan-US Community Education & Exchange (JUCEE). She worked for 6 years with the Tokyo YMCA before completing her Graduate studies. Sarajean holds a Columbia University Masters of International Affairs degree with a focus on human rights in East Asia and an undergraduate degree in Sociology.

Moderator

Tina Saunders

Director and Associate Professor of Instruction in Law
Temple University School of Law, Japan Campus (Profile)

Tina Saunders is an Associate Professor of Instruction in Law and Director of Temple Law School's Tokyo program. She teaches courses on civil procedure, torts, and conflict of laws. Professor Saunders has a broad range of international experience practicing law in the U.S. and working in Japan. Following law school, she served as a law clerk for Judge Lynne A. Battaglia at the Maryland Court of Appeals (highest state court). Professor Saunders then entered private practice focusing on complex, multi-district commercial and product liability litigation. She is a member of the Maryland State Bar.