Events Category: Social Justice

MENA Heritage Month Keynote
Play Circle Theater, Memorial Union
March 18, 2025 @ 5:30 pm
https://today.wisc.edu/events/view/206618

The Middle Eastern North African Heritage Month Planning Collective presents stand-up comedian, actor, and writer Emil Wakim as the 2025 keynote. Emil was born and raised in Chicago before moving to Bloomington, Indiana for college where he began performing stand-up. This fall, he joined the cast of Saturday Night Live for its milestone 50th season as the first Lebanese-American cast member. Emil made his late-night television debut on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and is featured on Don't Tell Comedy as well as Comedy Central’s Stand-Up Featuring and was selected as a New Face of Comedy at the Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal. Celebrate MENA Heritage Month as Emil performs a 30-minute stand-up routine followed by a moderated Q&A. This event is free and open to the public. Doors Open at 5 PM.

8417 William H. Sewell Social Sciences Building
March 20, 2025 @ 12:15 pm
https://www.irp.wisc.edu/2025-spring-irp-seminar-calendar/

Zoua Vang, Meta Schroeder Beckner Outreach Professor, Civil Society & Community Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Alfonso Morales, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Planning and Landscape Architecture, UW–Madison
Online
March 20, 2025 @ 4:15 pm
https://sage.nelson.wisc.edu/events/ai-and-computing-for-local-food-systems/

This lecture reviews topics that broadly deal with the use of computing (and sensing) solutions to address the mounting challenges we face in securing our food systems. The lecture focuses on three dimensions: Precision agriculture. This includes micro weather modeling, crop selection and adaptation, land management, real-time sensing for efficient crop watering, fertilization and pest control, etc. Intelligent food distribution systems: This covers transportation optimization, local sourcing promotion, distribution and markets, waste management and avoidance (through smart sensing and tracking), etc. Inter-silo connections: This includes connections to public health, marketing and consumer behavior, and ecological / ecosystems management and services of farm production. Morales will expose opportunities for collaboration across these dimensions.

Viviana Veloza Martinez
206 Ingraham Hall | VIRTUAL
April 29, 2025 @ 12:00 pm
https://lacis.wisc.edu/event/a-conditional-right-punishment-and-the-right-to-education-within-the-juvenile-justice-system-in-colombia/

More than 10,000 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18 are involved in the juvenile justice system in Colombia (Sistema de Responsabilidad Penal Adolescente). The law establishes that adolescents must have access to education within the juvenile system, whether they are serving custodial or non-custodial sentences. Despite the existence of clear regulations on how the right to education should be implemented within the juvenile system, the educational needs of these adolescents remain overlooked. Available educational data is nearly nonexistent, and government reports only reveal low retention and high rates of school dropout. We know almost nothing about the learning experiences of these young people.