For more information, please contact:
Gwen Osborne, director of public affairs, (312) 906-5251
ADVISORY TO PRODUCERS, COLUMNISTS, AND ASSIGNMENT, LEGAL, PLANNING, BUSINESS AND DAYBOOK EDITORS
CHICAGO–February 19, 2007–Chicago-Kent College of Law and Stuart School of Business have experts available to discuss current issues. To reach any of our experts, call Gwen Osborne, director of public affairs, at (312) 906-5251. Press releases and earlier advisories are available on our Web site: www.kentlaw.edu/news/advisory.
Former NBA All-Star Tim Hardaway has again apologized for disparaging remarks he made about gays during a radio interview a week after former NBA player John Amaechi revealed his homosexuality in a forthcoming memoir, Man in the Middle. As a result of his statements, Hardaway was banned from participation in current and future All-Star activities and has lost two commercial endorsement deals. Hardaway’s name was also removed from a Miami car wash he co-owns after a boycott by gay and lesbian groups was announced. Sports attorney and adjunct professor Eldon L. Ham is the author of The Playmasters: An Unauthorized History of the NBA and The 100 Greatest Sports Blunders of All Time.
The number of U.S. servicemembers with criminal records has doubled in the past three years, according to the findings of a recent study by the Michael D. Palm Center at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The report says last year approximately 100,000 people with criminal records were allowed to join the service. Nearly 44,000 people convicted of serious misdemeanors, more than 1,600 convicted felons, and almost 59,000 people with histories of drug abuse were allowed to enlist under the military’s “moral waivers program.” The military has also raised its age limit from 35 to 42 years old and lowered the acceptable scores on its aptitude test. Chicago-Kent professor Michael I. Spak served on active duty with the U.S. Army in the Judge Advocate General's Corps from 1963 to 1969 and has remained in the U.S. Army Reserves. As Colonel Spak, he is currently liaison officer of the Judge Advocate General's School in Charlottesville, Virginia, which covers a seven-state area. He is the author of Cases and Materials on Military Law and Military Justice. Professor Spak is available for interviews.
February is Black History Month. Chicago-Kent has experts available to discuss a number of legal issues related to the African-American experience.
The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, a bill currently before Congress, would require the Justice Department and the FBI to create cold-case units dedicated to civil rights crimes. The law is named for Emmett Till, a Chicago teenager whose racially motivated murder in Mississippi in 1955 was a major event in the Civil Rights era. The Till murder remained a cold case for a half century. In 2005, the FBI and Mississippi prosecutors exhumed Till's body from a suburban Chicago cemetery to look for clues in his murder and determine whether additional charges are warranted. Two men were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury for Till’s murder in 1955. The men, who are both deceased, later confessed to the crime in an interview with a Look Magazine reporter. A Mississippi grand jury will convene next month to hear additional information about the case. Professor Richard S. Kling, a criminal defense attorney who teaches forensic evidence courses, is available for interviews.
The proposed Chicago Mercantile Exchange-CBOT merger. Professor Michael Gorham, director of IIT’s Stuart School of Business Center for Financial Markets, is available for interviews. Professor Gorham served as the first director of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s new Division of Market Oversight, a division of 100 economists, lawyers, futures trading specialists and others dedicated to the oversight of the nation’s 12 futures exchanges.
Downtown Campus Events:
February 28: “National Security and the Constitution” is the topic of a lecture by Gary W. Hart, Wirth Chair Professor at the University of Colorado and distinguished fellow at the New America Foundation. Senator Hart served 12 years in the U.S. Senate, where he was a member of the Armed Services Committee. He also played a leadership role with regard to environmental and conservation legislation, military reform initiatives and foreign policy. In 1984 and 1988, he sought the Democratic party nomination for president. Since his retirement from the Senate, he has been involved in international law and business, as a strategic advisor to major U.S. corporations, and as an author and lecturer. Senator Hart served as a co-chair of the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century, which proposed an overhaul of U.S. national security structures and policies. This program, which free and open to the public, will be held in the Governor Richard B. Ogilvie Auditorium. The program begins at 3 p.m. A reception will follow Senator Hart’s remarks. This program is sponsored by the Chicago-Kent chapter of the American Constitution Society. For more information, please contact Professor Daniel W. Hamilton at (312) 906-5192 or dhamilton@kentlaw.edu.
March 7: “Muslim-Jewish Dialogue and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” is the topic of a lecture by Judea Pearl, computer science professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and the father of the late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The younger Pearl was abducted and murdered in Pakistan early in 2002 while investigating links between Al Qaeda and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Following his death, Daniel Pearl’s family and friends established the Daniel Pearl Foundation, which seeks to “promote cross-cultural understanding through journalism, music and innovative communications.” Professor Pearl, who serves as president of the foundation, travels and lectures extensively throughout the world to promote dialogue about conflict in the Middle East. This program, which will be held at 3 p.m. in the Governor Richard B. Ogilvie Auditorium, is free and open to the public. Following his remarks, Professor Pearl will sign copies of I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl. Edited by Professor Pearl and his wife, Ruth, the book is a compilation of expressions by 147 people on what being Jewish means to them. This program is sponsored by the Chicago-Kent/UIC Muslim-Jewish Initiative. Established in 2005, the initiative seeks to foster understanding by increasing intellectual interaction among Jewish and Muslim students at both schools. For more information, call (312) 906-5006.
March 27: 29th Annual Kenneth M. Piper Lecture. Thomas C. Kohler, concurrent professor of law and philosophy at Boston College Law School, will address the topic “Religion and the Workplace.” Professor Kohler, an internationally recognized authority in the areas of comparative and domestic labor, employment, and employment discrimination law, will outline the strong link between religion and current U.S. labor and employment law. He will discuss how the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act are deeply rooted in Catholic social thought and the Protestant social gospel movement. Professor Kohler asserts that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex and national origin, “would have been unthinkable without the involvement of African-American Protestant churches.” The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, please call (312) 906-5090.
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