The webinar will feature panelists Marilyn Ford, a Quinnipiac law professor and the Neil H. Cogan Public Service Chair; Gloria Holmes, author and professor emerita of education at Quinnipiac; attorney Michael Jefferson, community activist and a member of New Haven’s Civilian Review Board; attorney Robert Pellegrino, author and partner at Pellegrino & Pellegrino; and Don Sawyer, vice president for equity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at Quinnipiac. Camille Lavache, president of the Black Law Students Association, and George Morgan Jr., president of the Student Bar Association, will serve as moderators.

They will discuss the political climate in the nation following the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and several other Black Americans, racial oppression, police brutality, institutional discrimination, white privilege, and the Police Accountability Act of 2020. 

“We need to take action so that living while being black can no longer be seen as a crime through the eyes of those who believe that black lives do not matter,” Lavache said. “To achieve America’s ideal that everyone has equal access to social and economic success, it is crucial that we do not remain neutral; we must take a stance to unify in solidarity to make enduring change surrounding racial inequality and injustice.”

Morgan said, “The deprivation of basic human and civil rights has been systemically enforced as long as it has because we fail to discuss the elephant in the room: racism.”