Yale, New Haven and American Slavery Conference

Yale University will host a conference exploring the history and consequences of American slavery in the North, September 26-28.

Organized by Yale Law School and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, the conference will bring together noted historians, legal scholars, philosophers and sociologists from Yale, Harvard, Oxford, NYU, UCLA, Johns Hopkins and other institutions of higher learning.

Presentations and panels are open to all and free of charge.

The conference, titled “Yale, New Haven and American Slavery,” has two goals. The first is to explore the ways in which American slavery, and the confrontation with it, shaped local experience in New Haven and how local institutions, Yale in particular, responded to developments in the nation at large. The second goal is to examine, in moral, legal and religious terms, the contemporary implications of the history of slavery.

“Every corner of America, North and South, was touched by the institution of slavery,” says Anthony Kronman, dean of Yale Law School. “This conference will explore America’s confrontation with slavery through the lens of our local experience, in New Haven and at Yale, and will engage the contemporary meaning of the history we share for the challenges of the present we inhabit.”

Historian David W. Blight will deliver the keynote address on September 26 at 8 p.m. in the Law School’s Levinson Auditorium, 127 Wall Street. A professor of history and African American Studies at Amherst College, Blight was the 2002 winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Award for his celebrated new study, “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory.” The book explores how the United States achieved a measure of post-Civil War unity by celebrating the valor of white Union and Confederate soldiers and downplaying the destruction of slavery.

Conference sessions will deal with “Slavery and Racism in the Antebellum North,” “The Edwardsian Tradition and Post-Revolutionary Yale,” “John C. Calhoun and Sectional Politics,” “The Amistad Test, Colonization and Abolition,” “The Moral Claims of the Past: Justice Across Time” and “Reparations, Reconciliation and Repair: Present Remedies for Past Wrongs.”

The Gilder Lehrman Center was founded in 1998 at Yale, supported by Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman through the Gilder Lehrman Institute in New York City. Headed by David Brion Davis, the Sterling Professor Emeritus of History at Yale, the Center is a division of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. Dedicated to the investigation and dissemination of information concerning all aspects of slavery and the Atlantic slave system, in particular, the Gilder Lehrman Center promotes interaction among scholars engaged in research in these areas, and assists in the translation of scholarly information into public knowledge through publications, educational outreach, conferences and other programs.

More information on the conference is available on line at www.law.yale.edu/outside/html/Centers/cen-sc.htm.

A conference schedule is below.

Yale, New Haven and American Slavery

Thursday, September 26, 2002

8:00 p.m. Opening Keynote Speech
David W. Blight, professor of history and African American studies, Amherst College
Yale Law School Auditorium

Friday, September 27, 2002

8:00-9:00 a.m.Continental Breakfast, Room 120

9:00-10:30 a.m.Session One
Slavery and Racism in the Antebellum North
Ira Berlin, professor of history, University of Maryland at College Park
James O. Horton, professor of American Studies and history, George Washington University
Chair and commentator: Joanne Pope Melish, professor of history, University of Kentucky (Visiting Scholar, Brown University)

10:45-12:15 p.m.Session Two
The Edwards Tradition and Post-Revolutionary Yale
Harry S. Stout, professor of religious studies, American studies, Yale
Kenneth P. Minkema, editor, the Works of Jonathan Edwards, and director of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion, Yale
Peter Hinks, assistant professor of history, Hamilton College
Chair and commentator: Hugh Davis, professor of history, Southern Connecticut State University

12:15-1:30 p.m.Lunch break

1:30-3:00 p.m.Session Three
John C. Calhoun and Sectional Politics
Manisha Sinha, professor of Afro-American studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Robert Forbes, associate director, Gilder Lehrman Center, Yale
Chair and commentator: Christopher Brown, professor of history, Johns Hopkins University

3:15-4:45 p.m.Session Four
The Amistad Test, Colonization and Abolition
Howard Jones, professor of history, University of Alabama
James Brewer Stewart, professor of history, Macalester College
Chair and commentator: John Stauffer, professor of English, Harvard

6:30 p.m.Reception, Yale Law School courtyard

Saturday, September 28, 2002

8:00-9:00 a.m.Continental Breakfast, Room 120

9:00-10:30 a.m.Session Five
The Moral Claims of the Past: Justice Across Time
Ronald Dworkin, professor of law and philosophy, NYU, and professor of jurisprudence, Oxford
Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy, Princeton
Charles Fried, professor of law, Harvard
Seana Shiffrin, associate professor of philosophy and law, UCLA
Moderator: Anthony T. Kronman, dean, Yale Law School

10:45-12:45 p.m. Session Six

Reparations, Reconciliation and Repair: Present Remedies for Past Wrongs
Jules Coleman, professor of law and philosophy, Yale
Drew Days, professor of law, Yale
Glenn C. Loury, professor of economics and director of the Institute on Race and Social Division, Boston University
Orlando Patterson, professor of sociology, Harvard
Peter H. Schuck, professor of law, Yale
Moderator: Anthony T. Kronman, dean, Yale Law School