Dr. William Simmons will visit PC to discuss “Border Security, Drug Cartels, and Migrant Vulnerabilities in the Americas” on Wednesday, Nov. 6 at 7 p.m. The event will take place in Neville Hall.

“This will be a wonderful opportunity for the members of the campus and the local community to hear and engage in discussion with one of today’s leading human rights scholars about issues at our southern border,” said Dr. Booker T. Ingram, chair of the political science department at PC.

The lecture is the third annual Samuel C. Waters Lecture Series in Political Science. The event is hosted by PC’s Department of Political Science.

Work in Human Rights

Williams is a professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Arizona and director of the online Human Rights Practice graduate program. An expert in human rights, Simmons earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and his Ph.D. in political science from Louisiana State University.

He has authored and co-authored numerous books including Human Rights Law and the Marginalized Other, Joyful Human Rights. He co-edited with Carol Mueller Binational Human Rights: The U.S.-Mexico Experience.

Some of his most recent work focuses on the racialization of legal status through survey data of over 2000 Latinos in Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Chicago. He also has published two articles and a book chapter exploring legal remedies for the feminicides in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. One of the articles helped inform the groundbreaking case against Mexico in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

He is also a practitioner and has served as a consultant of human rights and social justice in The Gambia (West Africa), Niger, Nigeria, China, Mexico and the United States.

The Waters Lecture Series

The Waters Lecture Series in Political Science was established through a gift from Samuel C. Waters, a 1968 graduate of PC and an attorney in Columbia, S.C. The annual lecture series aims to highlight the value and relevance of the study of politics by hosting guest speakers to address a wide range of contemporary political and policy issues.

The lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will precede the event in the Cornelson Center Lobby of Neville Hall at 6:30 p.m.

Learn More about Political Science at PC

The Samuel C. Waters Lecture Series in Political Science is just one of the many opportunities for you to learn political science at PC. Check out Political Science for more.