The Sawyer Seminar presents Reparative and Restorative Paradigms for Environmental Justice

Date & Time

Wednesday, April 23, 2025, 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.

Category

Seminar

Location

Newark Express, 2nd Floor, Room 213

54 Halsey Street Newark, NJ, 07102

Contact

Mayte Green-Mercado

mg1426@newark.rutgers.edu

Information

Mayte Green-Mercado, Lead Principal Investigator, Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University - Newark Campus Lauren Shallish, Co-Principal Investigator, Department of Urban Education Co-Sponsors: Africana Studies Department, Rutgers – Newark Arabic Language Initiative, Rutgers – Newark Center for Migration and the Global City English Department, Rutgers – Newark Federated Department of History Department, Rutgers – Newark Honors College, Rutgers – Newark Humanities Action Lab, Rutgers – Newark Joesph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies, Rutgers – Newark Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Minor, Rutgers – Newark New Jersey Scholarship Transformative Education in Prison Program, Rutgers – Newark School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers – Newark Sheila Y. Oliver Center for Politics and Race in America, Rutgers – Newark Sociology and Anthropology Department, Rutgers – Newark

The final seminar Reparative and Restorative Paradigms for Environmental Justice, examines local and global perspectives to the existential challenges posed by climate change. The seminar will consider how reparative and restorative approaches to environmental justice may offer more inclusive opportunities to re-imagine the terms of citizenship and self-government; ones that embed the interconnectedness of humans and their ecology in culture, politics, and laws.

Sawyer_Seminar_Environmental Justice Flyer

Program

9:00 – 9:45 AM: Breakfast

9:45 – 10:00 AM: Introductory and Opening Remarks
Mayte Green Mercado, Associate Professor of History, and the Newark Campus Director of the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice

10:00 – 11:45 AM: Panel Ecocide in the Middle East
Kali Rubaii, PhD, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Purdue University
Shourideh C. Molavi, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Forensic Architecture
Mariam Abazeri, PhD, Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University
Amir Moosavi, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Moderator

11:45 – 1:45 PM: Lunch

2:00 – 3:20 PM: Green Amendments: Legal and Constitutional Frameworks for Environmental Justice
Commissioner Shawn M. LaTourette, New Jersey’s Commission of Environmental Protection
Maya K. van Rossum, Founder of the Green Amendment For The Generations Movement
Quinn Yeargain PhD, Associate Professor of Law, Michigan State University
Brian Phillips Murphy, Associate Professor of History, Moderator

3:20 – 3:30 PM: Coffee/Tea Break

3:30 – 5:30 PM: Mini Film Screening Mann v. Ford and The Meaning of the Seed
Anita Bakshi PhD, Instructor, Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey – New Brunswick
Wayne Mann, Ramapough Lenape Nation
Micah Fink, Emmy-Nominated Producer and Director of Mann v. Ford
Jack Tchen, Director, Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience, Moderator

5:30 – 6:00 PM: Closing Remarks

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