The Issues in African Development Seminar Series examines critical concerns in contemporary Africa using a different theme each semester. The seminars provide a forum for participants to explore alternative perspectives and exchange ideas. They are also a focal activity for students and faculty interested in African development. In addition, this seminar series prepares students for higher level courses on African economic, social, and political development. The presentations are designed for students who are interested in development as well as Africa’s place in global studies, want to know about the peoples, cultures, and societies that call Africa home, and wish to explore development theories and alternate viewpoints on development practice.

Please join us for a virtual seminar given by our guest Professor Marissa Jackson Sow of the University of Richmond School of Law and moderated by Cornell’s Professor Desirée LeClercq.

SEMINAR: Reckoning With the Racial Contract in International Law

DATE: Tuesday, November 8, 2022

TIME: 12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. ET

Click this link to sign up for the Zoom Webinar: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0kFc-HyiRISp6L-tpnTQfQ

The Seminar: Reckoning with the Racial Contract in International Law

Calls from scholars for anti-racist transformations within international law and international law scholarship and pedagogy have made the failure of international law to define, condemn, and combat racism increasingly ubiquitous, and to the human rights advocate, confounding. Despite the ongoing commemoration of the International Decade for People of African Descent and direct calls from UN member states for the United Nations to confront the issues of systemic racism and police brutality in liberal Western states, the United Nations has appeared to shy away from any measures beyond those which gently encourage States to aspire to eliminate racial discrimination. Moreover, despite international law’s formal guarantees of equality of access to justice and accountability for human rights violations, people of African descent and majority Black member states are systematically constructed out of international policymaking authority, and international legal protections—leaving them vulnerable to aggression, exploitation, and extraction.

Professor Jackson contends that the contemporary public international law regime, created and dominated by settler colonial states, has no ability to combat anti-Black racism because it has no intent or interest in dismantling racism; rather, the regime is both the manifestation of global racial contracting and the mechanism by which such contracting persists. The structure of the United Nations, along with the substance and procedure of international law, work together in coordinated fashion to guarantee that the racial contracts in force in racial states, are also performed, enforced, and protected within a global Racial Superstate.

About our Distinguished Guest: Professor Marissa Jackson Sow

Professor Jackson Sow is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law. She teaches and writes in the areas of contracts, constitutional law, international law, human rights, and legal theory/jurisprudence. Her most recent work, Protect and Serve, was published in the California Law Review. Professor Jackson Sow earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School, her Master of Laws from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and her B.A. from Northwestern University. Immediately prior to returning to academia, Professor Jackson served as a Leadership in Government Fellow for the Open Society Foundations and a 2020 Fellow for the Fellowship Programme for People of African Descent hosted by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The Cornell Institute for African Development (IAD) hosts a monthly webinar on contemporary African issues. This webinar series features diverse voices from the African continent and the Diaspora on a wide range of themes, challenges, breakthroughs in cutting-edge research outcomes, innovations, and discoveries across all disciplines and area studies. The topics include climate change, the environment, gender, education, the economy, health, governance, creative arts, Indigenous knowledge systems, the youth, and the recent/ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Other key topics deal with engaged research and academic issues on theory, critical thinking, approaches, methodologies, and fundamental and applied research in the development process. The webinar is open to the global academic public and all are welcome to participate.

The Issues in African Development Seminar Series examines critical concerns in contemporary Africa using a different theme each semester. The seminars provide a forum for participants to explore alternative perspectives and exchange ideas. They are also a focal activity for students and faculty interested in African development. In addition, this seminar series prepares students for higher level courses on African economic, social, and political development. The presentations are designed for students who are interested in development as well as Africa’s place in global studies, want to know about the peoples, cultures, and societies that call Africa home, and wish to explore development theories and alternate viewpoints on development practice.