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Scotland’s leading human rights lawyer, Aamer Anwar, to give 2019 Jimmy Reid annual lecture
The Jimmy Reid Foundation, in conjunction with the University of Glasgow, is delighted to announce that Scotland’s leading human rights lawyer, Aamer Anwar, is to give the seventh Jimmy Reid annual lecture on 10 October 2019. Currently, Aamer is the Rector of the University of Glasgow, as Jimmy Reid was in the early 1970s, and will give the lecture in the Bute Hall where Jimmy gave his famous rectorial address in 1972 called ‘Alienation’ and known as the ‘rat race is for rats’ speech.
The title of Aamer’s lecture is ‘The struggle for justice, equality and freedom in Scotland’. In it, he will not only discuss the state of justice, equality and human rights in Scotland but examine how the battle for these can be pursued in the face of opposition from the Scottish establishment.
Looking forward to giving the lecture, Aamer said:
It’s an honour to walk in the footsteps of Jimmy Reid. As Rector, he gave what has been described as one of the greatest speeches since Lincoln’s Gettysburg address in which he spoke out against injustice and inequality, urging our students to reject the values of the ‘rat-race’. Since then, we have achieved much that as a nation we can be proud of. However, injustice, inequality and racism remain deeply rooted in our institutions and society. We continue to sleep walk in complacency whilst politicians issue sound bites of comfort. Nearly 50 years after Jimmy spoke, the vulnerable, the poor, minorities and the weak are despised, abused and silenced. It is time that the voice of the voiceless was heard.
Professor Gregor Gall, director of the Jimmy Reid Foundation, commented:
Jimmy Reid would have been delighted that such a leading campaigner for social justice as Aamer Anwar is to give a lecture in his honour in the very hall where Jimmy himself gave his trailblazing 1972 rectorial address. In Scotland today, there is no one more qualified and suited to walk in Jimmy’s shoes than Aamer Anwar.
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Notes:
- Aamer Anwar is a longstanding anti-racist and human rights campaigner. He became a solicitor in 2000 before going on to found Aamer Anwar & Co, Solicitors & Notaries, in 2006. He was elected rector in 2017, having attended the University of Glasgow from 1986 to 1994. He was ‘Solicitor of the Year’ in the Herald’s Law Awards of Scotland 2016 and 2018, and ‘Lawyer of the Year’ at the fourteenth Scottish Legal Awards in March 2017. He is also a patron of the Jimmy Reid Foundation.
- The 2019 lecture will take place from 6.30pm onward at the Bute Hall, University of Glasgow on Thursday 10 October 2019.
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