AKSC Annual Conference 2019

Chief Guest & Keynote Speaker 

DR. KANCHA ILAIAH SHEPHERD

Political Theorist, Dalit Activist and Writer.

Special Guests and Speakers

Dr. Suraj Yengde | Ms. Boona Cheema |  Mr. Kunal Shankar |  Ms. Rachel Herzing |  Mr. Anto Akkara |  Dr. Hatem Bazian | Ms.Sabiha Basrai

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Dr. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd - Director, Centre for Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University(MANUU), Hydrabad, INDIA

He is an Indian political theorist, writer and activist for Dalit rights. He is the Director of Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy (CSSEIP) at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hydrabad. His contributions includes as the member of the National Research Committee constituted by the Ministry of Social Justice, member of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), member of the Planning Commission Sub Committee to formulate an agenda for land reforms for the XI Five Year Plan, member of the UGC Constitutional Committee to oversee the implementation of OBC reservations in all Central and State universities in India, former member of Executive Council of Periyar Maniammai University (Tamil Nadu) and former member of the National Book Trust, Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India, New Delhi.

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Dr. Suraj Yengde - Post-Doctoral Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA – USA

He is an award-winning scholar and activist from India. He is an inaugural post-doctoral fellow at the Initiative for Institutional Anti-racism and Accountability, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Suraj is India’s first Dalit Ph.D. holder from an African university (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) in the nation’s history.

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Ms. Boona Cheema - Chair-Person, Alameda County Healthcare for the Homeless and Mental Health Commission, CA – USA

She has been a tireless advocate for the homeless in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 40 years. She was Executive Director of Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency. She is currently the Chair at the Alameda County Healthcare for the Homeless Commission and also the Chair for the Berkeley/Albany Mental Health Commission.

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Mr. Kunal Shankar - Columbia University, New York – USA & Former Reporter at FRONTLINE Magazine – India

He is an M.A. Candidate at Columbia University. He was most recently with Frontline Magazine based out of Hydrabad, India and has been a journalist for the past 15 years. He has covered a wide range of issues – from human rights violations; corruption in India’s higher judiciary; drought and climate change, to the maturing of the country’s transgender movement.

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Ms. Rachel Herzing - Director, Center for Political Education San Francisco, CA – USA

She is the director of Center for Political Education, a resource for political organizations on the left, progressive social movements, the working class and people of color. Ms. Rachel has been an organizer, activist, and advocate fighting the violence of policing and imprisonment for over 20 years. She is a co-founder of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization dedicated to abolishing the prison industrial complex. She was the director of research and training at Creative Interventions – a community resource developing interventions to interpersonal harm that do not rely on policing, imprisonment, or traditional social services.

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Mr. Anto Akkara - Award-winning Investigative Journalist & Author, New Delhi – India

He firmly believes that ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ has reported extensively from hotspots in South Asia on human rights concerns, religious issues and social problems. He has covered extensively from the ground the massive Gujarat earthquake, 2004 tsunami devastation, Sri Lankan war, oppression in Myanmar, and birth of democracy and devastating earthquake that struck Nepal in 2015. He won a dozen national and international media awards such as Media in your Country Award of International Network of Young Journalists, Media in your Continent Award in 1995 of Geneva-based UCIP, Raoul Follereau Award of AIFO Foundation in Italy, etc

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Dr. Hatem Bazian - Director at Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project, Center for Race and Gender, The University of California, Berkeley

Founder of  Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project at the Center for Race and Gender, Berkeley, California - a research unit dedicated to the systematic study of Othering Islam and Muslims. He launched the Islamophobia Studies Journal, which is published bi-annually through a collaborative effort among the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project of the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California at Berkeley, the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative for the School of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, the Center for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, the International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding at the University of South Australia, and Zaytuna College - the 1st Accredited Muslim Liberal Arts College in the United States. In addition, Dr, Bazian is a weekly columnist for the Turkish Daily Sabah Newspaper and Turkey Agenda online magazine. Dr. Bazian is founder and national Chair of American Muslims for Palestine, board member of the Islamic Scholarship Fund, Muslim Legal Fund of America, President of Dollar for Deen Charity, and Chair of Northern California Islamic Council. Adviser to the Religion, Politics and Globalization Center at UC Berkeley.

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Ms. Sabiha Basrai - Co-ordinator for Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA)

She works with racial justice organizers to fight against Islamophobia. Ms. Basrai is also co-owner of the media justice cooperative ‘Design Action Collective’, a member the Center for Political Education’s Advisory Board and a part-time faculty member in the University of San Francisco’s Department of Art & Architecture.

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FOR MORE DETAIL:

visit: https://www.akscusa.org