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STRENGTHENED BONDS: ABOLISHING THE CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM AND RE-ENVISIONING CHILD WELL-BEING Columbia Law School Columbia Journal of Race and Law Volume 11 Symposium June 16-18, 2021 PROGRAM Evening Keynote Panel June 16, 2021 6pm-8pm EDT • Welcome o Gillian LesteR, Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law, Columbia Law School o Jane M. Spinak, Edward Ross Aranow Clinical Professor of Law, Columbia Law School, Symposium Co-Chair o Nicolás Quaid Galván, Editor-in-Chief, Columbia Journal of Race and Law • Introduction of Evening PRogRam and ModeRator o Nancy D. Polikoff, Professor Emerita of Law, American University Washington College of Law, Symposium Co-Chair • Keynote Address o DoRothy E. RobeRts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology, Raymond Pace & Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, Professor of Africana Studies, Director, Penn Program on Race, Science & Society, University of Pennsylvania, How I Became a Family Policing Abolitionist • Responses o Gwendoline M. Alphonso, Associate Professor of Politics, Fairfield University, Political- Economic Roots of Coercion – Slavery, Neoliberalism, and the Racial Family Policy Logic of Child and Social Welfare o LauRa BRiggs, Professor, Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Twentieth Century Black and Native Activism Against the Child Taking System: Lessons for the Present o Penthea BuRns, Co-founder, Wabanaki REACH and Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Truth, Healing, and Change in the Dawnland o Leyda M. Garcia-Greenawalt, MSW Student; Graduate Student Researcher; President, Foster Care Alumni of America - Illinois Chapter, Guilty: How Immigrating to the United States Became a Life Sentence to Child Welfare Keynote Panelist Biographies Gwendoline Alphonso is Associate Professor of Politics at Fairfield University. She is the author of Polarized Families, Polarized Parties: Contesting Values and Economics (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and has published in multiple volumes and journals, including Studies in American Political Development, Polity, Journal of Policy History, and Perspectives on Politics. She is the recipient of the Ellis Hawley Prize for her article in the Journal of Policy History (2016) and the Walter Dean Burnham Best Dissertation Prize in Politics and History (2011) from the American Political Science Association. She holds a PhD from Cornell University, JSD from Cornell Law School, and BCL (Bachelor of Civil Law) from Oxford University, UK. Dr. Laura Briggs is an expert on migration, U.S. and international child welfare policy, and transnational and transracial adoption. Her most recent book, Taking Children: A History of American Terror (2020), examines the 400-year-old history of the United States’ use of taking children from marginalized communities as a tactic of terror. Some of Briggs’ other books include How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics; Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transnational and Transracial Adoption; and International Adoption: Global Inequalities and the Circulation of Children, co-edited with Diana Marre. Briggs is a public intellectual whose work has been featured in court cases, podcasts, and journalism, including on National Public Radio, Slate, PBS, New Republic, Indian Country Today, the Washington Post, and Ms. magazine. Penthea Burns is a Senior Policy Associate at the University of Southern Maine Cutler Institute and serves on the board of Wabanaki REACH. Penthea is a co-founder of Wabanaki REACH, the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Youth Leadership Advisory Team, and Camp to Belong Maine. Nicolás Quaid Galván is a native of Northeast Los Angeles and a product of public schools. He is the son of a crop-worker and first in his family to attend law school. He earned a B.F.A. in Jazz Performance and a B.A., Double Major, in Politics and Education Studies at The New School. While an undergraduate, Nico served as Co-Chair of the University Student Senate and the first undergraduate Trustee of the university. Following graduation, Nico served as a California State Senate Fellow on the Senate Committee on Public Safety in Sacramento. He analyzed pending legislation, authored official Committee reports on such legislation, and helped draft and negotiate amendments. Immediately before starting at Columbia Law School, Nico served as Legislative Director for the California Institute for Federal Policy Research where he analyzed federal legislation's impact on California. After his 1L year, Nico interned at the California Attorney General's Civil Rights Enforcement Section, where he analyzed pending anti-discrimination legislation and explored possible challenges to proposed agency regulations. Nico's background and experiences fuels his passion for social change. Leyda Garcia-Greenawalt received her bachelor’s degree in social work from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where she is currently a master’s student. After spending eight years in foster care, Leyda found her passion in conducting research on criminal justice system involvement and child welfare policy. She plans to attend law school after obtaining her master’s degree to better advocate for children and families in need. Leyda spends her time trying to give back to the communities that raised her through community service and leadership. She currently serves as the President for the Foster Care Alumni of America – Illinois Chapter in addition to being a sworn-in CASA/GAL. Dean Gillian Lester is a leading authority on employment law and policy, specializing in workplace intellectual property law, contracts, public finance policy, and the design of social insurance laws and regulations. Dean Lester began her teaching career at UCLA School of Law in 1994 and joined Berkeley Law School as a professor in 2006, serving as interim dean from 2012 to 2014. She has held visiting appointments at Harvard Law School, Georgetown Law, University of Southern California Gould School of Law, University of Chicago Law School, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, in Israel. Dean Lester is the editor of Philosophical Foundations of Labour Law (with Hugh Collins and Virginia Mantouvalou), from Oxford University Press, and her widely used casebook, Employment Law: Cases and Materials (with Steven L. Willborn, Stewart J. Schwab and John F. Burton Jr.), is now in its sixth edition. Her journal articles and book chapters include “‘Keep Government Out of My Medicare’: The Elusive Search for Popular Support of Taxes and Social Spending” and “Can Joe the Plumber Support Redistribution? Law, Social Preferences, and Sustainable Policy Design.” Dean Lester serves on the boards of the Legal Aid Society of New York and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. She also serves on the executive committee of the Association of American Law Schools and is a member of the American Law Institute (ALI). Nancy Polikoff is Professor Emerita of Law at American University Washington College of Law and has been Visiting McDonald/Wright Chair of Law at UCLA School of Law and Faculty Chair of the Williams Institute, a national think tank on sexual orientation law and public policy. She began her career as a family law practitioner with the Washington DC Feminist Law Collective in the 1970’s, where her clients included parents whose children had been removed by the state. For more than 40 years, she has been writing about, teaching about, and working on litigation and legislation about LGBT parents. Her recent article on LGBT parents in the child welfare system is Neglected Lesbian Mothers, 52 Fam. L. Rev. 87 (2018). In 2011, she received the National LGBT Bar Association’s Dan Bradley award, the organization’s highest honor. Dorothy RoBerts is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Africana Studies, Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace & Sadie T.M. Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at University of Pennsylvania. An acclaimed scholar, speaker, and social justice activist, she is author of Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare, and Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century. She serves on the Board of Directors of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. Her book on abolishing family policing will be published by Basic Books in spring 2022. Jane M. Spinak is the Edward Ross Aranow Clinical Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. A member of the Law School faculty since 1982, Spinak co-founded the Child Advocacy and Family Advocacy Clinics and founded the Adolescent Representation Clinic representing adolescents and young adults aging out of foster care. From 2001 to 2006, she was the director of Clinical Education at the Law School. Spinak served as attorney-in-charge of the Juvenile Rights Division of The Legal Aid Society of New York City from 1995-1998. In 2002, she became the founding chair of the board of the Center for Family Representation (CFR) and continues to serve on CFR’s board. Spinak co-chaired the Task Force on Family Court in New York City from 2008 to 2011. Her current scholarship focuses on the history and effectiveness of the Family Court. .

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