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Upcoming

Book Talk: Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow

Nov•3•25

12:45pm - 2:00pm

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November 3, 2025
Boston University Scho0l of Law
Barristers Hall, First Floor
12:45-2pm

Please join us on Monday November 3rd, 2025 for a book talk to celebrate the launch of Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow with author Steven Dean.

Lunch will be available starting at 12:30pm.

About Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow:

Global tax policy has long determined which states can access the resources necessary to flourish. Today, even the wealthiest states struggle to tax rich individuals and multinationals. Anti-Black racism has enriched affluent states at the expense of marginalized ones and undermined the taxing power of all nations.

In a compelling narrative interwoven with personal storytelling, Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow connects Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s metaphor of the “bad check”-representing unfulfilled promises of freedom and equality to Black Americans-to contemporary anti-Black global tax policies. The book uncovers lost connections, such as those between Edwin Seligman, an architect of our global tax system, and the Dunning School, which laid the foundation for Jim Crow laws, and between Stanley Surrey, a Harvard professor and advisor to President John F. Kennedy, and key moments of the Cold War.
Furthermore, it takes a global view and reveals how racial panic triggered by African decolonization allowed an exclusive club of white countries to deliver a second bad check to newly sovereign states like Kenya and Nigeria. By circumventing the inclusive one-country, one-vote system of the United Nations, the OECD and its double tax treaty dismantled the generous arrangements that helped Europe rebuild after both World Wars.

Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law exposes the surprising role anti-Black racism played in shaping an international tax system that benefits billionaires at the expense of billions of people. This eye-opening account challenges readers to rethink the global tax system and its profound impact on racial and economic justice.

Panelists: 

Jessica Silbey, Honorable Frank R. Kenison Distinguished Scholar in Law at BU School of Law, will lead a discussion with:

  • Steven Dean, Paul Siskind Research Scholar at BU School of Law, and author of Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow. 
  • Scott Taylor, Dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies and Professor of International Relations at Boston University.
  • Attiya Waris, UN Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights, former UN Independent Expert on foreign debt, other international financial obligations, and human rights, and professor of law at the University of Nairobi.
  • Koritha Mitchell, Professor of English and African American Literature at Boston University.

Speakers

Jessica Silbey

Jessica Silbey

Honorable Frank R. Kenison Distinguished Scholar in Law at BU School of Law

Jessica Silbey

Honorable Frank R. Kenison Distinguished Scholar in Law at BU School of Law
Jessica Silbey teaches and writes in the areas of intellectual property, constitutional law, and law and the humanities. In addition to a law degree, she has a PhD in comparative literature and draws on her studies of literature and film to better account for law’s force, both its effectiveness and failing as socio-political regulation. In 2018, she was a Guggenheim Fellow and has recently completed a book supported by that fellowship called Against Progress: Intellectual Property and Fundamental Values in the Internet Age (Stanford University Press, 2022). In Against Progress, Professor Silbey considers intellectual property debates in law and culture as a bellwether of changing social justice needs in the 21st century. The book argues that intellectual property law is becoming a central framework through which to discuss essential socio-political issues, extending ancient debates over our most cherished constitutional values, refiguring the substance of “progress” in terms that demonstrate the urgency of art and science to social justice today. Professor Silbey’s last book, The Eureka Myth: Creators, Innovators and Everyday Intellectual Property (Stanford University Press, 2015), altered the national conversation about creativity and invention. Based on a qualitative empirical analysis of interviews with authors, artists, inventors and lawyers, the book challenges the traditional notion of intellectual property as merely creating financial incentives necessary to spur innovation. Professor Silbey continues her qualitative empirical study of intellectual property in on-going research on practices of digital photography and design. In addition to her research on intellectual property and constitutional law, Professor Silbey writes and speaks about the use of film as a legal tool (body cams, surveillance video, medical imaging) and the representations of law in popular culture (courtroom dramas, reality television). She is the co-editor of several books, including Law and Popular Culture: A Course Book (Vandeplas 2020) (with Michael Asimow), Trial Films on Trial (University of Alabama Press, 2019) (with Austin Sarat and Martha Umphrey) and Law and Justice on the Small Screen (Bloomsbury, 2012) (with Peter Robson). She is an affiliate fellow at Yale’s Information Society Project and was a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. She was previously chair of the Association of American Law School’s (AALS) national Section on Intellectual Property and served on the AALS Presidential Conference Film Committee from 2012-2020. She was co-chair of the New England Chapter for the Copyright Society of the United States from 2015 through 2018. She has been a distinguished lecturer and visiting fellow at the Willson Center for the Humanities and the Arts at the University of Georgia and was honored to give the 56th Robert D. Klein Lecture at Northeastern University in 2020. Before joining Boston University School of Law, Professor Silbey was a faculty member at Northeastern University School of Law where she was the faculty director of the Center for Law, Innovation, and Creativity, an affiliate professor in English, and Core Faculty at Northeastern’s NuLab for Maps, Texts, and Networks. Professor Silbey was honored to clerk for Judge Robert E. Keeton on the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts and Judge Levin Campbell on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Before becoming a law professor, she practiced law in the disputes department of the Boston office of Foley Hoag LLP focusing on intellectual property, bankruptcy, and reproductive rights.
Steven Dean

