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Perry World House’s new “Critical Conversations” program fosters critical thinking and civil discourse on crucial issues.

This inaugural Critical Conversation will explore whether reparations are the most effective way to redress lasting harms caused by centuries of colonization and slavery.

On the one hand, many Western nations reaped huge financial and other benefits from these practices, exacting an enduring human cost that reparations could seek to repair. On the other, those who would bear the responsibilities of paying these reparations were not directly involved in slavery or colonization.

So, are reparations a fair policy solution? Where do you stand? How would hearing from both sides of this issue shape your opinion? In Perry World House’s first ever Critical Conversation, we will explore these important questions, with input from our audience. At the start of the program, we will ask attendees to anonymously share whether they are for or against reparations. At the end, we will repeat this poll, and see how opinions have evolved over the course of the discussion.

Please note there will be a reception following the event.

Speakers

Jeremy Black is emeritus professor of history at the University of Exeter. Graduating from the University of Cambridge with a starred first, he did postgraduate work at the University of Oxford and taught at Durham University before moving to Exeter in 1996.  He has lectured extensively in Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, where he has held visiting chairs at West Point, Texas Christian University, and Stillman College.  He was named a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for services to stamp design. Black has written over 100 books, many of which examine aspects of eighteenth century British, European, and American political, diplomatic, and military history. He has also published on the history of the press, cartography, warfare, culture and on the nature and uses of history itself. Black has served on editorial boards including the Journal of Military History, the journal of the Royal United Services Institute, and History Today, and was previously editor of Archives.

Jeremy Sarkin is distinguished research professor of law at NOVA University of Lisbon. He has worked in the field of transitional justice for many years after being involved in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process in South Africa. He has worked on such processes in countries including Uganda, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tunisia, Bangladesh, and Syria. Sarkin served as an acting judge in the High Court in South Africa, and as chairperson-rapporteur of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. Throughout his career, Sarkin has published 19 books, including Reparations for Colonial Genocides and Germany’s Genocide of the Herero. For many years, he was a legal advisor to the Paramount Chief of the Herero of Namibia for their claims for reparations from Germany for the genocide committed between 1904 and 1908. Sarkin has law degrees from South Africa, a LLM from Harvard University, and a Doctor of Laws degree in comparative and international law. 

Moderator

DeNeen L. Brown has been an award-winning writer for the Washington Post for more than thirty-six years. Brown is an associate professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, where she teaches feature writing and the "Power of the Writing Voice." She has written extensively about the United States’ history of racial terror lynchings and massacres. After Brown's 2018 story on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was published on the front page of the Post, the mayor of Tulsa announced he would reopen the city's search for mass graves of victims of the massacre. In October 2020, the city discovered a mass grave that may be connected to the massacre. Brown’s work on Tulsa is featured in two documentaries, Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer and Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten. From 2000 to 2004, she was a foreign correspondent for the Post, becoming the first Black woman to cover Canada for the paper. In this role, Brown travelled throughout the Arctic and the Arctic Archipelago to write about climate change and indigenous populations. Many of her stories about climate change, which were first-hand reports about the fragile Arctic and thinning sea ice, are cited in scientific journals throughout the world.