Panel Discussion: Race and the Constitution

Join in on the discussion that is part of the university's year-long project series: Race Matters. 

Justin Dyer PhD, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri and St. Ambrose faculty members will discuss the influence of the U.S. Constitution on racial questions ranging from slavery to employment discrimination.

Justin Dyer, PhD, canvassed the early thinking of John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas as he examined the growth of antislavery constitutionalism in the years preceding the Civil War. The result of that research was "Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition," a book published in February by the Cambridge University Press.

Dyer's work also has been published Polity, Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Political Science and PS: Political Science and Politics. He is completing a second book that will investigate legal and historical parallels between the issues of slavery and abortion in American politics.

Since 2009, Dyer has been an assistant professor of political science at the University of Missouri, where he recently was awarded Provost's Outstanding Junior Faculty Research and Creative Award.

Dyer earned his doctorate in public law and political theory from the University of Texas at Austin after graduating Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from the University of Oklahoma. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society.

The Gottlieb Lounge in the Rogalski Center is located on the corner of Ripley and Lombard Streets, one block west of Harrison.