Events and Education
USC Gould School of Law

Upcoming Events

Past Events

Conflicts Between Law and Public Trust
in the Name of Public Health:
COVID Experiences From Around the World

Join us for a panel discussion with global and local experts on the use and misuse of the law in the COVID era.

Wednesday, February 10, 2021
9 a.m. (PST)
Click here to RSVP.

Speakers:

Allan Maleche
Executive Director,
Kenya Legal and Ethical Issues
Network on HIV and AIDS (KELIN)

Mandeep Dhaliwal
Director, United Nations
Development Programme's
(UNDP) HIV, Health and Development Group

Gerson Sorto
Supervising Attorney, Medical
Legal Community Partnership, Neighborhood Legal Services of
Los Angeles County

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"SHOULD DOCTORS INTENTIONALLY EXPOSE HEALTHY PEOPLE TO COVID-19?
The Ethics of 'Challenge Trials' for Vaccines Being Developed Against SARS-CoV-2"

Presented by the SC CTSI Workforce Development team,
and co-sponsored by the USC Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics

Friday, October 30, 2020
12 - 1 p.m. (PDT)
Click here to RSVP.

Speakers:

Dr. Daniel Wikler, Ph.D.
Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics
Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University

Mabel Rosenheck, Ph.D
Director of Public Programs at 1Day Sooner

Facilitator:

Alex M. Capron, University Professor
Director, Research Ethics for the SC CTSI

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"STORIES OF TRAUMA AND HEALING: GLOBAL WOMEN'S NARRATIVES, MENTAL HEALTH, AND DISABILITY IN POSTCOLONIAL AND CONFLICT ZONES"

A conversation with
Dr. Lyn Boyd-Judson and Dr. Julie Van Dam

Monday, October 26, 2020
12 - 1 p.m. (PDT)
Virtual Event

RSVP by Monday, October 26th at 11 a.m. to receive the Zoom link here.

JOIN US for a conversation with Dr. Lyn Boyd-Judson, Co-Chair, Oxford Initiative for Global Ethics and Human Rights and part-time lecturer in Keck Narrative Medicine Program and Dr. Julie Van Dam, Associate Professor of French and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of French and Italian, USC Dornsife.

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"WHAT IS OURS TO DO IN THESE TIMES OF CRISIS AND NEW POSSIBILITIES?"
ETHOS, ACTION, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

A conversation with
Dr. Edgar Rivera Colón and Dr. Kairos Llobrera

Wednesday, October 14, 2020
12 - 1 p.m. (PDT)
Virtual Event

JOIN US for a conversation with USC Narrative Medicine Faculty, Dr. Edgar Rivera Colón and Dr. Kairos Llobrera, as they discuss scholarly works and writers who have inspired and challenged them to ask: "What is ours to do in these times of crisis and new possibilities?"

Edgar Rivera Colón, PhD, is a Medical Anthropologist who teaches at Columbia University’s Narrative Medicine program. He is an expert on Latinx queer male sexual cultures. Dr. Rivera Colón trains public health professionals in working with Latinx LGBTQ communities in cultural and structural competency. His forthcoming book is Love Comes in Knots: Meditations in the American Labyrinth. Recently, Pato Hebert and he published “Slow Burn, Humid Pitch: Cultivating Care While Livin’ La COVIDa Loca” in NACLA Report on the Americas.

Dr. Kairos Llobrera holds a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. His academic interests include U.S. immigration (literature, history, and law), critical race theory, and 20th century and contemporary U.S. ethnic/minority literatures. As an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medical Education, Dr. Llobrera teaches in the Narrative Medicine MS Program at USC and serves as Director of Diversity and Inclusion Programs at the Keck School of Medicine.

