UC Davis experts: Law, civil liberties and terrorism
The following University of California, Davis, faculty are available to comment on aspects of law, civil liberties and terrorism.
- Civil rights, racial profiling
- 9/11 and racial profiling
- Censorship, freedom of expression
- Guantánamo Bay and post 9/11 policies and practices
- War on terrorism
Civil rights, racial profiling
Kevin Johnson, professor and dean of the UC Davis School of Law, has written extensively about how security measures adopted in the war on terrorism have adversely affected the civil rights of Arab and Muslim noncitizens and impacted immigration enforcement generally. Contact: Kevin Johnson, School of Law, (530) 752-0243, krjohnson@ucdavis.edu.
9/11 and racial profiling
Thomas Joo of the School of Law is author of "Presumed Disloyal: Wen Ho Lee, the War on Terrorism, and the Construction of Race," in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. In the article, he discusses how Asian Americans are often presumed to be disloyal to the United States. This had disastrous consequences for Japanese Americans during World War II and more recently for Wen Ho Lee, the American nuclear scientist wrongly accused of spying for China. Arab Americans are now presumed to be disloyal terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, with similarly tragic consequences for civil rights. Joo teaches and writes about race and Asian American legal history. Contact: Thomas Joo, School of Law, (530) 754-6089, twjoo@ucdavis.edu.
Censorhip, freedom of expression
Challenging books is a pervasive American response to literature that deals with sex, race, homosexuality and other uncomfortable subjects, says UC Davis English professor Don Abbott, who specializes in freedom-of-expression issues. "There is this impulse in American society to challenge literature because some groups want to prohibit people from reading certain books, which is a violation of the First Amendment," Abbott says. Among the most challenged books are those in the Harry Potter series, because they deal with wizardry and magic, Abbott points out. However, a perennial favorite book to ban has been "Huckleberry Finn," because of its presumably racist message and language. Most of the challenged books have received recognition as good or even great literature, Abbott says. Contact: Don Abbott, English, dpabbott@ucdavis.edu, (530) 752-6097.
Guantánamo Bay and post 9/11 policies and practices
Almerindo Ojeda is director of the UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas and principal investigator for its flagship project, the Guantanamo Testimonials Project. He can talk about his research, which shows that the U.S. government underreported the number of juvenile detainees at Guantánamo. He started The Davis Group, a gathering of lawyers (both military and civilian), human rights defenders and academics that first met in 2009 and then drafted specific recommendations for the creation of a presidential commission of inquiry into the detention policies and practices post 9/11. Contact: Almerindo Ojeda, Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, aeojeda@ucdavis.edu, (530) 574-4865.
War on terrorism
Scott Cutler Shershow, professor of English at UC Davis, can talk about the legal, political and philosophic issues raised by the war on terrorism. He is the co-author of recent essays examining indefinite detention, torture and warrantless wiretapping. A condensed version of his co-authored work, "The Guantánamo 'Black Hole': The Law of War and the Sovereign Exception," is available online. He is working on a book about human dignity and human rights law. Contact: Scott Shershow, English, scshershow@ucdavis.edu, (530) 400-4751.
Media contacts
- Karen Nikos, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-6101, kmnikos@ucdavis.edu.
Last updated Sept. 6, 2011
