The Penn Libraries is pleased to announce that Penn Law’s David Rudovsky, one of the nation's leading civil rights and criminal defense attorneys will deliver the 2017 Beitler Distinguished Lecture, “Crisis in Criminal Justice: Mass Incarceration and the Impact of DNA Science on the Phenomenon of Wrongful Convictions” on May 16th at 5:30pm in the Class of 1978 Pavilion on the sixth floor of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center.

In his lecture, Rudovsky will address two contentious issues in the U.S. Criminal Justice System. First, mass incarceration: the causes and implications of the unprecedented increase in the use of criminal sanctions, including racially disparate treatment. Second, the impact of DNA post-conviction testing beyond the exoneration of thousands of innocent, but convicted persons: what we have learned about wrongful convictions and measures that can be instituted to remedy systemic flaws in our criminal justice system.

Rudovsky practices public interest law with the firm of Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg. He became a Senior Fellow at Penn Law in 1988 and teaches courses in Criminal Law, Constitutional Criminal Procedure and Evidence. He is co-author (with Michael Avery and Karen Blum) of Police Misconduct: Law and Litigation (West, 2012, 3rd ed.) and The Law of Arrest, Search, and Seizure in Pennsylvania (6th ed. 2011, PBI Press). His awards include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and Award for Accomplishments in Civil Rights Law and Criminal Justice, the ACLU Civil Liberties Award, and, most recently, his fifth Harvey Levin Award for Excellence in Teaching.

In 2002, Dr. Lorraine Beitler donated a collection of over 1,000 items documenting the history of the Alfred Dreyfus affair and its impact on the art, society, and politics of France and the modern world to the Penn Libraries. The collection provides a context for international learning and debate through a program of touring exhibitions, publications, and conferences. After donating the collection, Dr. Beitler and her husband, Martin, established the Lorraine Beitler Lecture Fund to serve as a catalyst for the examination of the issues of prejudice and intolerance.

This lecture is free and open to the public. To register, please visit: http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/beitler17.html

​​​​​​​About the Penn Libraries
The Penn Libraries serve the world-class faculty and students of Penn’s 12 schools. The Libraries’ collections comprise more than 7 million volumes, over 100,000 journals, some 2 million digitized images, and extraordinary rare and unique materials that document the intellectual and cultural experience of ancient and modern civilizations. Through our collaborative relationships, we supplement Penn’s great local collections with physical access to the Center for Research Libraries (approximately 5 million items), the combined holdings of the Ivies (more than 70 million volumes), and exclusive electronic access to some 2 million public domain titles in the HathiTrust. Today, the Libraries play an instrumental role in developing new technologies for information discovery and dissemination and are noted for groundbreaking work in digital library design.  To learn more about the Penn Libraries, visit http://www.library.upenn.edu.

About the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

The Kislak Center is a vibrant space that brings together people, technology and unique content.  Located on the top floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, it was redesigned in 2013 to allow several different groups to interact with objects of study simultaneously, increasing the use of primary resources in the University’s curriculum and access to the Libraries’ resources for the larger scholarly community.  Today the Kislak Center encompasses the Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Furness Memorial Shakespeare Library, the Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection and the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies. To learn more about the Kislak Center, visit http://www.library.upenn.edu/kislak.