October 29, 2020 | 12:00pm
In times of crisis, upheaval, and deep social change, what defines moral leadership? What are the principals required of moral leadership? With the chaos of 2020 and in advance of the US election, join us for a stimulating conversation that focuses on the intricacies of moral leadership in times of genocide, civil rights, and women’s rights movements.
A conversation with Alexis Herr, University of San Francisco, Patricia Schechter, Portland State University, and Bobbin Singh, Oregon Justice Resource Center, moderated by Tim DuRoche, WorldOregon.
Co-sponsored by OJMCHE, WorldOregon, and the Oregon Justice Resource Center
We are grateful for your participation and encourage you to consider supporting our virtual programs.
Alexis Herr has dedicated her life to combating genocide and atrocity. Ms. Herr received a doctorate in Holocaust History from the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. In addition to holding academic positions at University of California, Berkeley, Keene State College, Northeastern University, and San Francisco State University, she has also worked for nonprofit organizations focused on Holocaust, genocide, and refugee education and advocacy. Dr. Herr is the recipient of fellowships and awards including the Saul Kagan Claims Conference Postdoctoral Fellowship (2017-2018), the European Historical Research Infrastructure Fellowship (2017), and the Pearl Resnick Postdoctoral Fellowship in Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC (2016). She is the author of The Holocaust and Compensated Compliance in Italy: Fossoli di Carpi, 1942 – 1952 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and the editor of Rwanda: The Essential Reference Guide (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2018) and Sudan: The Essential Reference Guide (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2020).
Patricia Schechter grew up on the east coast and attended Mount Holyoke College and Princeton University. In 1995, she joined the PSU history department faculty where she teaches women’s history, public history, and world history. Her first two books centered on African American women’s history. Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880-1920 (2001) focuses on antilynching activism. Remembering the Power of Words: The Life of an Activist, Legislator, and Community Leader (2011) is an oral memoir of Avel Louise Gordly, the first Black woman to be elected to the Oregon state senate. Her most recent public history project was a 20-year retrospective on Street Roots, Portland’s street newspaper, featuring an exhibit at the Multnomah County Public Library in 2019.
Bobbin Singh is the founding Executive Director of Oregon Justice Resource Center. He was born and raised in Atlanta, GA., and deeply inspired by the great figures of the civil rights movement in the South, often joking that as an Atlantan the first names he learned as a child were Dr. Martin Luther King, Andrew Young, Hosea Williams, and John Lewis. Bobbin moved to Portland in 2003, studying for his Bachelor’s at Portland State University and his JD at an Oregon law school. After graduating from law school in 2011, he started Oregon Justice Resource Center. Bobbin believes that mass incarceration, including over incarceration, mass conviction, and wrongful convictions, is in fact the greatest civil rights crisis of our time and we must all take ownership of it. He argues that for individual rights to have any meaning, we must protect them for everyone, without exception. Bobbin has served on the Board of Directors for the ACLU of Oregon from 2011-2017 (holding a number of leadership positions, including serving on the Executive Committee) and is currently a member of the Oregon Council on Civil Rights.