Speaker Series

The Port Huron Statement: A Declaration of Interdependence? 

250 years after the Declaration of Independence, where does The Port Huron Statement stand in relation? Students for a Democratic Society’s (SDS) 1962 manifesto, and catalyst for the 1960’s student movements, sought to provide a “truly democratic alternative to the present.” The statement called for a “participatory democracy” to meet citizens’ unfulfilled capacities of “reason, freedom, and love.” After a brief history of SDS, this talk will turn towards examining the connections, and divergences between the Declaration and the Statement.

How Indigenous Women Teachers Helped Boarding School Students Resist Assimilation

Drawing on her recent book, Agents of Survivance: Indigenous Women Teachers in the Boarding School Era, as well as her research on the Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School, Dr. Gere adds a new dimension to received accounts of boarding schools by focusing on the contributions of Indigenous women teachers. While acknowledging the many challenges they faced, she identifies specific practices and principles that Indigenous women teachers employed to facilitate survivance among their students.

Ruthless Ingenuity: Detroit's Purple Gang

Jewish mobsters ran Detroit during Prohibition (1920-1933). Known for shocking violence and vicious turf wars, the untouchable Purples were also emblematic of the Detroit neighborhood they called home: scrappy, resourceful, innovative, and proudly Jewish. And yet, the Purples remained sharply at odds with local Jewish communities, which endured shame and retaliatory antisemitism for the Purples' actions in Detroit and mid-Michigan.