As we have witnessed time and again, legalized violence is a social epidemic that harms marginalized communities. How might we reimagine systems of law enforcement and public safety both broadly and here in Madison? The panelists at this Humanities NOW conversation will help provide historical and political context for this urgent discussion.
Panelists speak from professional and personal contexts, including the UW-Madison History Department, the UW-Madison Law School, and our Madison community. We’ll be joined by:
- Simon Balto, Assistant Professor of History, UW-Madison
- Brian Benford, District 6 Alder (Madison, WI) and Success Coach for the UW-Madison Odyssey Project
- Lisa Washington, William H. Hastie Fellow, Law School, UW-Madison
- Moderated by DeVon Wilson, Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, College of Letters & Science, UW-Madison and Russ Castronovo, Director, Center for the Humanities and Tom Paine Professor of English and Dorothy Draheim Professor of American Studies, UW-Madison
Please note this is a hybrid event. It will be hosted in-person at the UW South Madison Partnership, 2238 South Park Street, and we’ll also offer a virtual option (Zoom). More information and registration will be available soon.
Held twice each academic year, Humanities NOW events offer both the campus and the community intellectual resources for understanding complex events. We aim to bring together campus faculty and staff and community experts to discuss current issues that have relevance not just for the humanities and higher education but our broader community.
- Simon Balto, Assistant Professor of History, UW-Madison: Simon Balto is a scholar, writer, and teacher of History and African American Studies. He is the author of the multi-award-winning Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). He is a regular contributor for The Guardian, and has written for multiple scholarly and popular publications, including TIME, The Washington Post, The Baffler, The Progressive, The Journal of African American History, Journal of Urban History, and Labor, among others. His media appearances include live interviews on the BBC World News, CNBC, and Al-Jazeera, as well as dozens of interviews for print pieces published around the world. He teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison after previously working at the University of Iowa and Ball State University. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- Brian Benford, District 6 Alder (Madison, WI) and Success Coach for the UW-Madison Odyssey Project: For the last thirty years, Brian Benford has fought for Madison’s most underserved and vulnerable communities as an activist, City Alder, and family advocate. He’s spent his career working directly with, and advocating for, at-risk youth, low-income families, and neighborhood organizations. Benford graduated from Odyssey in 2007 and is now Odyssey’s Success Coach, where he supports Odyssey students and alumni facing obstacles that stand in the way of pursuing higher education.
- Lisa Washington, William H. Hastie Fellow, Law School, UW-Madison: Lisa Washington (she/her/hers) is the current William H. Hastie Fellow at the University of Wisconsin. She is particularly interested in overlapping issues of poverty, race, and gender in the carceral state. Her research focuses on the intersections of family regulation law and the criminal legal system. Lisa’s current research project examines epistemic injustice in the family regulation system (“child welfare system”). This project examines how survivors of domestic violence are discredited, silenced, and excluded from shaping complex, authentic survival narratives. She argues that interventions in mainstream knowledge production should center directly impacted communities and families. She argues that the subjugation of marginalized knowledge in the criminal legal and family regulation system perpetuates already existing societal power structures.
