On Friday, March 3, an audience of nearly 400 came together in Penn Pavilion for a day-long forum on a Forum on Race, Community and the Pursuit of Justice sponsored by Provost Sally Kornbluth. Organized by a steering committee of Duke faculty, the forum addressed topics of mass incarceration of people of color in the United States, police engagement with communities of color, training methods for de-escalation of crises, the demographics of US police forces and the burden placed on police departments to resolve deep rooted social and economic problems.

Activists, artists, scholars, journalists and police officers engaged in dialog about the issues underpinning tensions between law enforcement and marginalized communities and where the country might move forward in resolving these tensions.

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A leading academic on police violence, David Sklansky of the Stanford Law School said, “it’s not enough to talk about bias in officers. We have to unbias institutions.  We need demographic change in these institutions. Ferguson [where an overwhelmingly white police force works in a predominantly black city] is good example.  An integrated police force is not a panacea but an important and necessary step.”