YUFA
External
Report on Critical Race Theory and Human
Rights Conference
by Lesley Jacobs
Law & Society Program, Arts
Director, Graduate Program in Social & Political Thought
29 Nov 05 - I attended the conference organized by the University of
Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), held downtown at the Renaissance Hotel.
Attendance by university faculty other than from UOIT was poor. There
were however quite a few undergraduates from UOIT - probably a majority
of those attending. Several NGOs were well represented, especially the
African Canadian Legal Clinic and the Urban Race Alliance. Several
members from the judiciary and the various bars were also present.
Kimberly Crenshaw, one of the founders of the critical race theory
movement in the United States, ended up missing her keynote address and
instead gave a talk the next day at the end of the conference. The talk
was not well attended but was nonetheless thoughtful and provocative, in
effect, outlining her views about the important developments in critical
race theory.
I attended a number of other sessions. Virtually all of these were
attended mainly by 2nd year undergraduate students from their criminal
justice program.
Most knew little about the topics. None of the sessions were especially
well thought out except the one on racial profiling. This one did an
excellent job of situating some of the work - academic and advocacy -
on racial profiling in Canada in a broader context.
I was invited by the conference organizer to present a paper when I
indicated in October that I was interested in attending. I presented a
paper titled "Legal Responses to Racial Discrimination: Comparing human
rights and equal opportunity legislation and organizations in Canada and
Hong Kong", which is a part of a project funding by a major MRCI-SSHRC
collaborative grant I hold with several others (at the Institute of
Asian Studies, UBC) on human rights and international trade disputes in
Canada, Japan, and China. Although the paper was reasonably well
attended, few of those attending knew much about comparative socio-legal
scholarship and I believe I failed to excite much interest in the topic.
I appreciate YUFA's support for conferences of this sort, with a critical
edge (especially given what I regard as the general neglect of race
issues at York
in general).