Steven Dean

Paul Siskind Research Scholar at BU School of Law, and author of Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow

Steven Dean

Paul Siskind Research Scholar at BU School of Law, and author of Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow
Steven Dean is internationally recognized for his work on the political economy of taxation, philanthropy, and social enterprise. He has published several books, including the award-winning For-Profit Philanthropy: Elite Power and the Threat of Limited Liability Companies, Donor-Advised Funds, and Strategic Corporate Giving (Oxford 2023), coauthored with Dana Brakman Reiser. He has also published articles in a variety of traditional and popular venues, including the NYU Law Review and The Nation. In addition to his work as a scholar, Dean has been outspoken about the impact of bias in tax law. He has spoken at the United Nations about the impact of anti-Black racism on global tax policy and testified before the US House Ways and Means Committee about the shortcomings of race-blind domestic tax rules. Dean’s interventions prompted President Biden to pivot his messaging about tax havens and forced the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to change the marketing materials for its two-pillar proposal for global tax reform. His current book project, Global Jim Crow: Taxation and Racial Capitalism (forthcoming with Oxford), explores the impact of Africa’s decolonization on the trajectory of the global tax regime. Dean has also published Social Enterprise Law: Trust, Public Benefit, and Capital Markets (Oxford 2017) with Dana Brakman Reiser; Social Enterprise Law: A Multijurisdictional Comparative Review (Intersentia 2023) with Dana Brakman Reiser and Giedre Lideikyte Huber; and Federal Taxation of Corporations and Corporate Transactions (Aspen 2018) with Brad Borden. Dean serves on the steering committee of BU’s Global Development Policy Center and is a core Faculty member of its the Global Economic Governance Initiative. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute. While on the faculty at Brooklyn Law School, he served as vice dean. Dean also led NYU Law School’s Graduate Tax Program, serving as faculty director while a visiting professor. Dean has served as a member of the executive committee of the New York State Bar Association Tax Section, the board of directors of the National Tax Association and the American Tax Policy Institute, and the board of regents of the American College of Tax Counsel and the Tax Notes Federal Advisory Board. He has worked as a consultant to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and served as a general rapporteur for the International Academy of Comparative Law. Dean created and hosted two seasons of The Tax Maven, a podcast featuring influential tax law experts discussing their scholarship and answering questions about tax. Dean practiced tax law at Debevoise & Plimpton and Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Before attending law school, he worked at KPMG. Dean is a graduate of Yale Law School and Williams College, and also studied at the University of Trier in Germany. Dean spent his childhood in Nassau, Bahamas.

