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This recording is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library and Not in Our Town Princeton. The N.J. Division on Civil Rights present on "Combating Appraisal Bias and Discrimination in New Jersey."

Housing Discrimination can impact anyone, including renters and homeowners of all backgrounds. The NJ Division on Civil Rights (DCR) enforces the Law Against Discrimination which makes it unlawful to discriminate against someone based on their race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, disability, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, and other protected characteristics. The Law Against Discrimination (LAD) also prohibits discrimination in housing, employment, and places open to the public. Research demonstrates that the undervaluing of properties falls disproportionately on buyers and sellers of color, leading to persistent racial disparities in rates of homeownership and wealth. This has led to a stark racial wealth gap in our state.

In this meeting, audience members will learn about home appraisal bias, how to identify it, and how to report it. Audience members who have received an unfair, inaccurate, or discriminatory home appraisal will learn how to request that their home be reassessed and how to file a complaint with the NJ Division on Civil Rights.

Aarin Michele Williams, Esq. (she/her) is an experienced and versatile attorney who works to champion the principles of equity, justice, and opportunity, over civility or respectability. She is barred in New Jersey, New York and the Southern District of New York but has appeared in various jurisdictions around the country. She is an experienced civil rights litigator, social, racial, and reproductive justice movement lawyer and proud criminal defense attorney. Aarin is currently the Chief Advisor to the Director of the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights (DCR). She has held various roles with DCR and has led teams in a landmark mortgage redlining matter with the DOJ, published civil rights reports on issues including the spread of white supremacy and bias in the state, promulgated our nation’s first Fair Chance in Housing Act and much more. Currently, she also leads DCR’s home appraisal discrimination initiative, the nation’s first state-based home appraisal task force of its kind.

This event was recorded on January 6, 2025.

Katz discusses his acclaimed podcast, “Inconceivable Truth,” with fellow journalist Charles Stile. The pod details the startling, and sometimes troubling, revelations of a search for his birth father.

FROM THE PRODUCERS

Peabody Award-winning investigative reporter Matt Katz has been searching for his biological father since he was a little kid. But it wasn't until his 40s that he realized he was on the wrong journey altogether. The true story is wrapped in confusion and secrecy, and in the end it upended the truth about who he is – raising questions about identity, fatherhood, medical ethics and what family really means. But will finding answers make him whole, or just make things even more complicated? “Inconceivable Truth,” named a Best of 2024 Podcast by Audible and Vanity Fair magazine, is available free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music.

BIOS PROVIDED BY PRESENTERS


Matt Katz is an investigative reporter, journalist and podcast host who has worked in newspapers, magazines, TV and audio for more than two decades, reporting on everything from local school boards to presidential elections to natural disasters. As an on-air reporter and host at WNYC and NPR for 11 years, he won several awards for watchdog reporting, including a 2022 Sidney Award for publishing never-before-seen images of squalid conditions at jails on Rikers Island in New York. For many years he covered former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, first for The Philadelphia Inquirer and then WNYC, winning a Peabody Award for a series of stories about the Bridgegate scandal that rocked Christie's political career. His book, “American Governor: Chris Christie's Bridge to Redemption,” was published by Simon & Schuster in 2016.

He is executive producer of City Cast Philly, a daily news-and-culture podcast and newsletter about Philadelphia. In 2024 he created, wrote, and hosted an autobiographical podcast, "Inconceivable Truth," that hit the Top 10 on the charts on Apple Podcasts, where it has more than 2,000 reviews and 4.8 stars. Vogue magazine named "Inconceivable Truth" one of the best podcasts of 2024. Matt's reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, PBS, The Washington Post, and Politico Magazine. He also works as an adjunct professor teaching journalism at the University of Pennsylvania. Once upon a time, he wrote a nationally syndicated dating column.

Charles Stile, a Princeton resident, is the veteran political columnist at The Bergen Record/USA TodayNetwork, providing readers street-level reporting and distinctive analysis on all areas of New Jersey politics. He has covered every governor since the final six months of Jim Florio’s tumultuous term in 1993. Stile joined The Record’s State House bureau in 2000 and moved up to become bureau chief in 2003. A year later, Stile guided the bureau during the spectacular collapse of Gov. Jim McGreevey’s administration. He was named a full-time columnist in 2007, making him one of a handful of State House-based columnists in the country.

