Under the title “Global Language Justice in Action: Theory, Practice and Performance,” the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS) at Columbia University, together with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, organized a symposium that brought together a panel of speakers to discuss language and linguists’ rights. The first speaker was Red T founder Dr. Maya Hess, who presented on the critical importance of enabling and sustaining multilingual spaces and the risks that entails for some linguists. We thank Dr. Isabelle Zaugg for her incisive comments as respondent. The next featured speaker was philosopher Dr. Michele Moody-Rights, who contemplated, inter alia, whether language rights should be included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In contrast, the final speaker, Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela, took a less academic approach: Members of the audience were treated to video and audio clips from her reggaeton album No Otro Lado, which deals with the increasing militarization of the US southern border.

We thank Prof. Anupama Rao and Alex Mendez for inviting Red T to this event. Further information can be found at:

http://icls.columbia.edu/events/global-language-justice-in-action-theory-practice-and-performance/

To learn more about the Global Language Justice initiative, visit:  https://languagejustice.wordpress.com/