Scott Taylor

Dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies and Professor of International Relations at Boston University

Scott Taylor

Dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies and Professor of International Relations at Boston University
Scott Taylor is Dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies and Professor of International Relations.
Dr. Taylor’s research and teaching interests lie in the areas of African politics and political economy, with a particular emphasis on business-state relations, private sector development, governance, and political and economic reform. He is the author of Politics in Southern Africa: Transition and Transformation (Lynne Rienner, 2011)(with Gretchen Bauer); Culture and Customs of Zambia (Greenwood Press, 2006); Business and the State in Southern Africa: The Politics of Economic Reform (Lynne Rienner, 2007); and Globalization and the Cultures of Business in Africa: From Patrimonialism to Profit (Indiana University Press, 2012), as well as of articles in numerous political science and area studies journals. Dr. Taylor has consulted widely in the field of international development, on issues of political economy and governance and democracy and elections. He has served as a consultant for numerous organizations, including USAID, DfID, the African Development Bank, the World Bank, and the Carter Center, as well as for private companies. He has held positions as visiting researcher at the University of Zambia, the University of Zimbabwe, and the Christian Michelsen Institute (CMI) in Norway. Dr. Taylor has traveled widely throughout Africa and served as an election observer in a number of African countries, including Ghana, Liberia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Dr. Taylor previously taught at Smith College and most recently at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where he was also Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the International Advisory Board for the Southern African Institute for Policy and Research (SAIPAR), a member of the Board of Trustees of Franklin and Marshall College, and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy. Dr. Taylor’s specializations include Africa, Governance and Politics and International Development

Attiya Waris

UN Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights, former UN Independent Expert on foreign debt, other international financial obligations, and human rights, and professor of law at the University of Nairobi

Attiya Waris

UN Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights, former UN Independent Expert on foreign debt, other international financial obligations, and human rights, and professor of law at the University of Nairobi

Attiya Waris was appointed the UN Independent Expert on foreign debt, other international financial obligations, and human rights by the Human Rights Council at its 47th session, and took up the function on 1 August 2021.

Attiya Waris is Kenya’s second full female law professor and the first professor from a religious, ethnic and racial minority in the country. She is also the only known Professor of Fiscal law on the African continent. Her original scholarly contribution to this field has been the development and strengthening of the linkages between finance and development through taxation, debt and illicit financial flows and the raising of living standards. Professor Waris has in the past held the position of Director Research for the University as well as acting Deputy Principal College of Humanities and Social Sciences as the first female Professor to hold both posts separately and simultaneously. She holds several portfolios currently and: is currently serving as the UN independent expert on foreign debt and international financial obligations under implications for human rights globally, the Chair of the Supervisory Board of the Capabuild Foundation based in the Netherlands, a Commissioner on the O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism and Structural Discrimination and Global Health and a member of the Editorial board of the Yearbook on Economic Determinants at the WHO while also being the Managing Editor of the Journal on Financing for Development housed at the University of Nairobi. Most recently Professor Waris was quoted in the Constitutional Court of Kenya in the debate on housing tax but her work was used by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Bahamas citing her as a legal scholar during the recently concluded G77 meeting in Kampala in January 2024. She has been a founding member of several organisations including the African Tax Researcher’s Network based in South Africa, the Tax Justice Network Africa, the Capabuild Foundation in Amsterdam and the Committee of Fiscal studies, University of Nairobi and most recently AFRODAD-East and Horn of Africa.

Koritha Mitchell

Professor of English and African American Literature at Boston University

Koritha Mitchell

Professor of English and African American Literature at Boston University
Dr. Koritha Mitchell is author of the award-winning book Living with Lynching and author of the 2020 book From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture. She is also editor of Frances E. W. Harper’s 1892 novel Iola Leroy and editor of Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the first book-length autobiography by a formerly enslaved woman. She has been a professor of English at Ohio State University for eighteen years. As a visiting scholar, she will conduct her teaching and research in community with BU students, staff, and faculty. Her public commentary has appeared in outlets such as Time, CNN, Good Morning America, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, NBC News, PBS Newshour, and NPR’s Morning Edition. Online, she’s @ProfKori.

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Book Talk: Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow

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