Events Calendar

Join leading experts on free speech and the First Amendment for an engaging and timely discussion on recent campus protests relating to the war in Israel and Gaza. They will explore what universities, including the University of Texas, have done effectively, where they’ve fallen short, and the broader implications for First Amendment rights.

Please RSVP by Monday, October 16th (see link) to reserve a seat and lunch. We hope you join us!

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2024/10/21/79177/

How does change happen? Movement in the public interest often involves vision, alliance-building, and patience. Where do lawyers and the law fit in? Author and Executive Director of Detention Watch Network Silky Shah and Professor Andrea Meza of the Government Accountability Project will discuss lessons learned from the immigrant rights movement. Professor Elissa Steglich will moderate the discussion.     Please RSVP by 12 pm, October 17.

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2024/10/21/78955/

This speaker series considers the criminalization of reproduction—historical and contemporary, local and global—largely through the lens of reproductive justice.

RSVP

Abstract: President Trump’s harsh, exclusionary anti-immigrant policies were bolstered by rhetoric that demonized migrant pregnancy and motherhood. including tropes like “birth tourism,” “anchor baby,” “chain migration,” and “public charge.” The Obama and Biden administrations, in contrast, enacted and publicized policies excepting pregnant women from otherwise intensive immigration enforcement regimes, projecting an image of humanitarian concern. This paper uses critical feminist ethnography to study the impact of pregnancy-related immigration policies on the lived experiences of pregnant migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border from 2017-2022. It documents the impacts of a shifting landscape of exclusion, expulsion, deportation, detention, and release during an era of rapid migration policy change. The findings are clear: under every policy regime, pregnant women are negatively impacted. During periods characterized by increased detention, detention conditions are poor. During periods characterized by exclusion and expulsion, pregnant women are forced to wait in dangerous, precarious conditions in Northern Mexico, increasing the likelihood that they will attempt a perilous desert crossing into the United States. And during periods characterized by a greater chance of receiving humanitarian parole due to pregnancy, parole is seldom granted to partners and family members, making family separation inseparable from a supposedly humanitarian exception.

Amanda Heffernan is a nurse midwife and Assistant Professor at Seattle University College of Nursing, where she is also Clinical Placement Coordinator for the Midwifery Program. In addition, she is a Seattle University PACE (Partnership for Advancing Community Engagement) Fellow and a faculty fellow at the Seattle University Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture. Her research interests sit at the intersection of migration and reproductive justice, including the impact of detention on families and the experiences of pregnant migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. She is author of “Pregnancy in United States Immigration Detention: The Gendered Necropolitics of Reproductive Oppression” in International Feminist Journal of Politics. She received a Ph.D. in Nursing from the University of New Mexico, an MSN in Nurse-Midwifery from Frontier Nursing University, a B.S. in Nursing from the University of Washington, and a B.A. in History from Whitman College.

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2024/10/21/78333/

On Tuesday, October 22, the Strauss Center hosts Alexander Gray, former Deputy Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff of the White House National Security Council, for a fireside chat with Strauss Center Director Adam Klein about what the world can expect regarding “Foreign Policy and National Security in a Second Trump Term.”

This event will be held at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and is part of the Brumley Speaker Series. Lunch will be provided and RSVPs are not required.

For more information about this event, please contact Brittany Horton at brittany.horton@austin.utexas.edu.

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2024/10/22/79298/

This public panel discussion on xenophobia at the U.S.-Mexico border will feature United Nations experts, scholars, organizers, and policymakers in dialogue with the community.

Panelists:

Dr. Pablo Ceriani Cernadas, UN Committee on Migrant Workers

Dr. Ibrahima Guissé, UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Shoba Sivaprasad-Wadhia, Director of the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Professor Rebecca Sharpless, Author of Shackled: 92 Refugees Imprisoned on ICE Air, University of Miami School of Law

Claudia Muñoz, Community organizer, Organiza Texas

The panel will follow a day-long expert consultation on the southwest border that will contribute to an initiative of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the United Nations Committee on Migrant Workers to address xenophobia and human rights violations against migrants. If you are a UT faculty member or student and are interested in observing the consultation, please fill out the following form: https://utexas.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6u81WgpPAoSv8ea

This event is hosted by the Immigration Clinic and Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at Texas Law, with support from the Sissy Farenthold Fund for Peace and Social Justice, Texas Global, Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis, Latin American Initiative at Texas Law, Latino Studies, William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law, Center for Asian American Studies, John L. Warfield Center for African & African Diaspora Studies, and Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS).

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2024/10/22/78430/

Attorneys from a variety of firms and companies will be in attendance for a networking happy hour. The event is jointly sponsored by all of the IP, Technology, and Sports/Entertainment law organizations.

RSVPs will be required before the event.

Full event information: https://law.utexas.edu/calendar/2024/10/23/78391/