Guns, Germs, Steel: An Overview of the Human History of Race

A conversation about Race and Structural Racism inspired by the works of Jarred Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel); Fredrick Engels (Origin of Family, Private Property and State) and Yuval N. Harari (Sapiens).This conversation will consider the global historical context for our ongoing crisis of race and policing. How did we get to where we are today? What is happening right now in terms of race, policing and American democracy? And, where can we go from here?
Yusef Jones
Yusef Jonas is a Human Rights Activist and Associate of the Elsinore Bennu Think Tank (EBTT) for Restorative Justice of Duquesne University. Incarcerated as a very young man, Mr. Jonas spent much of his adulthood in prison where he earned an Associate’s Degree as well as studying cultural anthropology, history and political science. Since, and most certainly prior to, his release, Yusef has been focused on a dynamic reformation of social, economic and political relations starting with his most immediate sphere of influence and expanding ever outward. Through EBTT and Duquesne University, he is currently working, as co-editor, about the experience of men returning from incarceration to their new reality as citizens in society.

Norman Conti is a professor of sociology at Duquesne University, specializing in police socialization, social psychology, and restorative justice. Along with six men serving life sentences at the State Correctional Institution in Pittsburgh, Dr. Conti founded the Elsinore Bennu Think Tank for Restorative Justice (EBTT), which created and developed the program Police Training Inside-Out. After the prison closed, the EBTT was reestablished on campus at Duquesne as a weekly conference of community activists and ex-offenders for developing ongoing programs to reduce recidivism and to address the needs of vulnerable youth. Dr. Conti is the coordinator of Duquesne’s Social Justice Association and a member of the national steering committee for the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. His work has appeared in The American Sociologist, Dialogues in Social Justice, The Federal Sentencing Reporter, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Journal of Public Scholarship in Higher Education, Kalfou, Law Enforcement Bulletin, The Police Journal, Police Practice & Research, Police Quarterly, Policing & Society, The Prison Journal, Social Network Analysis and Symbolic Interaction.

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