March 3, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—David Cole of Georgetown University and Phil Scraton of the School of Law at Queen’s University, Belfast, will present a panel discussion of “Enemies of the State?: Prisons, Human Rights, Civil Liberties and Democracies in Transition” at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 4, in the Cole Assembly Room (Red Room) in Converse Hall at Amherst College. Part of a series on the topic “Regulating Citizens: Prisons and the Future of Democratic Societies,” the discussion is sponsored by the Corliss Lamont Fund for a Peaceful World and open to the public.

The series is designed to foster discussion on problems of “citizenship” in both national and global arenas, issues of great concern in the domestic and international context and the topic of important debates not only regarding the rights of vulnerable populations, such as prisoners and immigrants, but all citizens in democratic societies. This program is also part of an Amherst College political science course, “Regulating Citizenship,” which is being taught inside the Hampshire County Jail and House of Corrections by Kristin Bumiller, professor of women’s and gender studies and political science.

Scraton is chair in criminology in the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, the School of Law at Queen’s University in Northern Ireland. He has written widely about deaths in controversial circumstances (public inquiries, inquests and criminal investigations), the politics of truth commissions, imprisonment and prisoners’ resistance. In 2004 he completed a study for the Human Rights Commission titled “The Hurt Inside: The Imprisonment of Women and Girls in Northern Ireland.”

Cole is a professor of law at Georgetown University. A graduate of Yale Law School, he served as a law clerk to Judge Arlin M. Adams of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and later became a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he litigated a number of major First Amendment cases. He has published in a variety of areas, including civil rights, criminal justice, constitutional law and law and literature. He is the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, a commentator on National Public Radio: All Things Considered, and the author of three books, including Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (2005). Enemy Aliens received the American Book Award and the Hefner First Amendment Prize in 2004.

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