Slavery in the 21st Century, Human Trafficking: A Global Shame will be presented by Christine Dolan on Wednesday, Feb. 29, 12-2 p.m. at the UTC Fine Arts Center, Roland Hayes Concert Hall, at the corner of Vine and Palmetto Streets. Admission is free and the public is invited to attend this UTC Diversity Lecture Series event.
Ms. Dolan is a broadcasting and print investigative journalist, photographer, and author. Ms. Dolan’s career has focused on U.S. and international politics and policy, wars/conflicts, humanitarian disasters, terrorist and criminal networks. Since 2000, she has focused on human trafficking worldwide on the street and over the internet, as well as politics.
After graduating from Georgetown University, she attended Georgetown University Law Center, and was trained as a criminal investigator. She left law school to join ABC News in Washington, DC.
In the 1980s, she served as political director of Cable News Network . At CNN, she created ELECTIONWATCH ’84, was responsible for the network’s editorial political coverage, and conceived INSIDE POLITICS – the first-ever daily political show on any U.S. network. Later, Ms. Dolan created and co-owned Convention Network – the first-ever 24-hour behind-the-scenes coverage of U.S. national political conventions.
Before President Clinton signed the US Anti-Trafficking bill in October 2000, the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children commissioned Ms. Dolan as a journalist to cover the exploitation of children emanating from the Balkan Crises – a war she previously covered in the early 1990s while co-owning and serving as executive producer of The World This Week, an international policy television series syndicated on PBS. In 2001, her groundbreaking human trafficking report, Shattered Innocence – The Millennium Holocaust, was released at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where former UK Detective Paul Holmes, then head of the Interpol Trafficking Committee, and Arnold Burns, former U.S. Deputy Attorney General of the United States, endorsed her work. Mr. Holmes called it, “the best work on human trafficking. Christine nailed the connection of the dots of this global phenomenon.”
Since that time, her reporting and work to fight slavery in the 21st Century has been acclaimed by Heads of States, and diplomats; President George W. Bush, Jan Eliasson, former president of the UN General Assembly and former Swedish ambassador to the United States, Dr. Richard Seziberra, former Rwandan ambassador to the United States, Edith Ssempala, former Ugandan ambassador to the United States, Paula Dobrinansky, former under secretary for Global Affairs, and others. Her work has been endorsed by members of the European Parliament, the OSCE in Vienna, Austria, the U.S. State Department, Interpol, FBI, U.S. Customs, U.S. Homeland Security, Australian Federal Police, Canadian Mounted Police, Scotland Yard, and other international law enforcement agencies, in addition to business leaders, educators, and fellow journalists.
Ms. Dolan is a co-founder of “Children in Slavery – The 21st Century Global Campaign,” an international coalition of diplomats, journalists, law enforcement officials and business leaders across the globe, who focus on practical solutions to end human trafficking.
Ms. Dolan is presently writing the second book of the trilogy Shattered Innocence.
Welcoming remarks at the Feb. 29 event will be offered by Dr. Bryan Samuel, UTC Office of Equity and Diversity; Beverly Cosley, city of Chattanooga Office of Multicultural Affairs; Leane Blevins, Southeast Tennessee Civil Rights Working Group (FBI); Ron Appel, RAC Immigration and Customs Enforcement; William C. Killian, U.S. Attorney, Eastern District of Tennessee and Dr. Roger Thompson, Professor, UTC Criminal Justice Department.
Sponsors include: UTC Criminal Justice Department; city of Chattanooga Office of Multicultural Affairs; Southeast Tennessee Civil Rights Working Group; UTC Office of Equity and Diversity. Co-sponsors include: UTC Departments of Psychology, Sociology, Political Science, Social Work, Legal Assistant Studies, Africana Studies.