Free Public Lecture on Diversity and Inclusion with Kenji Yoshino

Acclaimed author and Yale Law School professor Kenji Yoshino will be here Thursday May 8 to give his lecture examining how the drive for conformity and assimilation forces us all to "cover," or to downplay, our authentic selves.

When: Thursday May 8 7pm
Where: Student Union Theatre

Yoshino's highly regarded work on assimilation takes aim at how current anti-discrimination law fails to protect individuals against coerced conformity. According to Yoshino, all marginalized groups, including racial minorities, women, gays, religious minorities, and individuals with disabilities, are forced to downplay personality traits to fit in at work, at school, or in other social spheres. He shows that the pressure to cover has a profoundly negative effect on workplace productivity and educational attainment. Proposing a new civil-rights paradigm, Yoshino's analysis is revolutionary because it cuts across traditional divides such as race, sex, and sexual orientation, and by diagnosing "covering" as the key diversity issue of our time, Yoshino focuses on our right to authenticity. He not only seeks to protect individuals from discrimination, but also to advance their human flourishing.

His recent award-winning book,"Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights" (Random House, 2006), skillfully melds memoir and argument to explore the intersection of personal identity, politics and law. His lecture on Thursday will draw on his own experiences as a gay Asian-American to make the harms of covering vivid, while also bringing his legal expertise and rigor to bear on the problem.

A specialist in constitutional law, antidiscrimination law, and law and literature, Prof. Yoshino has published works in a wide variety of academic journals, including the Columbia Law Review, and featured essays in the New York Times, Slate, and The Washington Post. He has been interviewed on the Tavis Smiley Show and on PBS's Charlie Rose.

Prof. Yoshino was educated at Harvard University, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and received his J.D.from Yale Law School. He will be joining the tenured faculty of law at New York University this fall. For more go to http://www.kenjiyoshino.com

For more information or if you have any questions, please contact Marian Lien at lienma@cwu.edu or 963-1685.

This lecture is sponsored by the Diversity Education Center, the CWU Equity and Service Council,and the Diversity Training Initiative. For more information or for persons of disability to arrange for reasonable accommodation, call 509-963-1685, or (for hearing impaired) TDD