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Monday, October 21, 2024
An Evening with Jill Wine-Banks: “Facts. Not Alternative Facts is Nonnegotiable”
Time: 6:30 pm | Book signing and reception follows.
Location: Alice Campbell Alumni Center Ballroom
Jill Wine-Banks, a distinguished attorney and MSNBC Legal Analyst, is a prominent figure in political and legal discourse. Her association with MSNBC began in July 2017 when she made her debut appearance to comment on an opinion piece, she wrote in the Chicago Tribune titled “Former Watergate Prosecutor: Comey’s Firing Is As Bad as the Saturday Night Massacre.”
Jill's influence extends beyond traditional news analysis. She co-hosts two top-rated podcasts: #SistersinLaw and iGenPolitics, where she offers insights into governance, corruption, and cultural dynamics. Notably, #SistersInLaw, a 2024 Webby Award Winner, is produced by Politicon and features Jill alongside political and legal luminaries Joyce Vance, Barb McQuade, and Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Meanwhile, in iGenPolitics, Jill collaborates with Victor Shi to engage audiences of all ages in pressing national issues.
Beyond her two podcasts, Jill is a celebrated author, with her memoir, The Watergate Girl, optioned for a film adaptation by Katie Holmes/Noelle Productions. She continues to contribute op-eds to various esteemed publications, including NBC, the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Politico, MSNBC, and the Huffington Post.
Jill Wine-Banks has a B.S. in Communications from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, and a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law in New York City.
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Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Civic in Action: A Screening of No Time to Fail with filmmaker Margo Guernsey
Co-sponsored with the Illini Union Courtyard
Time: 6 pm | Location: Illini Union Courtyard Café
Election administrators were once invisible to the general public. Despite the unbelievable challenges and desperate attempts to disrupt and upend the 2020 election, they pulled off the most secure election in our history; and they did it amidst a global pandemic.
Rather than receiving a hero’s welcome, they have become the focus of an ongoing coordinated campaign of disinformation.
No Time To Fail gives voice to the experiences of this largely invisible, yet completely indispensable workforce, at this critical time in our country’s relationship with election management.
Filmmaker, Margo Guernsey will discuss the making of No Time to Fail and her recent Times Studio productions, The Officials, which positions election workers in rural and urban centers as defenders of democracy.
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Saturday, October 26, 2024
Free Speech and the Inclusive Campus. A Civic Discourse & Dialogue Workshop
Time: 2–4 pm | Location: SDRP, Room 2025A
This workshop is organized using deliberative dialogue to find where we can agree, learn from one another, and begin to focus on solutions to pressing civic issues. This session will focus on how the campus environment can become more welcoming of public debate and provide a safe space for diverse opinions. Participants will have the opportunity to build skills in: active listening, civility, dissent, consensus building, reasoning, critical and reflective thinking.
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Monday, October 28, 2024
Community of Practice: Connecting Community Engagement through Civic Health Measures
What does “civic health” mean? Civic health measures how healthy a community is in a civic sense, including how much people vote, volunteer, talk to neighbors, trust government, and feel they belong and matter. Similar to how we undergo annual doctor’s appointments to make sure we are well; it is essential that communities regularly assess civic health to ensure that local democracy is functioning as it should.
Using the Community of Practice framework, we will explore what civic health is, why it matters, how to measure it, and how students, faculty, and staff can contribute to their own community’s civic health.
Time: 11:30 am–1 pm | Location: University YMCA
Facilitator: Dr. Quixada Moore-Vissing
Quixada Moore-Vissing, PhD, is researcher about civic engagement and a practitioner of dialogue and deliberation. She is a specialist in civic health. Quixada wrote New Hampshire’s 2012 and 2020 State Civic Health Indexes and is currently partnering with Florida, Maine, and New Hampshire to write 2024 State Indexes. She was co-author of a toolkit called Local Civic Health: A Guide to Building Community and Bridging Divides. Quixada directs Public Engagement Partners, a civic engagement consulting firm, and works with clients including the Seattle Foundation’s Civic Commons on their Cities of Belonging program as well as UNICEF on their Child Friendly Cities Initiative. Quixada is proud to be an Illini and earned her Master’s in Communication at the University of Illinois in 2011, as well as her PhD in Education from University of New Hampshire.
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Wednesday, October 30, 2024
The Civic Café: Testing Democracy on Campus—Expressive Activity & More
Time: 6 pm | Location: Spurlock Museum
Co-sponsored with Spurlock Museum of World Cultures
Lynn Pasquerella was appointed president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in 2016, after serving as the eighteenth president of Mount Holyoke College. She has held positions as Provost at the University of Hartford and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Rhode Island, where she taught for more than two decades. A philosopher whose work has combined teaching and scholarship with local and global engagement, Pasquerella has written extensively on medical ethics, metaphysics, public policy, and the philosophy of law. Her most recent book, What We Value: Public Health, Social Justice, and Educating for Democracy, examines the role of higher education in addressing some of the most pressing contemporary issues at the intersection of ethics, law, and public policy. Pasquerella is a past president of the Phi Beta Kappa Society (2018-2021) and the host of Northeast Public Radio’s The Academic Minute.
A graduate of Quinebaug Valley Community College, Mount Holyoke College, and Brown University, her awards and honors include the President’s Award and Judith Krug Medal from Phi Beta Kappa; the William Rogers Award and the Horace Mann Medal from Brown University; the STAR Scholars Network North Star Lifetime Achievement Award; Mary Baldwin University’s Algernon Sydney Sullivan Service to Humanity Award; the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences Advocacy Award; Quinebaug Valley Community College Champions Award; and the Mount Holyoke Alumni Association’s Elizabeth Topham Kennan Award. Pasquerella holds honorary degrees from Elizabethtown College, Bishop’s University, the University of South Florida, the University of Hartford, the University of Rhode Island, Concordia College, Mount Holyoke College, Bay Path University, and St. Mary’s College and was named by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education as one of America’s top 35 women leaders. She serves on the boards of the Lingnan Foundation, the National Trust for the Humanities, the Coalition for the Common Good, and Handshake.
Will Creeley defends expressive rights and core civil liberties nationwide as Legal Director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). Since 2006, Will has coordinated FIRE’s legal advocacy and oversees FIRE’s Litigation, Legislative and Policy, Policy Reform, and Targeted Advocacy departments.
A co-author of First Things First: A Modern Coursebook on Free Speech Fundamentals, Will’s writing has been published by The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and many other outlets. Will edited the second edition of FIRE’s Guide to Due Process and Campus Justice, co-edited the second edition of FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus, and has authored amicus curiae briefs submitted to courts nationwide, including the Supreme Court of the United States and multiple United States Courts of Appeals.
Barred in New York and Pennsylvania, Will is a member of the First Amendment Lawyers Association and serves as co-chair of the Education Subcommittee of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice.
Will is a 2006 graduate of New York University School of Law, where he served as an associate executive editor for the New York University Law Review. Will graduated magna cum laude from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2003. A proud native of Buffalo, New York, Will now lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children.
The Civic Café is a conversation series by scholars, educators, and community advocates to advance pillars of democracy and civic education.