Youth panel set for March 22 at The Bay

A panel featuring five youth leaders in the Lincoln community will discuss their vision of racial equality in the E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues’ Cooper Conversation, 7 p.m. March 22 at The Bay, 2005 Y St. The event is free and open to the public. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

The panel will feature:

• Batool Ibrahim, a senior global studies and political science major at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and current president of the Association of Students of the University of Nebraska;

• Nasia Olson-Whitefeather, a senior criminology and criminal justice, and child, youth and family studies major at Nebraska, and recent president of the University of Nebraska Inter-Tribal Exchange;

• Meena Pannirselvam, a graduate student in educational administration at Nebraska, and a graduate assistant for the Office of Academic Success and Intercultural Services; and

• Zein Saleh, president of the Key Club, Student Council and National Honor Society at Lincoln’s North Star High School and a member of Lincoln Public Schools’ Scholarly Multicultural Equity Cadre.

The discussion will be moderated by Meyri Ibrahim, a junior political science major at Nebraska. Topics will include the rise in performative activism, allyship, the burden of representation, and microaggressions — focusing on issues affecting the panelists’ communities and futures.

The discussion, “Perform Activism: Youths Reckoning with Racial Justice,” is part of the 2021-22 season of the E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues.

This year’s Thompson Forum series, “Moments of Reckoning: Global Calls for Racial Equity and Action,” features five explorations into historical and contemporary cases of discrimination. The series kicked off Sept. 1 with a panel discussion featuring Husker faculty and continued with Penn State Law Professor Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia on Nov. 2 and actress, author and playwright Anna Deavere Smith on Feb. 9. The series will conclude with a talk by Walter Echo-Hawk, a Native American rights attorney, tribal judge and law professor, at 7 p.m. April 6 at the Lied Center for Performing Arts.

All events are free and open to the public. The university will follow the latest public health guidance from the Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department. For more information, click here. Event summaries and full biographical information on each speaker is available here.

Events are streamed on the Thompson Forum website and available on NET, LNKTV City and LNKTV Education. Events are also accessible on campus channel 4 and KRNU radio 90.3 FM. All talks are interpreted or will have closed captioning for people who are deaf and hard of hearing.

The E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues is a cooperative project of the Cooper Foundation, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Lied Center and University Honors Program. The series was established in 1988 with the purpose of bringing a diversity of viewpoints on international and public policy issues to the university and people of Nebraska to promote understanding and encourage discussion.