Philosopher, legal scholar, and women’s rights activist, Catharine A. MacKinnon, Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, will deliver the Philip and Franciszka Merlan Lecture at Scripps College on Tuesday, March 7, at 4:15 p.m. in the Balch Auditorium, Scripps College. Professor MacKinnon will lecture on “Women’s September 11: Rethinking the International Law of Conflict.” The lecture will be followed by a reception. Both events are free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Professor Rivka Weinberg at (909) 607-1819 or email rivka.weinberg@scrippscollege.edu.
One of the most widely cited legal scholars in English, Catharine A. MacKinnon’s numerous influential scholarly books include Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws (2005), Sex Equality (2001), Only Words (1993), and Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989). She has been published in scholarly journals as well as the popular press.
Professor MacKinnon specializes in sex equality issues under international and constitutional law and is co-director of the Lawyers’ Alliance for Women Project of Equality Now, an NGO promoting international sex equality rights for women. MacKinnon pioneered the legal claim for sexual harassment and co-created ordinances recognizing pornography as a civil rights violation. Since 1992, she has represented Bosnian women survivors of Serbian genocidal sexual atrocities, and with co-counsel won a damage award of $745 million in August 2000. This case, Kadic v. Karadzic, first recognized rape as an act of genocide.
Professor MacKinnon holds a B.A. from Smith College, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale. She has taught at Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia, spent a year at Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study, and practices and consults nationally and internationally.
The Scripps College graduating class of 1969 established and dedicated the Philip and Franciszka Merlan lecture to honor the memory Professor Philip Merlan. Professor Merlan taught at Scripps College for 25 years, during which time he also held visiting positions at Bonn, Columbia, Munich, and Oxford. He wrote more than 300 hundred papers on philosophy, jurisprudence, and literature, as well as the philosophy books From Platonism to Neoplatonism (1975), and Monopsychism, Mysticism, and Metaconsciousness (1969). Franciszka Merlan’s name was added to the lectureship in 1983, as a tribute to her contribution to her students, to Philip Merlan’s work, and to Scripps College. Franciszka Merlan edited a posthumous eight-volume series of Philip Merlan’s papers. She was also a respected scholar and teacher in her own right, holding positions at Columbia, Krakow, Pomona, and Scripps.