The 14th Amendment and the Crises in American Democracy with Sherrilyn Ifill

When
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Sherrilyn Ifill, a confident Black woman dressed in a white dress shirt and black suit jacket with her hands folded on a table

Monday, November 3, 2025 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Gildenhorn Recital Hall

Sherrilyn Ifill, professor of law and founding director of the 14th Amendment Center for Law and Democracy at Howard University, will deliver a Douglass Center for Leadership Through the Humanities public lecture on the 14th Amendment and the Crises in American Democracy. Professor Ifill's decades-long leadership in centering humanity in the law, combined with UMD’s selection of the Constitution as our First Year Book and the current and ongoing attacks on due process and birthright citizenship makes this an important moment to hear her analysis on this amendment, considered one of the most consequential.

Passed during Reconstruction, the 14th Amendment not only set out to protect the citizenship and rights of formerly enslaved Black people, but it also issued safeguards disqualifying former insurrectionists from running for state and federal office. Professor Ifill will offer analysis on the 14th Amendment in contemporary life and politics with a central focus on the human condition in law and democracy.

Learn more and register here.

Act Like You Know: A Podcast Preview and Talkback on Black Folks, Pop Culture, and Politics

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Act Like You Know is a podcast preview and talk-back event that centers the technical and professional communication value of Black cultural and rhetorical practices. Featuring Dapper Dan Midas (aka DDm), who hosts the Secretary of Shade YouTube channel, the event will screen excerpts from the first episode of the Act Like You Know podcast, followed by a talk-back style panel discussion. Together, we’ll explore the use of Black and queer cultural knowledge and language practices to communicate and translate complex social and political commentary. The event’s goal is to spark a dialogue about language, expertise, and ethos among folks within and outside the academy and to prompt us all to consider the cultural, rhetorical, and linguistic skills that Black (and other marginalized) writers and communicators bring to the task of making complex and specialized knowledge more legible, accessible, and ultimately more useful. 

October 24, 2024 Tawes Hall, Room 1121 Ulrich Recital Hall 5-7pm, followed by a light reception

Hosted by the Frederick Douglass Center for Leadership through the Humanities

Learn more and RSVP here

New Book Throws Jab at Art of Black Boxers

image of book cover with male black boxer
In “Heavyweight: Black Boxers and the Fight for Representation,” Jordana Moore Saggese, art history professor and director of the David C. Driskell Center, examines artistic depictions of Black boxers from the 19th through 21st centuries, revealing how their renderings reflected and reinforced stereotypes about Black men’s physicality, celebrity, power and place in the United States.
Learn more here

Lessons in Leadership: Frederick Douglass’ Legacy in the 21st Century

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Kenneth Morris
The Frederick Douglass Center for Leadership Through the Humanities hosts Kenneth Morris as the inaugural speaker for its Lessons in Leadership series. A descendant of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, Morris will share insights on leadership and his work to end systems of exploitation and oppression through his role as co-founder and president of the Rochester, NY-based nonprofit Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives (FDFI). 
 
Morris will be in conversation with ARHU Dean Stephanie Shonekan and Associate Dean GerShun Avilez, director of the Douglass Center. This event will be followed by a reception and include a book giveaway of the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.”
 
Monday, November 4, 2024 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm, Tawes Hall, Ulrich Recital Hall
 
 
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