I dont want to slow us down, but i do want make sure that all of you know a little bit about where you are today. Can i just get a sense of how many of you are at Brooklyn Historical society for the first time . Wow. Fantastic. Welcome. Welcome to all of our full timers as well. A few of our Board Members are in the audience so we are delighted by that as well. For those of you who have never been here before, i want to give you a sense of this institution which has been around for very long time am a 154 years and we are a Historical Society that prides ourselves on being very assessable to people, we have an extraordinary Research Library that is open to one and all and we encourage you to come explore. We have exhibitions which you may have gotten a glimpse of ray behind this wall, history of abolition in brooklyn called in pursuit of freedom, theres an expedition about Jackie Robinson and baseball world series season, upstairs and an exhibition about the Prospect Park and its histo
So, again, encouraging people to take their seats. Good evening, everyone. My name is kai bird, im the new executive director of the Leon Levy Center for biography which is celebrating its tenth year now all due to shelby white and the leon levy foundation. And i want to advertise, first of all, our new alliance with bio. This is our first sort of jointlysponsored event with them, but we are also, courtesy of will swift here the president of bio, we are also going to be doing, cosponsoring their great annual conference on biography next may. And that will also be happening here at cuny. Should be a great event with over 200 biographers. I also want to advertise and put out the word, we have a december 15th deadline for our new, our annual fellowship, and there are four fellowships given out every year of 65,000 a pop for aspiring biographers. So if you know of people who are aspiring, please encourage them to apply. And finally, i just, you know, im really thrilled that were able to do
Good evening, everyone. I am the new executive director celebrating its tenth year now and i want to advertise the alliance with the bio. Courtesy of the president bio we are going to be cosponsoring their conference will also be happening here. For the new indigo fellowship there fellowships given out every single year. Im thrilled to this event and owner bob and i introduced now go swift will take it from here. Those of you who dont know it stands for the Biographers International organization and i want to think before we such a good friend and those whom ive mastered now for being so helpful and also cathy curtis is amazing and put this whole event together. But she already has so much to do because she is so amazing. It is as well as the biographers are masters of the field and we are excited to inaugurate a New Fellowship that allows people to apply and travel if they win the fellowships traveled to have the funds to go to the places their subjects lived so they could get a more
Encouraging people to take their seat. Good evening, everyone. I am the new executive director celebrating its tenth year now and i want to advertise the alliance with the bio. Courtesy of the president bio we are going to be cosponsoring their conference will also be happening here. For the new indigo fellowship there fellowships given out every single year. Im thrilled to this event and owner bob and i introduced now go swift will take it from here. Those of you who dont know it stands for the Biographers International organization and i want to think before we such a good friend and those whom ive mastered now for being so helpful and also cathy curtis is amazing and put this whole event together. But she already has so much to do because she is so amazing. It is as well as the biographers are masters of the field and we are excited to inaugurate a New Fellowship that allows people to apply and travel if they win the fellowships traveled to have the funds to go to the places their s
Nancy caught, for her support of our endeavor here today. Today, we will address a timely topic the participation of historians in courtroom proceedings. Theres no systematic study, but the evidence we have indicates of, for instance, scholarly amicus briefs, where scholars file amicus briefs in court proceedings, has been increasing. Theres a long history of scholarly input into Appellate Court cases stretching back at least to the famous brandeis inef in a Supreme Court case 1908, but for our purposes, our pedigree as historians might be traced back to the brown versus board of education litigation in which the distinguished cptorians helped the in aa casee naacp make the against School Segregation. More recently, 400 historians signed an amicus brief in the case of webster versus reproductive services, the abortion rights case from 1989, tell youanelists will about things that are both older and more recent. In addition, historians testifying at trial has a quite long pedigree. As j