Constitution Day at the Byrd CenterThe fourteenth annual Tom E. Moses Memorial Lecture on the U.S. Constitution was given by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin (Ret.) on Constitution Day, Monday, September 17, 2018. Harkin represented Iowa’s Fifth Congressional District from 1974-1984 in the U.S. House of Representatives before winning election to the United States Senate, where he served five terms with distinction from 1985 to 2015. Senator Harkin’s talk was titled “The Constitution and Persons with Disabilities.”
Senator Harkin was the primary author and driving force behind the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, legislation that has become known as the “Emancipation Proclamation for people with Disabilities.” The legislation changed the landscape of America by requiring buildings and transportation to be wheelchair accessible, and to provide workplace accommodations for people with disabilities. As a longstanding member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP) Senator Harkin along with Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT) introduced and helped enact ADA amendments that further protected all Americans with disabilities from discrimination in 2008. |
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About the Moses Memorial LectureThe Moses Memorial Lecture is named for the late Tom E. Moses, a longtime civil libertarian, activist, and founder of the Eastern Panhandle branch of the ACLU-WV. The inaugural Moses Lecture was given by Senator Robert C. Byrd in 2005. You can view videos of some of our past Moses Memorial Lecture on the Byrd Center YouTube Channel >>
Past Constitution Day Speakers: 2005: Senator Robert C. Byrd
2006: Joseph Onek 2007: Anthony Williams 2008: Dr. Donald A. Ritchie 2009: David Cole 2010: Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia and Bob Edgar 2011: Richard Dreyfuss 2012: Dr. Michael Austin 2013: Dr. Raymond Smock 2014: Clay Risen 2015: Dr. Ralph Young 2016: Dr. Elizabeth Hinton 2017: Ganesh Sitaraman 2018: Senator Tom Harkin |
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