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Helena Silverstein, associate professor of government and law, will speak on “Diversity in the Balance: The Uncertain Future of Affirmative Action” noon tomorrow in Interfaith Chapel, Hogg Hall.
Free and open to the public, the event is sponsored by the Chaplain’s Office Brown Bag Series. Lunch may be brought or purchased for $3.
Silverstein will discuss the legal status of affirmative action in higher education, addressing the current challenges to the University of Michigan before the Supreme Court.
Her honors include Lafayette’s Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Lecture Award and a Mellon Summer Research Fellowship, 2000; the Pi Sigma Alpha Award for best paper and Betty Nesvold Award for best paper presented on women and politics, both at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, 1999; and the Aaron Hoff Award for outstanding contributions to the Lafayette community, 1998.
Her recent work with students includes EXCEL Scholars research with government and law major Emily Francis ’03 (Hummelstown, Pa.) on whether Southern juvenile courts are granting young pregnant women their full constitutional rights (see related story). She mentored Monica Patterson ’02 last year in her honors thesis examining gender discrimination in athletics (see related story).
Silverstein’s 46-page article, Honey I Have No Idea: Court Readiness to Handle Petitions to Waive Parental Consent for Abortion, co-written with Leanne Speitel ’02, was published in October by Iowa Law Review (see related story). Her areas of interest also include federal laws passed to fight terrorism that restrict civil liberties (see related story).
Silverstein wrote Unleashing Rights: Law, Meaning and the Animal Rights Movement, a book published by University of Michigan Press in 1996. She has contributed articles to Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service (April 17, 2002), Law & Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice (Volume XX, Number 1, 2002), Animal Law (Volume VIII, 2002), Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy (fall 2001), Studies in Law, Politics and Society (Volume 19, 1999), Law and Social Inquiry (Volume 24, Number 1, 1999), Focus on Law Studies (Volume XIV, Number 1, Fall 1998), Cause Lawyering, (Oxford University Press, 1998), and A Different Kind of State? Popular Power and Democratic Administration, (Oxford University Press, 1993).
She has been a member of the Board of Trustees, Nominations Committee, Graduate Program Workshop Committee, Ad-Hoc Committee on Governance, and New Book Prize Committee for the Law & Society Association. She also has served as review essays editor and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board, Law & Society Review; section chair for Judicial Politics and Public Law, Western Political Science Association; grant proposal reviewer, National Science Foundation; and article reviewer, Law & Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, and Studies in Law, Politics and Society.
She holds master’s and doctoral degrees in political science from the University of Washington and a bachelor of arts degree, cum laude, in political science and economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
A member of the Lafayette faculty since 1992, Silverstein is a past resident faculty adviser of the McKelvy House Scholars Program, in which about 20 students of high academic achievement and promise reside together in an historic off-campus house and participate in shared intellectual and social activities (see related story).