KOREMATSU v. UNITED STATES
AND THE INTERNMENT OF JAPANESE AMERICANS DURING WWII
Looking back. Looking forward.
An examination of the United States’ forced removal and internment of Japanese
Americans during WWII and its legal, political and moral implications in our time.
A program by the Madison Chapter of the American
(www.acslaw.org/chapters/wi/madison-lawyer-chapter )
Who:
●
Society.
Paul Kusuda - One of the 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry forcibly
removed from their homes and incarcerated in resettlement camps
● Asifa
●
Constitution
Quraishi-Landes - Constitutional Law Professor
Jean Feraca - Former Wisconsin Public Radio Moderator
When: April 28, 2017, Noon-1:30 p.m.
Where: Madison Central Library (3rd Floor), 201 W. Mifflin Street.
This event is open to the public.
Co-sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, the American
Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Wisconsin Chapter, the Wisconsin International
Law Society, the Wisconsin Association of Muslim Lawyers (WAML) and the Madison
Public Library.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 1942, Executive Order 9066 began a chain of events that quickly led to the
evacuation and internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans – all without due process.
In Korematsu v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court, in one of its most widely
criticized decisions, upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion order. When he was 19
years old, Paul Kusuda, an American born citizen, and his family were among the Japanese
Americans who, because of their ancestry, were forcibly removed from their homes and
incarcerated in desolate areas. Mr. Kusuda, a long-time Madison area resident and advocate
for racial minority groups, will share his recollection and nuanced understanding of the life
of Japanese Americans in the camps and their experiences during this dark chapter in
American history. He is an articulate and exacting historian, with an acute awareness of the
constitutional injustice of the government’s actions and the relevance of his experience to
events that are unfolding today.
Kusuda will be joined by UW Constitutional Law Professor, author and noted scholar
Asifa Quraishi-Landes. Professor Quraishi-Landes, currently the president of the National
Association of Muslim Lawyers, will examine Korematsu and its legacy. She will explore
the government’s use of Executive Orders to restrict immigration and its invocation of
national security to justify discrimination, restrictions of movement and deprivation of liberty
on the basis of national background, ancestry, race or religion.
The program will be moderated by Jean Feraca. One of public radio’s premier talk
show hosts, Ms. Feraca hosted Conversations with Jean Feraca for 13 years on WHA, and
then hosted Here on Earth: Radio without Borders, a pioneer international news and cultural
affairs talk show.
She has won several awards including for the series Inside Islam:
Dialogues and Debates. She is a Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and
Letters.
Speakers
Paul Kusuda
Paul Kusuda is a graduate of the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. He is a
past Deputy Director of the Bureau of Juvenile Services, Division of Corrections, with the Wisconsin
Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Kusuda was instrumental in establishing the Asian
American Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the first in the Midwest. He is a
columnist for Asian Wisconzine and Capital City Hues. Mr. Kusuda has given his time and expertise
generously to various causes and is the recipient of several awards for volunteer service, including: the
Lifetime Achievement Community Award of United Way of Dane County (2013), the Martin Luther
King, Jr. Recognition Award by Dane County (2006), the Leadership Award from the Coalition of
Wisconsin Aging Groups (2004), the Outstanding Service Award by the Wisconsin Organization for
Asian Americans (2003), and the Outstanding and Dedicated Service Award by the National AARP
(1999).
Prof. Asifa Quraishi-Landes
Asifa Quraishi-Landes specializes in comparative Islamic and U.S. constitutional law, with a current
focus on modern Islamic constitutional theory. She is a 2009 Carnegie Scholar and 2012 Guggenheim
Fellow. Recent publications include "Healing a Wounded Islamic Constitutionalism: Sharia, Legal
Pluralism, and Unlearning the Nation-State Paradigm (forthcoming in Transformative Constitutionalism,
Boaventura De Sousa Santos, editor) and "Legislating Morality and Other Illusions about Islamic
Government," (forthcoming in Locating the Shari'a: Legal Fluidity in Theory, History and Practice,
Nathan French & Sohaira Siddiqui editors). Currently, she is working on a book manuscript, "Islamic
Reconstitutionalism," in which she proposes a new model of Islamic constitutionalism for today's
Muslim-majority
countries.
Professor Quraishi-Landes holds a doctorate from Harvard Law School and other degrees from Columbia
Law School, the University of California - Davis, and the University of California - Berkeley, and has
served as law clerk in the United State Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She has served as a Public
Delegate on the United States Delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, the
Task Force on Religion and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy for the Chicago Council on Global
Affairs, and as advisor to the Pew Task Force on Religion & Public Life. She is currently President of the
National Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML), and serves on the governing board of the Association
of American Law Schools' Section on Islamic Law. She is an affiliate of the Muslim Women's League,
past President and Board Member of Karamah: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, a Fellow
with the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and a member of the "Opinion Leaders Network"
for the British Council's "Our Shared Future" project.
Jean Feraca
Jean Feraca is an award-winning journalist, writer and public speaker whose skills as a communicator
became renowned as Wisconsin Public Radio's premier talk show host. Feraca hosted Conversations with
Jean Feraca on WHA-Radio for thirteen years before creating Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders,
the pioneer international news and cultural affairs talk show she hosted for ten years before retiring in
2012. During her long and influential career she garnered many accolades including major awards from
the Niagara Foundation, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the National Telemedia Council, an
Ohio State Award and a Gabriel Award for her signature series, Women of Spirit, and a second Gabriel
Award for Inside Islam: Dialogues and Debates. In 2003, collaborating with Emily Auerbach, she cofounded UW-Madison's Odyssey Project as an educational experiment designed to transform the lives of
adults living in poverty. Now in its thirteenth year, Jean teaches philosophy and civic engagement as one
of Odyssey's four core faculty. She is the author of three books of poetry and the memoir I Hear Voices:
A Memoir of Life, Death, and the Radio which won the Kingery/Derleth non-fiction award from
the Council for Wisconsin Writers and was named one of the best books of 2009 by the American Library
Association. Feraca is a fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters.
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