25 Years of Asking Questions: Who Gets to go to School?

From school segregation and busing to book bans, charter schools, and modern achievement gaps, the fight for educational equity has long reflected the nation’s broader struggle to live up to its democratic ideals. In her lecture, The Politics of U.S. Public Schooling: Tinkering Toward and Away from Dystopia, Dr. Melinda Lemke invites attendees to examine how far we’ve come since Brown v. Board of Education, and what still divides us. Through this conversation, we aim to explore the legal, cultural, and policy battles that have shaped access to education in America, and to encourage reflection on what “equal education” should mean in the 21st century.

The discussion is grounded in the legacy of Robert H. Jackson’s final Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), the landmark decision that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The ruling affirmed that equality in education is essential to equality in citizenship, an idea that continues to challenge our laws, institutions, and collective conscience.

About the Speaker
Melinda Lemke, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Educational Policy and affiliated faculty in Global Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University
at Buffalo (UB), SUNY. Dr. Lemke is a qualitative methodologist, and her research focuses on the politics of education and how social policies address structural violence to improve the health, well-being, and human rights of women and girls. This includes examining the causes, effects, discourses concerning, and public system responses to gender-based violence and the largescale internal and cross-border displacement.

Dr. Lemke’s work in higher education is informed by a previous career in U.S. public secondary education and work in sexual assault prevention and advocacy. She is actively involved in shared governance at UB, SUNY, serving for example as faculty senator elect and as United University Professionals Buffalo Center Chapter Grievance Officer for Academics. Dr. Lemke is the author of more than 60 publications and is the recipient of multiple research and practice awards, including most recently the Paula Silver Case Award for co-authored research on human trafficking and the Dr. Conrad F. Toepfer, Jr. Award for doctoral mentorship.