During the dialogue, Prof. Kennedy discussed a range of topics, from the Supreme Court to interracial adoption to comparisons between the civil rights and the gay rights movements.

     Regarding the Supreme Court, Prof. Kennedy does not always agree with the judges, but he thinks they are good lawyers. He is for parentless children having the chance to be raised by caring parents, regardless of race, and he's against a regime that would prevent that from happening. Further, he feels the struggle for gay rights, like the struggle for civil rights, will be a slow and complicated struggle, but that it will ultimately be redemptive.

     For the Henry J. Miller Lecture, titled "Revisiting the Case of Leo Frank: Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Perversion of Justice," Prof. Kennedy first gave the historical background of the Leo Frank case. In 1913, Mary Phagan, a white woman who worked at a pencil factory in Atlanta, was murdered. Two black suspects were questioned, and James Conley, whom many now believe to be the real murderer, implicated Leo Frank, the manager of the factory. Public sentiment about the murder was that it required a "special" defendant and that a black defendant would be too commonplace." Frank, a Jew who had been raised in the North and was considered a "Yankee," was also affluent, and those were among the factors against him.

     Frank was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging, but the governor commuted the sentence, and Frank was sent to a prison camp. While he was there, a group of vigilantes kidnapped Frank and lynched him. Prof. Kennedy said that Frank was the first white person found guilty of a capital crime based on the testimony of a black person.

     Prof. Kennedy focused on two instances where the "race card" was played during and after the trial. Frank's attorneys appealed to "anti-anti-Semitism," arguing that Frank would have never been accused if he had not been a Jew. The attorneys also played the "anti-black card," questioning the integrity of the star witness, James Conley, based on his race. After this attack, the black press began to editorialize that Frank was guilty, and after Frank was lynched, the black press editorialized about the inconsistency of the outrage over Frank's lynching compared to the lack of outrage over the lynching of blacks.

     Prof. Kennedy said two things could be gained by considering the racial issues in this case. First, this case breaks down the black/white paradigm that is usually the basis for racial issues and makes us consider whether Jews are a "race," and the change in that perception of Jews has shown how conceptions of race can change over time. Second, this case shows that we should not romanticize marginalized peoples, because marginalized people can marginalize others too. Prof. Kennedy ended by saying, "The vice of racism is not a vice that is limited to the powerful."