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"Politics and Policies: Fighting for the Health and Well-Being of Children at the Border"

A lecture by Colleen Kraft, MD, MBA
The Medical Humanities, Arts, and Ethics Series

Wednesday, September 30, 2020
12 p.m. PDT
Virtual Event

Students, faculty, staff, and others are invited to register to attend the first of three talks on “Health and Human Rights” in the current Medical Humanities, Arts, and Ethics Series, cosponsored by the Pacific Center, with support from “Visions & Voices.” Dr. Colleen Kraft — past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, a clinical professor of pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and attending physician at Children's Hospital Los Angeles — is best known for her advocacy for humane treatment of migrant children at the border. Her work to explain to the public the harms to young children caused by the "zero tolerance" policy, which included separation of children from parents, helped to mobilize advocates across the political spectrum to end this policy.

Dr. Kraft will discuss the science of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the fight for the rights and health of children throughout the world. Since a landmark 1998 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, research has confirmed the relationship between adversity in childhood and higher levels of morbidity and mortality in adulthood, and uncovered the connections between the two at molecular, behavioral, and societal levels. The devastating effects of emotional trauma and toxic stress in children are nowhere more evident than in the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

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"Lost in the Maze? Navigating Evidence and Ethics in Translational Neuroscience"

Neuroscientists, ethicists, and policymakers are invited to attend international conference on February 14-16, 2018 at the Schloss Herrenhausen, Hanover, Germany

February 14-16, 2018
Herrenhausen Palace
Hanover, Germany

Clinical trials for novel intervention to combat a range of neurological diseases and injuries are critically needed. However, safely and ethically conducting such trials often proves daunting, for a range of reasons. Concerns about such matters as non-validated or irreproducible pre-clinical research results, researchers' needs to divide their time between their research and pursuing funding, and the inflated expectations produced by science hype all hinder efforts to conduct investigations responsibly.

This conference, organized by scientists and ethicists from the US and European universities and sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation, has been specifically designed to explore these concerns and investigate strategies that can mitigate them. It will convene an international and interdisciplinary faculty to join with attendees in examination and discussion aimed at producing practical recommendations for facilitating safe and ethically responsible investigations of new modalities that might better serve the health needs of patients around the world.

Travel awards are available for students at all levels, as well as young investigators who have completed their terminal degree within the last five years. A full description of the program, the travel awards opportunity, and a registration link, can be found here.

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New "Law and Global Health" Collaboration Launched

Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Law Building (LAW) 130
University Park Campus

August 2016 saw the inauguration of a new university-wide collaborative program to advances scholarship on important issues in global health, with an emphasis on their legal and human rights aspects. The group, supported by the USC Research Collaboration Fund, is led by Professor Sofia Gruskin, director of the USC Program on Global Health and Human Rights and professor in the Gould School of Law and the Preventive Medicine Department of the Keck School of Medicine, University Professor Alexander Capron, co-Director of the Pacific Center, and USC Research Professor Charles Kaplan, Associate Dean of Research at the School of Social Work.

The Law and Global Health group will meet from 12-1 pm on the second Tuesday of each month. The sessions will alternate between examining the common theme for the year from different disciplinary perspectives and focused discussions of other global health topics that could repay further examination the following year. The 2016-17 theme, "In Transition: Gender [Identity], Law & Global Health," will be introduced by law professor David Cruz at 12 noon in Room 130 at the Law School. Click for more information on the Law and Global Health Collaborative.

Join us for the inaugural discussion launching the new USC Law & Global Health Collaboration!

Students, faculty and staff welcome. Lunch will be provided.

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Two Men Talking

4 pm, Monday, September 19, 2016
Mayer Auditorium
USC Health Sciences Campus

As part of the Medical Humanities, Arts, and Ethics Series, which engages core health issues in society today, we will present Two Men Talking, a storytelling event that looks at HIV/AIDS, homophobia, racism, and identity. Created by Academy Award—nominated filmmaker Murray Nossel and psychiatrist Paul Browde, Two Men Talking makes space for difficult and transformative stories to be told and heard. Nossel and Browde met as twelve-year-olds in South Africa and were estranged for years after a bullying episode. When they met again in New York many years later, they began trying to make sense of the incident that pushed them apart and of "growing up white, Jewish, gay, and privileged under apartheid." They have spent the last two decades mining their past for stories, and together founded Narativ Inc., a company whose mission is "a world connected through listening and telling personal stories."

