Professor Montoya Presents Keynote at Cesar Chavez Week
April 6, 2011
Professor Margaret Montoya was the keynote speaker at Cesar Chavez Week in late March at the University of California at Davis School of Law. Her talk was titled, "Identity in the Legal Profession." The event was organized by La Raza Students Law Association.
Additional César Chavez Week events included a talk by Sylvia Mendez, a winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her father was the original plaintiff in the precedent-setting school desegregation case, Mendez v. Westminster. Additional events included lectures by Joaquin Avilla, assistant professor at Seattle University School of Law, and Ana Avendaño, associate general counsel and director of the Immigration Worker Program at the AFL-CIO, as well as a showing of the documentary film Papers: Stories of Undocumented Youth.
In mid-March, Montoya participated in Searching for Equality, a conference on law, race and socio-economic class at the University of California at Irvine School of Law. The two-day conference engaged academics, legal practitioners and policy makers from around the country in dialogue about the effects of alarming statistical disparities on access to opportunity in the United States. Participants examined the interplay between race and class in a variety of different substantive areas, with the focus always remaining on real issues that affect real people. The Center on Law, Equality and Race at the UC Irvine School of Law sponsored the event.
