Participants
Peggy Antrobus
Institution Builder, Activist, Writer
Peggy Antrobus, from the Caribbean, has been involved in the establishment of a number of agencies and organizations including the Women’s Bureau in the Office of the Prime Minister of Jamaica (1974), the Women and Development Unit (WAND) of the University of the West Indies (1977), the Caribbean Association for Feminist Action and Research (CAFRA) (1981), and Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), a network of scholars and activists from the Economic South (1985), and has held leadership positions in most of these. She is a strong advocate for the advancement of women in the Caribbean and internationally. Antrobus has been a consultant to a number of international organizations (including the UN and the Canadian International Development Agency) and US foundations including the Pathfinder Fund of Boston, the Ford Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and has served on the boards and advisory committees of a number of organizations including the Global Fund for Women. Her writings on gender studies, development policies, economics, and human rights have been published widely and in 2004 her book, The Global Women’s Movement: Issues, Strategies and Challenges, was published by Zed Books. Antrobus received a BA from Bristol University and a PhD in Education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Joe Bailey, Jr.
Filmmaker; Rapoport Center Fellow
Joe Bailey, Jr. is a fellow at the Rapoport Center, lending motion picture and sound expertise to the Frances T. “Sissy” Farenthold Archives Project. An award-winning filmmaker and UT Law graduate, he also teaches “Documentary & Civil Society” in the Plan II Honors Program.
Phyllis Bennis
Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies; Fellow, Transnational Institute (Amsterdam)
Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of both the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, and the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. She helped found and is on the advising board for the US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation. For ten years, she worked as a journalist for the UN, and currently serves as an advisor to UN officials on the Middle East and UN democratization issues. Bennis is an active part of the global peace movement. She is co-chair of the UN-based International Coordinating Network on Palestine and works with the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition. She is the author of eight books, including Ending the Iraq War: A Primer (2009), Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer (2009), and Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer (2010). She has contributed to The Nation, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Al-Jazeera.
Khiara Bridges
Associate Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Anthropology, Boston University School of Law
Khiara Bridges is an Associate Professor of Law and Anthropology at Boston University. Her areas of expertise include critical race theory, reproductive rights, equal protection, and fundamental rights analysis under the due process clause. Bridges has written many articles concerning the intersection of race, class, and reproductive rights that have been published in the Stanford Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, among others. In 2011, Bridges published her first book, Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization. She earned her BA in Sociology from Spelman College, and her JD and PhD from Columbia University. Bridges is also a classically trained ballet dancer who continues to perform professionally in New York City.
Daniel Brinks
Associate Professor of Government; Co-Director, Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, University of Texas at Austin
Daniel Brinks is Associate Professor of Government and co-director of the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the role of the law and courts in supporting or extending human rights and many of the basic rights associated with democracy, with a primary regional interest in Latin America. He is currently at work on a project that examines constitutional change in Latin America since about 1975, focusing especially on judicial institutions and constitutional review. He has published articles in journals such as Comparative Politics, Studies in Comparative International Development, and the Texas International Law Journal. His books Courting Social Justice: The Judicial Enforcement of Social and Economic Rights in the Developing World (co-edited with Varun Gauri) and The Judicial Response to Police Violence in Latin America: Inequality and the Rule of Law were both published by Cambridge University Press. Brinks received a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and a J.D. from the University of Michigan.
Don Carleton
Executive Director, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin
Don Carleton has been executive director of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History since its creation in 1991. From 1979 until 1991, Carleton was head of the University’s Eugene C. Barker Texas History Center. Dr. Carleton served as founding director of the Houston Metropolitan Research Center, an urban history archives project sponsored by Rice University, the University of Houston, and the City of Houston. At HMRC, he established The Houston Review: A Journal of History and Culture of the Gulf Coast. Dr. Carleton has published and lectured extensively in the fields of historical research methods and sources, the history of broadcast journalism, and twentieth century U.S. political history. Dr. Carleton’s book Red Scare won the Texas State Historical Association’s Coral Tullis Award for the most important book on Texas published in 1985. Dr. Carleton’s most recent book is Conversations with Cronkite. He holds the University’s J. R. Parten Chair in the Archives of American History, and has been honored with membership in The Texas Institute of Letters, the Austin Headliners Club, and the Philosophical Society of Texas. Dr. Carleton received his PhD in U.S. history from the University of Houston.
