Morse
Professor
Current
Wayne Morse Professor
Each year, noted scholars, authors, and activists who have raised the level of public awareness of such important issues as human rights and social justice, constitutional law, and the role of representative government, visit the University of Oregon as occupants of the Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics. Their mission is to serve the students and faculty of the university and the citizens of Oregon by stimulating discussion and debate of important contemporary concerns.
For 26 years, the Wayne Morse Chair for Law and Politics has been given to distinguished scholars who embody the qualities and traditions associated with Wayne Morse. Chairholders are public figures and scholars from a variety of disciplines. Morse Chair Professors give a major public address, teach courses, meet with students and community groups, and participate in various other relevant public and private events.
The Wayne Morse Center
is pleased to announce that Professor Mark Graber
will occupy the Wayne Morse
Chair for Law and Politics in 2008-09.
TWENTY-EIGHTH OCCUPANT - Mark Graber
Mark
Graber, Professor of Law and Government
University of Maryland School of Law
Graber is a graduate of Columbia Law School and 
earned a Ph.D. in
Political Science from Yale. Professor Graber is recognized as one
of the leading scholars in the country on constitutional law and politics.
He is the author of Rethinking Abortion (Princeton University Press)
and Transforming Free Speech (University of California Press). His
most recent book is Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil.
Graber will be in residence at the UO School of Law in September and early October, 2008, where he will teach a class on Judicial Review and Democracy. Graber will give a public address on “Polarization and the Courts” on October 2, 2008.
The highlight of Graber's visit will be a “West Coast Constitutional Law Schmooze” on September 12 and 13, 2008 at the Knight Law Center. The “schmooze” is an unstructured conference on a general topic in constitutional law that attracts scholars in the law and social sciences. The topic for the schmooze will be “Polarization and the Constitution.” Discussion topics may include the definition of polarization, political theories of democracy and assumptions about majoritarian or polarized processes, and the role of the courts when the political parties are polarized.
Read about the most recent schmooze.
View Graber's
curriculum vitae (128K PDF).
Professor Arturo Escobar occupied the Waybe Morse
Chair for Law and
Politics in 2007-08.
TWENTY-SEVENTH OCCUPANT - ARTURO ESCOBAR
The Wayne Morse Center theme
of democracy and citizenship will touch on issues that were relevant
to Senator Wayne Morse who served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
and was chair of the Latin American subcommittee, scrutinizing U.S. foreign
policy and political developments in Latin America. As former director of the
Institute of Latin American Studies at UNC, Escobar's research spans
several key areas, including political ecology, social movement theory,
and theories of development.
Escobar's most recent work focuses on social movements, nature and the environment, and how places and regions struggle for difference and diversity under globalization. Escobar's work broadens our understanding of globalization and the processes of modernity, highlighting the importance of place, colonialism, and alternatives to the hegemony of Eurocentric knowledge and development.
Professor Escobar was in residence at the UO for the first three weeks of winter term, 2008. He cotaught an anthropology course, Anthropologies of Development and Social Movements, with Professor Lynn Stephen, and gave a public address, “Left Turn? Right Turn? Where is Latin America Going?” on January 31, 2008.
“Where are Latin America and the Carribean going?
The answer to this question hinges, in great part, on the extent to which the recently elected ‘Left’ regimes are able to transform the undemocratic development models of the past.”
— Arturo Escobar, 2007-08 Wayne Morse Chair
Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics
1221 University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403-1221
Phone: (541) 346-3700, Fax: (541) 346-1564
