At the invitation of University’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion, diversity expert Jacqueline Barnett will be hosting a lecture Thursday concerning hate crimes.
The event, “confronting hate: understanding the current status and history of federal hate crime legislation,” is part of ODI’s bi-annual Dialogue on Diversity. The seminar is open to all N.C. State students, faculty and staff who wish to attend.
The session will take place at 3 p.m. in the Washington-Sankofa Room (room 126) on the first floor of Witherspoon Student Center.
Barnett is the director of institutional equity at Tulane University. She was previously associate chief counsel to the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.
Barnett will discuss statutes and current legislation such as the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act. This legislation extends hate crime protection to a person’s gender, sexual orientation or disability.
Congress passed the Matthew Sheperd Act in October 2009, and President Obama signed it into law later that month.
According to Diversity’s website, the lecture will also “provide practical tools as to how to utilize this new statute, and related legislation, to create a more inclusive and safe community.”
Jo-Ann Robinson, assistant vice provost for Student Diversity, said the event is partly in response to incidents last year where hate speech was written in the Free Expression Tunnel.
The goal of the seminar is to address any confusion surrounding hate speech, hate crime and free speech by providing a venue where students and faculty can learn about federal legislation against hate crimes, according to Robinson.
“I want students to understand it from historical perspective; the legal precedents, and how it impacts diversity and inclusion,” Robinson said. “[Barnett’s] presentation will really inform our campus community.”
In previous sessions, Dialogue on Diversity has covered the University’s Islamic and GLBT community, neo-diversity and illegal immigration – topics that got a lot of attention and were well-attended, according to Robinson. In each of the events, ODI strives to address controversial diversity topics head-on and give students an open forum to discuss these issues.
“The dialogue is focused on students and is designed to get them talking about controversial topics,” Robinson said. “Sometimes there are some really hard conversations.”
Robinson said she was excited about students having these types of opportunities to learn about diversity.
“We talk about creating an inclusive and diverse environment, and one step toward creating that is by having conversations,” Robinson said. “These dialogues on diversity are opportunities to have those conversations.”
Robinson also said she hopes the event will inspire students to continue their conversations with each other until the next Dialogue on Diversity.
“This is what we need to be doing every day. Students graduating today are entering a diverse world, and it’s our role as a university to prepare them,” Robinson said. “We’re just doing our job.”