Mary Anne Case
Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
Mary Anne Case is Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Among the subjects she teaches are feminist jurisprudence, constitutional law, European legal systems, marriage, and regulation of sexuality. While her diverse research interests include German contract law and the First Amendment, her scholarship to date has concentrated on the regulation of sex, gender, and sexuality, and on the early history of feminism. Recent publications include “The Ladies? Forget About Them: A Feminist Perspective on the Limits of Originalism” (Constitutional Commentary, 2014) and “Feminist Constitutionalism and the Constitutionalism of Marriage” (in Feminist Constitutionalism Global Perspectives; Cambridge U. Press, 2012). She has previously been litigator for Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison in New York, research professor at the University of Virginia, visiting professor at New York University, Bosch Public Policy Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, and Crane Fellow in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University. She earned a BA magna cum laude from Yale University and a JD cum laude from Harvard Law School.
James Dunnam
Attorney; Former Texas State Representative (1996-2011)
James Dunnam is a Waco-based attorney who served in the Texas House of Representatives from 1996 to 2011. Described as “the sharpest and most persistent thorn in the conservative paw,” he led the Texas House Democratic Caucus and was the chairman of the House Select Committee on Federal Economic Stabilization Funding. Named by the Associated Press as one of “The Most Influential Lawmakers of 2009,” he was also a member of the House Committees on Environmental Regulation and Transportation, Legislative Study Group, and the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus. He currently practices law with the firm of Dunnam & Dunnam. He received a BBA from Baylor University and a JD from Baylor School of Law.
Karen Engle
Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair in Law; Co-director & Founder, Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, University of Texas School of Law
Karen Engle is the Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair in Law and founder and co-director of the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. She teaches and researches in the fields of public international law, international human rights law, and legal theory. Engle writes on the interaction between social movements and law, particularly in the fields of international human rights law, international criminal law, and Latin American law. She is author of The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development: Rights, Culture, Strategy (Duke University Press, 2010), which received the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association Section on Human Rights. Other recent publications include “The Grip of Sexual Violence: Reading United Nations Security Council Resolutions on Human Security” (in Peacekeeping, Gender Equality and Collective Security)(Palgrave, 2014) and “Self-critique, (Anti)politics and Criminalization: Reflections on the History and Trajectory of the Human Rights Movement” (in New Approaches to International Law: The European and American Experiences)(TMCAsser Press/Springer, 2012). Engle received a Bellagio Residency Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation in 2009 and an assignment as a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Bogota in 2010. She received her JD magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and a BA with honors from Baylor University.
Frances T. “Sissy” Farenthold
Former Texas State Representative; Former Chair, National Women’s Political Caucus; Trustee Emeritus, Institute for Policy Studies
Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold, a Corpus Christi native, graduated from Vassar College in 1946 and the University of Texas School of Law in 1949, where she was one of only three women in a student body of 800. After graduating from law school, Farenthold served on the Corpus Christi City Council’s human relations commission. From 1965 to 1967, she was the director of the Nueces County Legal Aid Program.
Farenthold was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1968, where she represented Nueces and Kleberg counties. She was the only woman in the House at that time and championed civil rights and women’s rights over her four years of service in the legislature. In 1971, Farenthold became an active member of the “Dirty Thirty,” a group of members of the 1971 Texas House of Representatives that pushed for government transparency in wake of the Sharpstown Scandal. Farenthold co-sponsored the Equal Legal Rights Amendment to the Texas Constitution with then-Texas Senator Barbara Jordan. Farenthold ran in the Democratic primary for governor in 1972 and 1974, losing both times to Dolph Briscoe. She gained national recognition during the 1972 Democratic Convention, when she came in second for the Vice Presidential nomination, the first woman to be seriously considered for the Vice Presidential candidacy. In 1973, she was elected as the first chair of the National Women’s Political Caucus.
In 1976, Farenthold became the first female president of Wells College in Aurora, New York. During her tenure at Wells, Farenthold expanded her work with women’s groups, anti-nuclear and peace activists, and human rights groups. She was an active member of Helsinki Watch, the predecessor to the organization Human Rights Watch, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
Upon her return to Houston in 1980, Farenthold opened a private law practice and taught law at the University of Houston. Farenthold and her cousin, Genevieve Vaughan, participated in a wide variety of events in the women’s peace movement. Together they organized the Peace Tent at the 1985 NGO Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, held in conjunction with the third UN World Conference on Women. Farenthold also worked with the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a progressive multi-issue think tank devoted to peace, justice, and the environment. With IPS, Farenthold made trips to investigate human rights violations in Central America and Iraq.
Farenthold continues to lend her voice and support to human rights efforts around the world. She served as Chair of the Board of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, and currently serves as one of its Honorary Directors. She is a member of the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice’s Advisory Board, and is an emeritus trustee of IPS. She lives in Houston.
