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Wednesday, October 19, 2022

‘Labor and the Food System’ at URI Oct. 25 Honors Colloquium

Saru Jayaraman, co-founder and president of One Fair Wage, to speak at URI

By Kristen Curry

Attorney and activist Saru Jayaraman, co-founder and president of One Fair Wage, will present at the 2022 University of Rhode Island Honors Colloquium Tuesday, Oct. 25, on “Labor and the Food System.”

Jayaraman is director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., Jayaraman worked with displaced World Trade Center workers to co-found the Restaurant Opportunities Center, which grew into a national movement of restaurant workers, employers, and consumers.

Jayaraman will speak at 7 p.m. at Edwards Hall on the Kingston Campus, as part of the fall Honors Colloquium, “Just Good Food,” which will be presented in person and streamed live (video links are available the day of each event at the link above). The lecture is co-sponsored by the URI John Hazen White Sr. Center for Ethics and Public Service.

A graduate of Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Jayaraman has been profiled in a variety of publications including The New York Times and New York magazine and has been a guest on multiple television shows, from CNN to PBS. Her work after 9/11 with the Restaurant Opportunities Center led to the creation of One Fair Wage, which works to end the practice of subminimum wages in the service industry. The founding of these organizations has been chronicled in the book The Accidental American and the award-winning documentary Waging Change.

Jayaraman was recognized as a Champion of Change by the White House in 2014 and has also received a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award. She is the author of four books including her latest, One Fair Wage: Ending All Subminimum Pay in America, as well as Behind the Kitchen Door, Forked: A New Standard for American Dining, and Bite Back: People Taking on Corporate Food and Winning.

The URI Honors Colloquium is the University’s premier lecture series. Hosted by the University’s Honors Program, this university-wide educational forum is free and open to the public. This year’s lecture series is bringing several experts to the Kingston Campus to examine local and global food systems, examining ways to create equitable, sustainable and resilient food systems, on Tuesday evenings through Dec. 13. Learn more about the fall colloquium.