Wisconsin Academy: To host a public conversation with social justice advocates Janine Geske and Scott Straus

Contact: Jason A. Smith, communications director

The first event in a new Academy Evenings conversation series called “Talk to Me”

MADISON—Two of the Wisconsin’s leading social justice advocates come together for a scintillating exchange in Talking Resolution: A Conversation on Violence, Restorative Justice, and Human Rights. As part of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters’ Academy Evenings “Talk to Me Conversation Series,” Janine Geske and Scott Straus will consider whether victims, their families, communities and countries can heal after unspeakable acts of violence, and explore what we mean by international human rights. This first Academy Evening of this new series is Tuesday, September 21, 2010, from 7:00–8:30 pm at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art lecture hall, 221 State Street. This free event is open to the public, the doors open at 6:15 pm. For those who cannot attend in person, we offer a live webcast, sponsored by the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy. For more information or to tune in to the live webcast, visit http://www.wisconsinacademy.org.

Janine Geske is a Distinguished Professor of Law at Marquette University and director of the Law School’s Restorative Justice Initiative. A former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice, she served on the Court from 1993–1998. >From 1981–1993, she was a Milwaukee County circuit court judge. Geske has received many honors and accolades and been recognized multiple times as among the best lawyers in the Unites States. She was elected a Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy in 2008.

Scott Straus is an associate professor of political science and international studies and director of the Human Rights Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Cornell University Press, 2006), which received the 2006 Award for Excellence in Political Science and Government from the Association of American Publishers, and, with Robert Lyons, Intimate Enemy: Images and Voices of the Rwandan Genocide (MIT/Zone Books, 2006). His Reconstructing Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Atrocity, co-edited with Lars Waldorf, is forthcoming from the University of Wisconsin Press.

The Academy Evenings “Talk to Me Conversation Series” is sponsored by the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, University of Wisconsin–Madison, M&I Bank, Isthmus Publishing Company, and the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy.

About Academy Evenings

Academy Evenings engage the public in a wide variety of topics of public interest and feature Wisconsin’s leading thinkers, scholars, and artists. These free forums are intended to encourage public interaction with these leaders in an intimate atmosphere designed to foster discussion and build community. The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters sponsors Academy Evenings regularly in Overture Center for the Arts in Madison and at other venues across the state. For more information on Academy Evenings in your area, visit wisconsinacademy.org .