The Centre for Feminist Legal Studies presents:
Zara Suleman
Family Law Project Director,
West Coast LEAF
“Justicia in Your Face:
Addressing Race and Gender in Law Schools and Legal Education “
WEDNESDAY, 12:30-1:30PM,
SEPTEMBER 17, 2008
Room 157, Curtis Building
1822 East Mall, UBC
I felt during my law student days that I was always waiting for my legal education to being. I always felt that “something” was missing or perhaps that I was missing something…[I]f I could only change, perhaps fit in a little better, my law experience would be rewarding. Both the institution and some of my teachers reinforced this belief. Since then I have understood that the greatest obstacle was not myself but the very structure of the institution and the legal studies program.
– Patricia Monture Angus
As long as we see ourselves as not implicated in relations of power, as innocent, we cannot begin to walk the path of social justice and to thread our way through the complexities of power relations.
– Sherene Razack
Lecture: From the personal to the institutional – Zara Suleman will explore the issues of race and gender (among other intersections) that continue to isolate and make invisible the lived realities of racialized students in law school. This session is meant to be just a beginning to a larger discussion and brainstorm of strategies to address systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ableism and other oppressions in law schools, legal education and practice.
Speaker Bio: Zara Suleman is the Family Law Project Director at West Coast LEAF (the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund) in Vancouver. She has a B.A. from Simon Fraser University, an LL.B. from the University of Ottawa and an LL.M. from the University of Victoria. She is a long-time activist and former front-line rape crisis and transition house worker. She has also worked actively on anti-racist initiatives and worked for several years as an immigrant and refugee community advocate. Zara’s most recent co-written publication with Leighann Burns is, “Justicia in Your Face: How to Survive Law as an Anti-Colonial, Anti-Racist, Feminist Activist” published in Calling For Change: Women, Law, and the Legal Profession, edited by Elizabeth Sheehy and Sheila McIntyre (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2006).
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