Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

Race and Election Law

Tue, November 1, 2022
Dinner Program
John Fund and Gowri Ramachandran, panelists

In recent years, state legislatures in Georgia, Texas, Florida, and elsewhere have changed election law to strengthen voter identification requirements, limit mail elections and ballot collection, or tighten absentee ballot deadlines. Critics argue that these laws represent "Jim Crow 2.0," an attempt to suppress the votes of blacks and other racial minorities. Supporters argue that they are necessary to ensure secure elections and that they pose no unfair barriers to voters of any race. In a conversation facilitated by Zachary Courser, visiting assistant professor of government at CMC and director of the CMC's Policy Lab, John Fund of the National Review and Gowri Ramachandrann of the Brennan Center, will share their perspectives on this nationally debated issue.

This event is co-sponsored by the Jerome H. Garris Dialogue Series at CMC with additional support from the Open Academy and the Presidential Initiative on Anti-Racism and the Black Experience in America, all at CMC.

John Fund
John Fund is national affairs columnist for National Review magazine, a contributor to Fox News.com, and an on-air analyst for Newsmax TV. He is an often-quoted expert on the interconnections between politics and economics.

He previously served as a columnist and editorial board member for The Wall Street Journal. for 27 years.  

He is the author or co-author of several books, including Our Broken Elections: How The Left Changed The Way You Vote (2021), Obama's Enforcer: Eric Holder (2014), Who's Counting(2012); and Cleaning House: America's Campaign For Term Limits (1994).

Born in Tucson, Arizona, he worked as a research analyst for the California Legislature in Sacramento before beginning his journalism career as a reporter for the syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. He has reported on foreign affairs from over 40 countries. 

Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, called him "the Tom Paine of the modern Congressional reform movement." He has won awards from the Institute for Justice, The Competitive Enterprise Institute and The Fund for American Studies. 

Gowri Ramachandran
Gowri Ramachandran serves as senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Democracy program. Her work focuses on election security, election administration, and combatting election disinformation.

Before joining the Brennan Center, she was professor of law at Southwestern Law School, in Los Angeles where she taught courses in constitutional law, employment discrimination, critical race theory, and the Ninth Circuit Appellate Litigation Clinic. Her work has been published in Election Law Journal, North Carolina Law Review, and Yale Law Journal online, among others.

She serves on the Ninth Circuit’s Fairness Committee, which considers racial, religious, gender, and other disparities in the administration of justice.

Ramachandran received her undergraduate degree in mathematics from Yale College and a master’s degree in statistics from Harvard University. While in law school, she served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. After graduating from law school in 2003, Ramachandran served as law clerk to Judge Sidney R. Thomas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Billings, Montana.

(Source: https://www.brennancenter.org/experts/gowri-ramachandran)

This event is co-sponsored by the Jerome H. Garris Dialogue Series at CMC with additional support from the Open Academy and the Presidential Initiative on Anti-Racism and the Black Experience in America, all at CMC.

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

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