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Panel: Considering Juneteenth

Join us for speakers and light refreshments as we explore Juneteenth and what it means today. Registration requested. This program is in person only.

A video of the late Steve DiGregorio speaking about Juneteenth will introduce the panel moderated by Miles Smith, Associate Director of Athletics Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Princeton University. Panelists include Michelle Tuck-Ponder, Esq., Hendrik Hartog, Professor Emeritus, Princeton and Sherrod Smith, Deputy Attorney General for the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability.

Panelists

Michelle Tuck-Ponder, Esq. is the Chief Executive Officer of Destination Imagination, Inc. a global creative problem solving program for young people.  A former mayor of Princeton, NJ she is a member of the Princeton Board of Education.  She has served as Executive Director of the Women’s Fund of New Jersey, CEO of the Girl Scouts of Delaware-Raritan, Inc., assistant counsel to former Governor Jim Florio, assistant director of the New Jersey Division on Women and New Jersey Division on Civil Rights, director of development and public affairs at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and congressional aide to former US Representative Louis Stokes and the late US Senator Frank Lautenberg.  She also was a Community Builder Fellow with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in Camden and has served as a lecturer at Princeton and Rutgers Universities.  Michele is a former trustee of New Jersey After 3, Princeton United Methodist Church, Leadership New Jersey and the Center for NonProfit Corporations, Morven Museum and Gardens, the Princeton Housing Authority and the United Front Against Riverblindness.  A graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Tuck-Ponder is married to Rhinold Lamar Ponder, Esq. and is the mother of two children, Jamaica and William D’Artagnan.

Hendrik Hartog, Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty, Emeritus; Professor of History, Emeritus

Hendrik "Dirk" Hartog is the Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty, Emeritus. For a decade, he was the director of Princeton University’s Program in American Studies. Hartog has spent his scholarly life obsessed with the difficulties and opportunities that come with studying how broad political and cultural themes have been expressed in everyday legal conflicts. He has worked in a variety of areas of American legal history: on the history of city life, on the history of constitutional rights claims, on the history of marriage, on the history of slavery and emancipation, and on the historiography of legal change and of legal history. He is the author of Public Property and Private Power: the Corporation of the City of New York in American Law, 1730-1870 (1983), Man and Wife in America: a History (2000), Someday All This Will Be Yours: A History of Inheritance and Old Age (2012), and The Trouble with Minna: A Case of Slavery and Emancipation in the Antebellum North (2018). He has been awarded a variety of national fellowships and lectureships, and for a decade he coedited Studies in Legal History, the book series of the American Society for Legal History. In 2016, he was made an Honorary Fellow of the American Society for Legal History. He is affiliated with Princeton’s Program in Law and Public Affairs, with the Program in American Studies, and with the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Before coming to Princeton, he taught at the University of Wisconsin Law School (1982-92) and at the Indiana University (Bloomington) School of Law (1977-82).

Sherrod Smith serves as a Deputy Attorney General for the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability.  In this role, he focuses on cases involving public corruption, criminal violations of civil rights laws, and illegal use of force by law enforcement officers. Earlier in his career, Sherrod served as a project coordinator for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law where he focused on bias-motivated crimes and as a White House Liaison for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration.  He is the former Vice Chair of the Princeton Civil Rights Commission.  Sherrod graduated with a B.A. from Boston University, an M.P.A. from the Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs, and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

Moderator

Miles Smith, Jr. comes to Princeton University as Associate Director of Athletics Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. In his capacity Smith will have oversight of all aspects of DEI education and training for student-athletes, coaches and staff within the athletics department. Smith will also serve as the liaison to the University Office of Diversity and Inclusion and student-athlete affinity groups. Smith will hold the role of the department’s NCAA athletics diversity and inclusion designee. 

The Philadelphia native served as the Associate Athletic Director for Compliance and Student Development at The College of New Jersey. Smith was responsible for working to develop educational, leadership and support programming for student-athletes, and to research, identify and solicit student-athletes for participation in leadership, career, internship and education programming offered by the NCAA and other organizations. Smith also served as the advisor for Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) and Athletic Diversity Inclusion Designee (ADID). In Smith role as ADID he worked with The College of New Jersey Inclusive Excellence Department on several initiatives such as the We Are TCNJ: A Strategy for Inclusive Excellence strategic plan and The Men of Color Success Initiative.  

Presented in partnership with the Civil Rights Commission.

Light refreshments will be served

Community Room Accessibility

• Wheelchair accessible
• Assistive listening system compatible with personal T-coil-enabled devices (compatible  headphones also available for use during programs)
• English-language subtitles for films (when available)
• If there is an accommodation that you need or would like so that you can fully enjoy library programs, please visit our Accommodations Request Form.

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