Past Events

This program will only be offered online. 1.0 hour Indiana CLE (Distance Education) credit will be available but you must register for the Zoom Webinar using the link below. Following registration, you will receive an email with a link to join the Webinar. 

Ensure you are joining the webinar from the Zoom application (desktop or mobile) to enable participation in the polling throughout the webinar for CLE credit. Please note joining the webinar from a web browser is not compatible and doing so will result in not receiving CLE credit.

E-mail certificates will be provided certifying attendance for those wishing to apply for CLE credit outside of Indiana.

Watch the Recording

Topic: COVID-19 and the Racialization of Diseases

Matiangai Sirleaf is a critical voice in global public health law and she will explore COVID-19 and the racialization of diseases and examine international responsibility in the context of epidemic and pandemic diseases. The COVID-19 pandemic has surfaced what was always latently there, the racialization of diseases. Sirleaf’s current research project illuminates how racialized fears of contagion contributed to the development of the global public health regime and continues to influence global health law, agenda setting and policy. She argues that the response from global actors to the COVID-19 pandemic reminds us quite powerfully how the history of diseases and responses to diseases is linked to colonial and ongoing politics of racial exclusion. Sirleaf’s project analyzes the material effects of the racialization of diseases and demonstrates how it exacerbates racial subordination and violates the fundamental human rights of historically subordinated groups. The presentation is a timely reminder of the need for effective global legal action and solidarity to strengthen health systems as well as the global health law architecture to better respond to existing and emerging diseases.

Presentation Slides (PDF)

Speaker:

Matiangai Sirleaf
Nathan Patz Professor of Law, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law

Matiangai V.S. Sirleaf (@matiangai) writes and teaches in the areas of public international law, global public health law, international human rights law, international criminal law, post-conflict and transitional justice and criminal law. She is the Nathan Patz Professor of Law at the University of Maryland School of Law. Professor Sirleaf previously served as an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, as an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law and as a Sharswood Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her scholarship focuses on remedying the accountability and responsibility gaps that exist in international law. Professor Sirleaf has received several prestigious grants, awards, fellowships, and other honors. These include the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award (2019), the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics Health Law Scholar Selection (2019), the New York University Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award (2014) and a Fulbright Fellowship (2004). Professor Sirleaf is a graduate of Yale Law School, the University of Ghana Legon Center for International Affairs, and New York University College of Arts and Sciences. She has served in a number of attorney and fellow roles prior to entering academia. These roles include: Human Rights Fellow at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll; Law Clerk, Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo, Constitutional Court of South Africa; and Bernstein Fellow at the International Center for Transitional Justice.