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Social Injustice Issues

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Full Course Title: 
Social Injustice in the American Foundation

This course explores American law and political institutions in a historical context, instead of examining specific legal doctrines. Topics include, but are not limited to, the creation and state of our democracy, the role of race, gender, and ethnicity, the concepts of citizenship and equality. It examines a series of questions concerning the relationship between law and society and the importance of history in understanding modern social injustices. This course will explore the origins of social injustices in the founding documents of the American legal system. The course will review significant texts regarding the history of their drafting and how socioeconomic status, race, gender, and ethnicity played into the final results. Students will participate in individual presentations, group projects, and a community project where they will produce quick video blogs to help primary and secondary school children better understand the disparities existing in our founding documents. This course will improve the student's skills in analysis, evaluation, and ability to synthesize complex ideas.

Course Details
Prefix: 
UCO
Course Number: 
1200
Section Number(s) and Day/Times Taught: 
190: TR 3:30pm-4:45pm
191: TR 5:00pm-6:15pm
198: TR 6:30pm-7:45pm
Term: 
Fall 2024
Categories: 
Global Issues
Instructor(s)

Garrett Jackson

Garrett's career has included government, non-profit, and higher education. His teaching and work experience spans over two decades, at the local, state, federal, and international levels of government, presenting at conferences across the US, as well as the UK and the Russian Federation.

In 2014, he was invited by the U.S. Department of State as a Fulbright-Hays Act Cultural and Public Exchange Grant recipient, to lecture in Russia at three universities and as the keynote speaker at the Russian Federation Conference on Rural Settlements. There, he worked with Russian academics, and rural officials to develop relationships, as well as preliminary concepts for a proposed cultural heritage center and trail in the remote Ural and Chelyabinsk Oblast regions of the country.

Garrett earned his Doctor of Law and Policy (LP.D) at Northeastern University in Boston, where his dissertation focused on exploring the disparity gaps that exist for under-resourced individuals serving on boards of directors at community action agencies in the Commonwealth of Virginia. He continues to research this topic at the national level. He earned certificates in Higher Education Teaching from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University; a Graduate Certificate in Public Administration from Virginia Tech; a M.A. in Community and Organizational Leadership from Emory & Henry College; a B.A. in Geography, and is a graduate of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia. Additionally, he holds Certifications in Digital Citizenship and Human Rights from the U.S. Institute for Diplomacy and Human Rights and a Certificate in Paralegal Studies.

Garrett serves as the Director of Public Affairs for a community action non-profit, responsible for the creation, maintenance, and furtherance of the agency's legislative agenda, government relations, and communications. His non-profit organization experience includes serving and holding offices on the boards of several non-profit organizations at the local, state, and national levels. In his "spare time," Garrett enjoys volunteering in the community, advocating for the incarcerated, and working with Ukrainian soldiers, students, and educators as an English Efficiency Coach.