Ward Farnsworth
Dean & John Jeffers Research Chair in Law, University of Texas School of Law
Ward Farnsworth is Dean & John Jeffers Research Chair in Law at the University of Texas School of Law. Before coming to UT, Farnsworth taught for fifteen years at Boston University School of Law, where he also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and was Legal Adviser to the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in the Hague. Farnsworth teaches courses on torts, contracts, civil procedure, admiralty, and rhetoric. He is Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Third) Torts: Liability for Economic Harm and author of Restitution: Civil Liability for Unjust Enrichment (University of Chicago Press, 2014), The Legal Analyst (University of Chicago Press, 2007), and Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric (David R. Godine, 2010). He has published scholarly articles on a range of topics in the Columbia Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and other journals. Farnsworth received a JD with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School, and afterwards served as law clerk to Anthony M. Kennedy, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and to Richard A. Posner, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Cary Franklin
Assistant Professor of Law, University of Texas School of Law
Cary Franklin is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law. Her primary research interests are in the fields of constitutional law, antidiscrimination law, and legal history. She is particularly interested in the history of antidiscrimination law in the areas of sex and sexual orientation, and the ways in which this history influences legal conceptions of equality today. Before joining the UT Faculty, Professor Franklin was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a Ribicoff Fellow at Yale Law School. Her work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in the Harvard Law Review, the NYU Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. Her article, The Anti-Stereotyping Principle in Constitutional Sex Discrimination Law, was awarded the Kathryn T. Preyer Prize by the American Society for Legal History. Professor Franklin received a BA in English and history from Yale University and a DPhil in English from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. After completing her doctorate, she received a JD from Yale Law School, where she served as an Articles Editor on the Yale Law Journal. She clerked for Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who at the time sat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Arvonne Fraser
US Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women; Senior Fellow Emerita, University of Minnesota
Arvonne Fraser was a senior fellow at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota from 1982-1994 and is now Senior Fellow Emerita. In her time at the Humphrey Institute, Fraser directed the International Women’s Rights Action Project (IWRAW) and co-founded the school’s Center on Women and Public Policy. In 1992, Fraser received a Resourceful Woman Award for women’s human rights from the Tide Foundation. She also served as the United States’ Ambassador to the UN Commission on the Status of Women from 1993-1994. In 1995, she became the first non-lawyer to be honored with the Award for Prominent Women in International Law by the American Society of International Law’s Women in International Law Interest Group. In 2007, Fraser received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the University of Minnesota. She received a BA from the University of Minnesota.
James Galbraith
Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations, LBJ School of Public Affairs, and Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin
James Galbraith holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and a professorship of government at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Galbraith served in several positions on the staff of the U.S. Congress, including executive director of the Joint Economic Committee. He directed the LBJ School’s PhD Program in Public Policy from 1995 to 1997, and currently directs the University of Texas Inequality Project. He has authored or co-edited six books and two textbooks, most recently The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth. Galbraith writes frequently for policy magazines and the general press, and is a senior scholar of the Levy Economics Institute. Galbraith also serves as chair of the Board of Economists for Peace and Security. He received his AB from Harvard University, an MA and MPhil from Yale University, and his PhD in economics from Yale University.
Sylvia Garcia
Texas State Senator
Sylvia Garcia currently serves as Texas State Senator for District 6. She began her public service career with the City of Houston, serving as Director and Presiding Judge of the Houston Municipal System for an unprecedented five terms, and later, was elected as City Controller for the City of Houston. In 2002, Sylvia was elected to Harris County Commissioner’s Court—the first Latina to be elected in her own right to the office. Sylvia has served on over 25 community boards and commissions, including the San Jacinto Girl Scouts, the Houston Hispanic Forum, the American Leadership Forum, Battleship Texas and the Museum of Fine Arts – Houston. Sylvia was named “Humanitarian of the Year” by the National Conference of Communities and Justice and selected as one of “Houston’s 25 Power People” by Inside Houston magazine. She also received the Texas Woman’s University Board of Regents Woman of Distinction Award, the Hispanic Scouting Distinguished Citizen Award from the Sam Houston Area Council/Boy Scouts of America, and the Board Award from the San Jacinto Girl Scouts. Garcia received a BA from Texas Women’s University and a JD from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University.
Curtis Graves
Former Texas State Representative (1967-73)
Curtis Graves is a businessman and former state congressman. He served as a representative in the Texas Legislature from 1969 to 1973 and was one of the first African Americans to serve in the House after the Texas Reconstruction. During his time in the Texas Legislature, he, along with Sissy Farenthold, was part of the famed Dirty Thirty. He went on to work at NASA for thirty years in various capacities, including as Director of Educational Programs. Currently, he works as a professional photographer and operates his own studio, Graves Fine Art Photos. Graves received a BBA from Texas Southern University.
