Occurring Friday evening, October 25, 2019 as part of the Kent State conference: “Commemorating Violent Conflicts and Building Sustainable Peace”

Location: Ballroom of the Kent State University Hotel and Conference Center
Time: Friday, October 25, 7:30 – 9:30 pm.

How can it happen that children and teens sometimes find themselves looking up the barrels of their own governments' guns? The May 4 shootings shocked the United States, but it was hardly unique. This group of discussants brings together scholars and analysts who have worked on police and military violence against youth and people who, as youths, have been the target of this violence. We will use a fishbowl discussion format to engage in a lively discussion to consider the causes and consequences of this surprisingly common form of state violence, and ways to reduce it.

Fishbowl Discussants:

Ms. Christine Nobiss

Christine Nobiss is a Plains Cree-Salteaux from the George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan. She has a master’s degree in Religious Studies with a Native American focus and a minor in Native American studies from the University of Iowa. She is the founder and co-chair of Indigenous Iowa. Indigenous youth were at the forefront of the 2016-17 protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, for which they endured significant violence from the state. Their decision to run thousands of miles (“Run For our Water”) to speak with officials in Washington, D.C. helped inspire thousands of other people to join the protest and bring widespread attention to issues related to environmental justice and indigenous land rights. Standing Rock youth have continued to reflect on the life-changing experience and transformative nature of standing up for what you believe.

Dr. Thomas Grace

Thomas M. Grace, Ph.D., is best known for his scholarship on the student rebellion of the 1960s. He is the author of Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016) as well as other articles and chapters in books devoted to the protest era. As one of nine surviving casualties of the Ohio National Guard gunfire in May 1970, he spoke at the second and fifth commemorations of the fatal shootings at Kent State and in every decade since. In the aftermath of the killings, he served on the board of the Kent Legal Defense Fund and later in the same decade was part of a group of plaintiffs that won a 1974 US Supreme Court decision, Scheuer v. Rhodes, for their right to sue Ohio National guardsmen and he testified in both the subsequent 1975 and 1978 civil trials. Grace also testified at the federal grand jury that returned criminal charges against eight guardsmen in March 1974. Pursuing a long-term interest in history, in 2003, Grace earned a PhD after decades as a social worker and elected labor leader. Currently, he is adjunct professor of history at SUNY/Erie in Buffalo.

Dr. Tony Gaskew

Tony Gaskew, Ph.D., is a professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Pittsburgh, Bradford. He has over twenty years of policing experience and in 2001 he received the Region IV Florida Narcotic Officer of the Year award. He is a Fulbright Hays Fellow and is the founding director of the Prison Education Program, where he has created groundbreaking post-secondary education initiatives in prisons since 2007. As a critical ethnographer, his research focuses on the relationship between policing and the Black experience in the U.S and beyond, decolonizing and dismantling justice systems, and the intersecting metaphysical nature of creating a Black resistance consciousness in the U.S. and beyond. He is the author of Policing Muslim American Communities (Edwin Mellen Press, 2008) and of Rethinking Prison Reentry: Transforming Humiliation into Humility (Lexington Publishers, 2016). His next book, Decolonizing Policing: Critical Race Theory and Black Liberation, is forthcoming in 2020 from Rowman and Littlefield. In 2016 Tony Gaskew was invited to the White House by the Obama administration along with ten other educators from across the nation to lead discussions on criminal justice reform and higher education inside prisons.

Ms. Sibley Hawkins

Sibley Hawkins has been with the International Center for Transitional Justice since 2014, focusing primarily on gender justice and truth seeking in Côte d’Ivoire, Nepal, Syria, and Tunisia and elsewhere. Through research and engagement with victims’ groups, she strives to change the narrative about how women and victims of gender-based violations are perceived. Recently, she has been examining the role of unofficial truth seeking in highlighting victim’s voices and experiences where “official” processes are either non-existent or ineffective. Ms. Hawkins helped develop ICTJ’s gender mainstreaming policy and has conducted workshops with civil society on implementing a gender-sensitive approach. Before joining ICTJ, she focused on the rights of persons with disabilities. She holds a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree in Human Rights and International Law from New York University. She has lived in Colombia and Spain and is fluent in Spanish. She loves performing with her all-female improv group Butterfly Kisses.