Our Path Forward
Photo Credit: Kathy Huang
We are excited to announce late-breaking news that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will speak as part of the Library’s Democracy Day activities. He is scheduled to speak at 1:15 PM in the Main Library, Lecture Hall, including time for questions
This event is the first in an Our Path Forward series presented by the Library to affirm its commitment to public discourse and democracy during a period of change and uncertainty. Structured as a panel of leading voices and experts from the community, conversation will touch on topics such as immigration, civil rights, journalism and mass incarceration.
The program will consist of a panel discussion, as well as opportunities for comments and questions from the audience. Confirmed speakers include:
Claire Messud, American novelist and literature and creative writing professor, currently a Senior Lecturer at Harvard. Best known as the author of the novels The Emperor’s Children and The Woman Upstairs.
Ron Sullivan, Jr., a leading theorist in the areas of criminal law, criminal procedure, trial practice and techniques, legal ethics, and race theory. He is the faculty director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute and the Harvard Trial Advocacy Workshop.
Miguel de Icaza, distinguished Engineer at Microsoft focusing on mobile developer tools. He co-founded Xamarin in 2011 and Ximian in 1999, both with Nat Friedman. Miguel co-founded the GNOME project in 1997, and has directed the Mono project since its creation in 2001, including multiple Mono releases at Novell. Miguel has received the Free Software Foundation 1999 Free Software Award, the MIT Technology Review Innovator of the Year Award in 1999, and was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 innovators for the new century in September 2000. In 1997, he was interviewed by Microsoft for a position but lacked the university degree to obtain a work H1-B Visa. Today he is one of the most respected voices in Open Source. Born in Mexico, de Icaza became a US Citizen in 2015.
Susan Church, chair of the American Immigration Lawyers of New England and a partner at the law firm of Demissie & Church. She is a trial and appellate attorney focusing on the intersection of criminal defense and immigration. With the assistance of the ACLU and Mintz Levin law firm, she recently successfully sued President Donald Trump over his travel ban directed against Muslims. Church was one of the early lawyers at Logan Airport the day of the EO by POTUS Trump.
Peter Kadzis, @Kadzis WGBH News, Senior Editor, contributes political analysis, and is part of the trio that produces the Scrum Podcast. He has spent years inside daily newspapers and national magazines before joining the now-defunct Boston Phoenix, where he worked for 25 years—primarily as editor or executive editor. A thoughtful voice on journalism and this political moment in time.