Michelle Alexander delivered the Frank Giesber Keynote Lecture for the 2012 Krost Symposium. Her talk - Mass Incarceration as a Tool of Social Control - highlighted many of the issues she examined in the book.

Ashlie McEachern spoke with Ms. Alexander about the lecture and her book.

From the book's description: "The New Jim Crow" was initially published with a modest first printing and reasonable expectations for a hard-hitting book on a tough topic. Now, ten-plus printings later, the long-awaited paperback version of the book Lani Guinier calls "brave and bold," and Pulitzer Prize--winner David Levering Lewis calls "stunning," will at last be available.

In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet, as legal star Michelle Alexander reveals, today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal.

Featured on The Tavis Smiley Show, Bill Moyers Journal, Democracy Now, and C-Span's Washington Journal, "The New Jim Crow" has become an overnight phenomenon, sparking a much-needed conversation—including a recent mention by Cornel West on Real Time with Bill Maher - about ways in which our system of mass incarceration has come to resemble systems of racial control from a different era.

TLU's annual Krost Symposium brings together scholars, journalists, government officials, community leaders and others to discuss relevant and important issues of our time. Past symposium topics range from nuclear war to health care to the intersection of art and science to the theological concepts of suffering and salvation. The symposium is one element of the university's Krost Life Enrichment Program, established in 1977 to foster the physical, intellectual, social and spiritual development of TLU students and the broader community. The program's commitment to developing the whole person -- body, mind and spirit -- is a manifestation of, and central to, TLU's mission of preparing young women and men for lives of purpose through leadership and service to others.

One of the founding fathers of the Krost Life Enrichment Program and Krost Symposium was Dr. Frank Giesber, professor emeritus of economics, who served Texas Lutheran as academic dean when the idea of the Krost program and symposium became a reality. In recognition of Dr. Giesber's contributions to the establishment and on-going support of the Krost Program, the keynote presentation of each Krost Symposium is now titled the Frank Giesber Lecture.

Texas Lutheran University students experience a challenging academic environment that sets a path for life-long learning. Our students engage in high-impact educational experiences that include civic engagement, aesthetic expression, critical thinking, and a focus on intercultural and global knowledge in a community that welcomes the interplay of faith and reason.
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