Erica Grieder
Senior Editor, Texas Monthly
Erica Grieder is currently a senior editor at Texas Monthly. She wrote for The Economist as the Southwest correspondent from 2007 to 2012. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Spectator, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and the New Republic. Grieder recently authored her first book, Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas, which was published in 2013. She received her B.A. in Philosophy from Columbia University and her Master of Public Affairs from The LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin.
Ray Hill
LGBT Activist; Founder and Host, “The Prison Show”
Ray Hill has served as a prominent LGBT rights’ advocate in Houston, Texas, since 1966. He is the founder and host of “The Prison Show,” which airs on KPFT 90.1 FM in Houston. The show, which recently marked its 30th anniversary, brings prisoners a mix of criminal justice news, words of support from friends and family, and Hill’s own advice and analysis. In 1968, Hill, along with David Patterson and Rita Wanstrom, formed the Promethean Society, the first gay civil rights organization in Houston. Hill helped form the Gay Political Caucus in 1975 to address issues of job discrimination, gay sexual rights, and the ability for gay and lesbian couples to file joint income tax returns. He also founded the Houston Human Rights League in 1977. Hill was granted a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Stonewall Lawyers Association in 2002, the Houston Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in 2005, and the Houston Peace and Justice Center in 2006. Hill graduated from the University of Houston.
Christopher Hooks
Journalist, Texas Observer
Christopher Hooks is a political journalist for the Texas Observer. He previously worked as a freelance journalist, with his work appearing in Texas Monthly, Slate, Politico, and others. He covered the 2013 legislative session for The Texas Tribune and runs a new blog for the Observer entitled “Hooks on Politics.” He received a BA in history from the New School.
Trey Martinez Fischer
Texas State Representative
Trey Martinez Fischer is a seventh-term member of the Texas House of Representatives for District 116 of San Antonio. Rep. Martinez Fischer is well known as a successful Latino democrat in Texas, and was recently named one of the 10 Best Legislators of 2013 by Texas Monthly. He is the chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, the oldest and largest Latino legislative caucus in America, and he also sits on the Natural Resources and Ways and Means Committees as well as the Select Committee on Transparency in State Agency Operations. Rep. Martinez Fischer is an especially strong advocate for education and was named the “2013 Friend of Education” by the Texas Classroom Teachers Association. A graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, Rep. Martinez Fischer also received a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Texas San Antonio, and a Masters in Public Administration from the Baruch College of Public Affairs.
Rachel Rebouché
Associate Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law
Rachel Rebouché is an Associate Professor of Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law, where she teaches family law, health law, and comparative family law. After law school, she served as the Associate Director of Adolescent Health Programs at the National Partnership for Women & Families and the Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow at the National Women’s Law Center. She also clerked for Justice Kate O’Regan on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Her latest research assesses the overlap of genetic testing and family law doctrines, comparative methods in reproductive health reform, and governance feminism. Rebouché’s article, The Limits of Reproductive Rights in Improving Women’s Health, appeared in the Alabama Law Review in 2012. Her work has also been published in several compilations, including a chapter entitled Challenges for Contemporary Reproductive Rights Advocacy in Feminist Constitutionalism: Global Perspectives. Rebouché received a JD from Harvard Law School, an LLM from Queen’s University, Belfast, and a BA from Trinity University.
Evan Smith
Editor-in Chief, CEO, and Co-Founder, The Texas Tribune
Evan Smith is the Editor-in-Chief, CEO and co-founder of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan digital news organization. In its first four years in operation, the Tribune won two general excellence awards from the Online News Association, four Edward R. Murrow Awards from the Radio Television Digital News Association, a Sigma Delta Chi award for excellence in journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists, and a Knight-Batten award for innovations in journalism. Smith previously held editorial positions at a number of national magazines, most recently as Deputy Editor of The New Republic. Smith has written for Newsweek, GQ, and other national magazines. He received a BA in public policy from Hamilton College, and an MA in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
Louise Trubek
Clinical Professor of Law Emerita, University of Wisconsin Law School
Louise Trubek is Clinical Professor of Law Emerita at the University of Wisconsin Law School. She is an active scholar and teacher in the fields of health law, public interest law, and regulation and governance. She also co-organizes a Law and Society sponsored International Research Collaboration on Reflective Practitioners/Public Interest Law. Trubek was honored with the Founder’s Award by the University of Wisconsin Law School’s Economic Justice Institute in 2012, and with the Marygold Melli Achievement Award from the Legal Association for Women for significant contributions to women in the law in 2000. Her numerous papers and publications have appeared in Seton Hall Law Review, New York Law Journal, Wisconsin Law Review, and UCLA International Law Review, among others. She received a BS from the University of Wisconsin and a JD from Yale University School of Law.