CUSSW DISTINGUISHED VISITING SCHOLAR SERIES

Wednesday, April 23, 2008
12:30 - 1:30 (Room C03)

School of Social Work - 1255 Amsterdam Avenue
(between 121st & Morningside Drive)


RSVP: click here

Presentation
In 1973, a young civil liberties lawyer filed a controversial class action lawsuit that challenged New York City's operation of its foster-care system. Thirty-five years later, Nina Bernstein. the
author of "The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care,"
(Pantheon, 2001,Vintage paperback, 2002), looks back at how race, religion, and politics shaped the city's treatment of poor children, and considers the impact of new forces on current efforts to reform child welfare, including national battles over immigration and the growth of
economic inequality.

About the Presenter
Nina Bernstein is a reporter for The New York Times and the author of "TheLost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care."The bookwon a PEN Literary Award and the 2002 New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism, and was a finalist for both the 2001 National Book Award and the Book Critics' Circle Award.

As a journalist, Ms. Bernstein has written investigative features on a wide range of social and legal issues, both as a national correspondent and as a metropolitan reporter covering poverty, child welfare, homelessness and social services. She now covers immigration for the New York Times, which she joined in 1995. That year, she led the paper's investigation into the case of Elisa Izquierdo, 6, who was in the care of the city's child welfare agency when she was beaten to death. The resulting articles won a George Polk Award for distinguished metropolitan coverage.

Between 1986 and 1995, Ms. Bernstein was a reporter for New York Newsday, where she served variously as a foreign correspondent, an investigative reporter and on national and metropolitan assignments concerning healthcare, legal affairs, education and child welfare. In 1994, her series in New York Newsday about the Wilder lawsuit won the 1994 Columbia
School of Journalism Mike Berger Award. The same year, she won an Alicia Patterson
Foundation Fellowship to research foster care and the politics ofpoverty in America.

Before joining Newsday, Ms. Bernstein was a special projects reporter for The Milwaukee Journal in Wisconsin, where she specialized in covering juvenile court, mental health and investigations.

A graduate of Harvard University, magna cum laude, in History and Literature of Modern Europe, she returned to Harvard in 1983-84 as a Nieman fellow, concentrating on American social history and the law. Her many other honors include a fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin (fall 2002), and awards from the Investigative Reporters and Editors
(for a series about Milwaukee's municipal justice system that brought reform), from the National Education Writers Association (for articles about the New York City public schools), and from the Newswomen's Club of New York (for stories about computer privacy, and inequity in divorce courts).

Ms. Bernstein, who is married and has two sons, is also the author of a book of fiction for children 8 to 12, "Magic by the Book," published in 2005 by Frances FosterBooks/Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Suggested Readings

The Vintage website about "The Lost Children of Wilder." http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679758341

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THIS IS A PUBLIC EVENT