2016 John Breaux Symposium to Focus on Voting Rights in America
04/12/2016
Watch the 2016 Breaux Symposium here:
Nearly 51 years after passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication will host a two-day symposium to examine the current state of political participation in the United States, as well as race relations in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
This year’s annual John Breaux Symposium – “This Great Experiment in Human Progress: Race, Voting and Mass Communication a Half Century After the Voting Rights Act” – will take place in the Holliday Forum at LSU’s Journalism Building in Baton Rouge, April 11-12, 2016.
LSU’s Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs sponsors the annual symposium. The Race in the Americas (RITA) group, will join the Reilly Center as the symposium’s co-sponsor.
Among those participating in the symposium will be:
Former U.S. Sen. John Breaux; Charles S. Bullock, the Richard B. Russell professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia; Nicole Austin-Hillery, director and counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University;
Journalist Ari Berman, author of Give Us The Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America; Kwame Holman of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University; David Goodman, president of The Andrew Goodman Foundation, and brother of Andrew Goodman (one of three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964);
Theresa Amato, founder of the Citizens Advocacy Center; Jarvis DeBerry, columnist for NOLA.com | New Orleans Times Picayune; Alfreda Tillman Bester, general counsel for the Louisiana State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Jasmyne Cannick, broadcaster and social commentator and Glo Smith, State Director, Douglass Leadership Institute; Campaigns & Elections Chair, Florida Federation of Republican Women.
Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler; Louisiana state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, chair of the Democratic Party of Louisiana; Robin Armstrong, national committeeman from Texas, Republican National Committee; Rickey Cole, chair of the Democratic Party of Mississippi, Gilberto Hinojosa, chair of the Democratic Party of Texas and Jason Dore, executive director of the Republican Party of Louisiana.
“We are honored to host such a distinguished group of scholars, political leaders, journalists and activists to discuss one of the issues most important to our democratic society – voting and access to the ballot,” Manship School Dean Jerry Ceppos said. “And we are delighted that RITA has joined us in sponsoring this symposium.”
The Breaux Symposium facilitates lively debate and discussion on themes relating to politics and mass communication. Underpinning the focus of the Manship School on the study of media and politics, the central question at the heart of each Breaux Symposium is: How well is the public being informed, and what must be done to increase citizen awareness and constructive debate? The 2016 event will focus on issues surrounding voting and political participation, and race relations in U.S. society in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
The symposium’s proceedings are free and open to the public. For more information, including a schedule of the conference proceedings, please contact Kelli Palmer at kpalm13@lsu.edu or 225-578-7312 or James Owen Heath at jamesoheath@raceintheamericas.com.