RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Texas Law Prof Gerald Torres on Voting Rights, Affirmative Action & More

University of Texas law professor Gerald Torres in the studios of KOOP-FM in Austin, Texas, Friday, July 12, 2013. Photos by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Rag Radio podcast:
UT-Austin law prof Gerald Torres
joins us on Rag Radio

We discuss the recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on voting rights and affirmative action, plus immigration reform, Atmospheric Trust litigation, Native American sovereignty, and much more.

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / July 17, 2013

University of Texas law professor Gerald Torres was Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, July 12, 2013. Torres, who holds the Bryant Smith Chair in Law at the University of Texas, is an expert on environmental and agricultural law, critical race theory, and federal Indian law.

And he plays a mean harmonica!

Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download this episode of Rag Radio here:


Among issues that Professor Torres discusses with us on the show are the recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on voting rights and affirmative action, plus immigration reform, Atmospheric Trust litigation, and Native American sovereignty.

Gerald Torres, who was associate dean of the University of Minnesota Law School before coming to UT-Austin, has served as deputy assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and as counsel to then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.

His book, The Miner’s Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy (Harvard University Press), written with Harvard Law Professor Lani Guinier, was described by Publisher’s Weekly as “one of the most provocative and challenging books on race produced in years.”

Gerald Torres in performance!

Professor Torres is a past president of the Association of American Law Schools. He has served on the board of the Environmental Law Institute, the National Petroleum Council, and on EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Law Institute.

Torres was honored with the 2004 Legal Service Award from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) for his work to advance the legal rights of Latinos. He currently is Board Chair of the Advancement Project, the nation’s leading social and racial justice organization. He is also on the board of the Natural Resources Defense Council and is Vice-Chairman of the Board of Earth Day Network.

He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Stanford, and Yale law schools.


Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement.

The show has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, July 19, 2013: Sociologist, media critic, and author Todd Gitlin.
Friday, July 26, 2013: Sanford, FL-based political science prof Jay D. Jurie, on the consequences of the Trayvon Martin verdict.

The Rag Blog