The Fight for American Democracy: Student Voting, Civil Rights and the Promise of the 26th Amendment

The event is open to the public and registration is required.

The Carter Center is hosting a special talk on a book and four short documentaries focusing on the fight for voting rights on US college campuses co-sponsored by The Carter Center, the Bard College Center for Civic Engagement, and the United Negro College Fund. The event will feature a reading and conversation with book editors and authors representing Bard College, Tuskegee University, the North Carolina A&T State University and the United Negro College Fund.

The book, Youth Voting Rights: Civil Rights, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, and the Fight for American Democracy on College Campuses, uses the history of the 26th Amendment and the ongoing fight to promote and defend youth voting rights as a prism through which to teach the history of the struggle for the fundamental right to vote in the United States.

The event will feature co-editors by Jonathan Becker, professor of political studies, vice president for academic affairs and director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College, and Yael Bromberg, Esq., a constitutional rights litigator, leading legal scholar of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, and election law professor at American University Washington College of Law, as well as Jelani Favors, vice president of the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute at the United Negro College Fund, Lisa Bratton is an associate professor of History at Tuskegee University, and Erin Cannan, Bard College’s vice president for Civic Engagement, It will be moderated by Sierra Ford, the speaker of the Bard College student body, Atlanta Posse Scholar and former Carter Center United States Elections Democracy Intern.

The book and the documentaries focus on case studies of four institutions – Tuskegee University, Prairie View A&M University, North Carolina A&T State University, and Bard College. These cases, which emerged from a joint course that united faculty and students from all four institutions, offer unique insights into the role of college communities in the fight for suffrage, and their contributions to the evolution of the right to vote.

Co-sponsored by The Carter Center, the Bard College Center for Civic Engagement, and the United Negro College Fund

Moderator:

Sierra Ford ’26,
Bard College student body president,
head of Election@Bard,
Carter Center United States Elections Democracy Intern,
Posse Atlanta Scholar

Panelists:

Jonathan Becker
Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Political Studies at Bard College

Yael Bromberg
26th Amendment litigator and visiting professor at American University Washington College of Law

Jelani Favors
United Negro College Fund Vice President and Senior Director of the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute

Lisa Bratton
Associate Professor of History at Tuskegee University

Erin Cannan
Vice President for Civic Engagement at Bard College