A talk by lawyer Michiko Nakajima. In the course of the Iraq War, citizens in Japan, singly or in groups, have been taking the state to court alleging violation of the "no war" clause of the Constitution in deploying Self-Defense Force troops. Feminist labor lawyer Michiko Nakajima led a group of 15 women plaintiffs in one such suit. This endeavor builds on her half-century of activism engaging with many of the great struggles of postwar Japan, from the US-Japan Security Treaty, gender equality in the workplace, and the Women's Tribunal on Military Sexual Slavery. Part of the Japan at Chicago Lecture Series: Celebrating Protest. Sponsored by apan Committee of the Center for East Asian Studies, the Human Rights Program, the Center for International Studies, the Center for Gender Studies, the Public Interest Law Society and the Japan Law Society.

A talk by Bertha Lujan, Secretaria del Trabajo, Gobierno "Legitimo" de México (de Andrés Manuel López Obrador), former Controlora, Cd. de México (2000-2006), and lead organizer of Frente Auténtico del Trabajo. From the Human Rights in Mexico Series. Sponsored by the Katz Center for Mexican Studies, Center for Latin American Studies, the Human Rights Program, and the Norman Wait Harris Fund of the Center for International Studies.

A conversation between Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, and Susan Thistlethwaite, President of Chicago Theological Seminary. In her book Failing America's Faithful, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend issues a spiritual call to arms to those who feel like her that today's churches—Catholic and Protestant alike—are failing to promote the welfare of those who depend upon them. After recounting her personal story in one of the most prominent Catholic families in America, she shows how America's neediest are now forgotten while their churches fight political battles against abortion rights and homosexual marriages. She provides hope through powerful examples of individuals effecting change and maintains that our individual actions can return our churches to their traditional role as shepherds to their flock. From the World Beyond the Headlines Series. Cosponsored with the Chicago Theological Seminary.

A talk by Philip Lutgendorf, Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies, University of Iowa. From the South Asia Seminar.

A discussion with the director of the film Rokkashomura Rhapsody: A Plutonium Plant Comes to Northern Japan. Part of the Japan at Chicago Lecture Series: Celebrating Protest. Sponsored by the Japan Committee of the Center for East Asian Studies, the Human Rights Program, the Center for International Studies, the Committee on Cinema and Media Studies, the Environmental Studies Program and Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. Co-sponsored by DePaul University.

Based on nearly a decade of painstaking research in archives and census records, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elliot Jaspin's book Buried in the Bitter Waters provides irrefutable evidence that racial cleansing occurred again and again on American soil, and fundamentally reshaped the geography of race. From the World Beyond the Headlines Series. Co-sponsored with the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture.

A panel discussion with: Lisa Haugaard, Executive Director of the Latin America Working Group; Joy Olson, Executive Director of the Washington Office on Latin America; Adam Isacson, Senior Associate at the Center for International Policy. From the Latin American Briefing Series. Co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies and the International House Global Voices Program.

Sponsored by the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies, the Division of the Humanities, the Division of the Social Sciences, the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, the College, the Committee on Jewish Studies, the Program in Poetry and Poetics, the Russian Studies Workshop, the Department of History, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, and Critical Inquiry.

A discussion with Alexander Vershbow, United States Ambassador to the Republic of Korea and Lee Tae-sik, Korean Ambassador to the United States. From the World Beyond the Headlines Series. Cosponsored by the Korea Economic Institute, the Korean Consulate of Chicago and the Center for East Asian Studies.

Sara Paretsky is the author of the bestselling V. I. Warshawski novels, including, most recently, Fire Sale and Blacklist. She is the winner of many awards, including the Cartier Diamond Dagger award for lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers’ Association. This lecture series honors the life and work of Dr. Robert Kirschner, noted forensic pathologist and international human rights activist, who was a founder of the University of Chicago Human Rights Program. From the Human Rights Program's Robert H. Kirschner Memorial Lecture Series.