Two Men Talking combines elements of theatre, therapy, and real life to emphasize the profound relationship between listening and telling. The captivating event illuminates how every interaction is a co-creation, and how our stories connect us all.

Reception in the Hoyt Gallery will follow the presentation.

Admission is free. Reservations required. RSVP (beginning Thursday, August 25) as follows:

• USC Students, Staff, and Faculty
• General Public

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When We Have to Talk about Something Less Pleasant: Aging, Alzheimer's, and the End of Life
A Lecture by Cartoonist Roz Chast

4 pm, Thursday, March 30, 2017
Mayer Auditorium
USC Health Sciences Campus

Our aging population has raised many ethical dilemmas and policy choices for society. Those involving loss of memory and decisionmaking capacity are among the most personally difficult and legally complex. As part of the Medical Humanities, Arts, and Ethics Series, which engages core health issues in society today, cartoonist Roz Chast will share her story of coping with the loss of her parents and the everyday realities of Alzheimer's disease—a story she tells with courageous honesty in the gut-wrenching and darkly humorous graphic memoir Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? Chast's cartoons appear in major magazines including The New Yorker and Scientific American. Her memoir—which garnered an Eisner Award, the Kirkus Prize, and a National Book Award nomination—masterfully combines cartoons, text, and photographs to challenge readers' perceptions of death and dementia as well as their assumptions about what topics are appropriate for comics. Chast also highlights the roles of health professionals and caregivers at the end of life.

A reception in the Hoyt Gallery will follow the lecture.

Admission is free. Reservations requested. RSVP beginning Friday, March 3, at 9 a.m. Please check back to RSVP.

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Music and Medicine: Experiments and Explorations

4 p.m., Thursday, March 31, 2016
Mayer Auditorium
Health Sciences Campus

How does music affect the human brain? Find out, and experience a wonderful demonstration of the power and beauty of music, on March 31st, when the Pacific Center joins with the Keck School of Medicine's Program in Medical Humanities, Arts, and Ethics, and the USC Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics in presenting Music and Medicine: Experiments and Explorations, on the Health Sciences Campus.

The moderator for this multidisciplinary event will be Berislav Zlokovic, a classically trained tenor who is the director of the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute and a leader in Alzheimer's disease research whom Thomson Reuters has listed among "the world's most influential scientific minds.," Participants will include Marcus Raichle, a world-renowned neurologist and university professor at Washington University in St. Louis; Alison Balbag, award-winning harpist and PhD candidate in the USC Davis School of Gerontology; and Christopher Snowdy, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at USC. Also taking part will be concert pianist Zora Mihailovich and singers from LA Opera who participated in the "Music and Memories" program in which they performed for individuals affected by dementia. The event is part of USC's Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative program. Admission is free but reservations are requested. A reception will follow in the Hoyt Gallery. For more information, please visit the V&V website or contact the program at (213) 740-0483.

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The Wounded Warrior: Outside the Wire's "Theater of War" Presents a Dramatic Reading of Scenes from Sophocles's Ajax

Medical Humanities, Arts, and Ethics Series * Visions & Voices Event

4 p.m., Thursday, September 24, 2015
Mayer Auditorium
Health Sciences Campus
Information and RSVP (tickets are free)

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Lecture by leading physician-commentator Dr. Danielle Ofri, September 22, 2014

New York Times columnist Danielle Ofri, MD, will speak about "The Amyglada and the Stethoscope: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine," a USC Visions and Voices lecture co-sponsored by the Pacific Center on September 22, 2014, at 11:30 a.m. In Mayer Auditorium on the USC Health Sciences Campus. Admission is free; reservations are requested (visionsandvoices.usc.edu). Book signing and refreshments will follow.

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