Wednesday, February 8, 2017
12:00pm – 1:30pm
Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street
After over ten years since its implementation, affirmative action in Brazil has been bathed in controversy. Professor Penha-Lopes will read from her forthcoming book, Confronting Affirmative Action in Brazil: University Quotas Students and the Quest for Racial Justice (Lexington Books), based on her sociological study of the first class of graduating quota students at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). While the university quota policies have created opportunities for upward social mobility for their beneficiaries, by themselves they cannot bring full racial justice to Brazil because the higher university setting is but one sector of society, besides being a privileged arena still occupied by a numerical minority of Brazilians, regardless of race or color. Professor Penha-Lopes also considers the future of affirmative action as a social policy in Brazil in view of the recent major political change brought up by the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and the installment of Michel Temer as her successor.
Co-sponsored by Africana Studies.