Annual Brooklyn Lecture on International Business Law: The World Bank's Minimalist Race Agenda
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About the Lecture
Following the murder of George Floyd, the World Bank established an Anti-Racism Task Force that divided the Bank’s work into two phases. Phase 1 involves workplace issues including raising awareness, strengthening knowledge, and mitigating instances of racism and racial discrimination. Phase 2 issues will look at the World Bank’s development work and its community engagements.
This lecture will focus on the early indications of how the World Bank is addressing issues of race in its development work. My primary claim is that, so far, it seems the World Bank is moving towards a path of institutionalizing a pretty thin understanding of racial discrimination in its development work. This minimalist race agenda does not, for example, include the World Bank facing its role in justifying its lending to the racist South African government during apartheid, in open defiance of international law and of the United Nations.
This lecture will make the case that the World Bank has to face its racist legacy up front, as well as to explicitly disavow the techniques its lawyers and leaders deployed to defend the World Bank’s continued lending to apartheid South Africa.
Ultimately, my claim then is that by looking back to see how the World Bank has in the past addressed issues relating to race, we, as international economic lawyers, can also better trace the footprints of racism embedded in rules and institutions of the post–Second World War order and what we can do to begin to address them.
Sponsored by the Dennis J. Block Center for the Study of International Business Law and the Brooklyn Journal of International Law.
Hybrid Event
This event is being held both virtually on Zoom and in person. However, due to space limitations, in-person participation is available to current Brooklyn Law School faculty, students, and staff only on a first-come, first-served basis.
More Info
For general inquiries regarding this event, please contact the Brooklyn Law School Office of Events at events@brooklaw.edu or (718) 780-7966.
Requests for a reasonable accommodation based on a disability to attend this event should be made to Louise Cohen, Director of Equal Opportunity and Title IX Coordinator, at louise.cohen@brooklaw.edu. Please make your request at least ten days before the event. We will do our best to address accommodation requests made after the ten days.