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BY: | DATE: Mar 18, 2018

Join us for the next part of the Sorensen Center’s Speaker Series, “Critical Voices: From Local to Global,” on addressing inequalities and what it means to live in a constitutional democracy today

 

TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 2018

6:00 pm     Welcome Reception

6:30 pm     Conversation

7:30 pm     Reception

 

The Sorensen Center for International Peace and Justice is thrilled to invite you to an evening with two renowned voices in democracy on the world’s stage.  Please join us for a conversation and reception; this event is free and open to the public.

 

CLICK HERE TO RSVP

 

South African Justice Albie Sachs

South African Justice Albie Sachs

Justice Albie Sachs is a retired Justice of the South African Constitutional Court. His career in human rights activism began in 1955 at the age of seventeen when, as a second year law student at the University of Cape Town, he took part in the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign. During the next 11 years, Justice Sachs worked as an activist and lawyer defending individuals targeted by apartheid laws. After several stints of detention and solitary confinement, Justice Sachs went into exile in 1966.  Following the first democratic elections in 1994, President Nelson Mandela appointed Justice Sachs to the newly established Constitutional Court, where he served for 15 years. He participated in landmark rulings, including declaring capital punishment a violation of the right to life as well as making it unconstitutional to prevent gay and lesbian people from marrying. The court also backed AIDS campaigners in 2002 by insisting that the government had a duty to provide HIV-positive pregnant women with drugs to reduce the risk of transmission to their newborn babies. Since his retirement from the Court, Justice Sachs has been a frequent visiting professor and has served as an advisor on matters of constitutional law. A prolific author, Justice Sachs has won two Alan Paton Awards, for Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter and The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law. His latest book is We, the People: Insights of an Activist Judge.

 

Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation

photo courtesy of the Ford Foundation

Darren Walker is president of the Ford Foundation where is pioneering a model of disruptive philanthropy targeting the causes of inequality. In this role, he led the philanthropy committee that helped bring resolution to Detroit’s historic bankruptcy declaration and he also chairs the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance. Previously, he was vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation, managing the Rebuild New Orleans initiative after Hurricane Katrina, and Chief Operating Officer of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, overseeing a revitalization program of central Harlem. Walker also had a decade-long career in international law and finance. He is a member of the Commission on the Future of Riker’s Island, the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and numerous boards.  Walker was raised by a single mother in Ames and later Goose Creek, Texas, and was one of the first children to benefit from the Head Start Program. Educated exclusively in public schools, Walker received the “Distinguished Alumnus Award,” the highest honor given by his alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin. Walker was recently named one of Rolling Stones 25 People Shaping the Future.

 

The Sorensen Center, named after Ted Sorensen, trains social justice lawyers to work from the local to the global levels, protecting rights of those affected by instability, conflict, and repression. 
For more information visit www.SorensenCenter.net or email SorensenCenter@law.cuny.edu.