Police violence, community protest and civil unrest have dominated media headlines and public debate recently, and in early June, two of the nation’s most recognized scholars of racial justice will deliver public talks at the UO about the roots of this crisis.

Kimberlé Crenshaw, an internationally acclaimed legal scholar and public intellectual, and George Lipsitz, an eminent sociology and black studies scholar, will speak as part of a campus seminar on issues of race.

Crenshaw will give a free public talk titled “Black Girls Matter: Organizing for a Gender-Inclusive Racial Justice Movement” on Tuesday, June 2, at 4:30 p.m. in Room 110, Knight Law Center.

Crenshaw is a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and Columbia Law School and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, a leading national gender and racial equity think tank.

Crenshaw will discuss an array of initiatives to elevate long-ignored issues of concern to black women and girls, including #SayHerName, a recent report documenting and remembering black women and girls killed by police.

Crenshaw’s writing and research on “intersectionality” — examining the ways that race, class, gender and other forms of difference converge and interact — has influenced a generation of scholars in the in the humanities and social sciences.

On Thursday, June 4, at 4:30 p.m., Lipsitz will join Loren Kajikawa, an assistant professor of musicology, in a public talk about race, music and politics in Room 110, Knight Law Center. Lipsitz, a professor of sociology and black studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of 11 books on the histories and politics of racism, popular culture, music and social movements.

Lipsitz will also discuss Kajikawa’s new book, “Sounding Race in Rap Songs”, which argues that rap music allows us not only to see but also to hear how mass-mediated culture engenders new understandings of race.

Both talks are sponsored by the UO Department of Ethnic Studies, with the support of the College of Arts and Sciences, Academic Affairs and the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Public Policy.

Lipsitz and Crenshaw are among a group of 12 nationally recognized scholars who will be visiting the UO for a week to participate in a collaborative seminar with UO faculty titled “Countering Colorblindess Across the Disciplines” co-organized by Daniel Martinez HoSang, an associate professor of ethnic studies and political science.