College to host moderated discussion on U.S prison system 

A presentation titled “The Carceral State: Race, Citizenship and American Life in the 21st Century,” will be held 7:30–9:30 p.m. Sept. 17 in Emerson Suites Room B as part of Ithaca College’s celebration of Constitution Day.

Marie Gottschalk and Adolph Reed Jr., both professors of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, will engage in a conversation moderated by Carlos Figueroa, assistant professor of politics at the college.

Gottschalk and Reed will talk about mass incarceration and its relation to governmental policies and some of the social, moral and political issues stemming from it. They will also discuss the development, origins and consolidation of the U.S. carceral state and its meaning today following the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A question and answer session will follow the discussion.

Reed’s research focuses on American and African-American politics and urban politics and political development, and he has written numerous books on these issues.

Gottschalk is a specialist in American politics, focusing on criminal justice, race and the development of the welfare state. Her latest book is titled “Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics.”

Figueroa writes and teaches in the areas of race, religion and citizenship; African-American politics and political thought; policy analysis; and public leadership. He joined the college’s politics department in 2013.

U.S. News & World Report ranks college ninth in northern region

U.S. News & World Report, a national magazine, has once again ranked Ithaca College as one of the top colleges and universities in the North. The magazine’s 2016 list of “Best Colleges” ranked the college ninth out of 138 regional universities.

It also ranked the college 12th in its “Best Value” list of universities that provide a quality education for an affordable cost in the northern region.

The college has been placed in the top 15 “Best Colleges” Regional Universities in the North for 21 straight years and has been ranked No. 9 for the past two years.

Villanova University was ranked the top regional university in the northern region.

The magazine ranks colleges based on measures of peer assessment, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, graduation rate performance and alumni giving.

Ithaca College is placed in the regional universities category, which includes institutions that provide a full range of undergraduate majors and master’s degree programs but few doctoral programs. The regional universities category is divided into four sections: North, South, Midwest and West. The magazine also separates rankings for national universities and liberal arts colleges.

Discussion on transborder gender to be held Sept. 21

The Ithaca College Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity will hold its first presentation of its annual discussion series featuring  Maylei Blackwell, who will discuss “Transborder Gender and Indigeneity” at 7 p.m. Sept. 21 in Clark Lounge.   

Blackwell will present her research on the increasing complexity of community in Los Angeles in the subject of indigenous migration from South America. She seeks to better understand how indigenous women advocate for themselves as they migrate and proceed through the systems of racial overlap and hybridization.

Blackwell is an associate professor of Chicana studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

She serves as one of the directors of the Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles Project, a digital mapping project of indigenous communities. She is also a representative of the Abya Yala Working Group of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and the author of a book about feminist voices in the Chicana movement.