“A Challenge to Democracy”

Ethnic profiling is illegal in the United States, prohibited by the Fourth Amendment, which requires probable cause for searches and seizures, and by the Fourteenth Amendment, which calls for equal protection under the law. And yet as the recent arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates demonstrates, the issue remains far from settled. This fall Washington University in St. Louis will present “Ethnic Profiling: A Challenge to Democracy,” a semester-long series exploring the history, impact and ethical issues surrounding ethnic profiling through lectures, readings, performances, panel discussions and other events.

Influence 150: 150 Years of Shaping a City, a Nation, the World

Harriet Hosmer, Portrait of Wayman Crow, Sr., 1866, Carrara marbleSince its founding in 1853, Washington University in St. Louis has grown from a small private school to one of the nation’s premiere research universities. Influence 150: 150 Years of Shaping a City, a Nation, the World, which opens Sept. 5 at the Gallery of Art, celebrates that journey with hundreds of archival photographs, drawings, posters, letters, scrapbooks and other materials chronicling key events, people and discoveries in the life of the university.