In October 2023, Stile was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in New Jersey Journalism from the Corporation For New Jersey Local Media at the non-profit’s Third Annual Byrne-Kean Dinner, which recognizes “journalistic excellence on the local, regional and statewide levels.” Before coming to The Record, Stile worked at The Times of Trenton as a reporter covering the business community and later as a as a general assignment reporter chronicling Trenton city politics and urban issues. He joined that paper’s State House bureau in 1993. He began his career one week after graduating from Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey) in 1983, as a city hall reporter for the Sentinel-Ledger of Ocean City. Like many of his protégés on the school newspaper, The Signal, Stile was a student of Bob Cole, the legendary journalism professor. Later that year, he joined the Princeton Packet, assigned to the Princeton University beat.

Stile was born in Mineola, N.Y., and is a 1978 graduate of Lower Cape May Regional High School. He lives in Princeton with his wife, the acclaimed storyteller Maria LoBiondo.

This event was recorded on January 8, 2025.

Author Michael Gabriele explores the rich history of taverns in Colonial New Jersey.

Author Michael C. Gabriele is a lifelong Garden State resident and a 1975 graduate of Montclair State University. He has worked as a journalist, freelance writer and author for more than forty years. Gabriele is a member of the board of trustees for the New Jersey Folk Festival at Rutgers University, a member of the executive boards for the Allied Artists of America, New York, the Nutley Historical Society, the Theater League of Clifton, and serves on the advisory board of the Clifton Arts Center.

From the author: New Jersey was the “Crossroads of the American Revolution,” and as battles raged, colonial taverns formed the social network that held the state together. Taverns were the stage for the unfolding drama of a colony transitioning into statehood and making decisions about declaring a war of independence. New Jersey’s General Assembly, meeting in September 1777 at a tavern in Haddonfield, declared New Jersey to be “a state, not a colony,” in effect, joining the call for revolution and a break from British rule. Taverns were the places where the voices of history took shape, used as recruitment stations for colonial militias and meeting places for local committees of safety, which ran daily municipal matters for communities. George Washington used taverns as headquarters, where he drafted his many letters and planned strategy with his generals. Taverns were the “seedbeds” for the revolution, strongholds for political activities, beacons for travelers, and venues for entertainment, merriment, and libations.

Presented in partnership with the Historical Society of Princeton.

This event was recorded on December 11, 2024

This recording is presented by The Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Princeton University and co-sponsored by Land, Language, and Art: A Humanities Council Global Initiative, Princeton Public Library, the Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship (ProCES), and the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Panelists discuss how treaty agreements established through wampum belts were upheld—or neglected—both on Lunaapahkiing (present-day New Jersey and surrounding region) and in the Lunaape diaspora.

This panel is offered as a public part of the Munsee Language & History Symposium, now in its fourth year of convening.

Public presentations at the library on treaty agreements and related obligations will be made by:

John Moses (Kanyen’kehaka and Delaware, Six Nations / Canadian Museum of History), “The History and Application of Repatriation Policy at the Canadian Museum of History”

Mary Jane Logan McCallum (Munsee-Delaware Nation / University of Winnipeg), “Dutch Pageant at the Town Hall, 1924: Purchase and Disappearance at the Tercentenary of the Settlement of New Amsterdam”

Jo Ann Gardner Schedler (Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians), “Stockbridge and Munsee Treaties, Honoring Our Ancestors”

About the Fourth Annual Munsee Language & History Symposium:
This event continues and deepens ongoing relationships with Lunaapeewak (Lunaape people) from Munsee-speaking tribal nations, this year widening the circle to include Unami-speaking language keepers, as they gather with Princeton students, staff, and faculty on their own traditional territory, Lunaapahkiing. The symposium will take place in the presence of a wampum belt from Munsee-Delaware Nation, currently housed at the American Museum of Natural History, which will be in Princeton for the occasion. Sessions focus on treaty agreements, representations of Lunaapeew people in museums, language updates from each community, and versions of the Lunaape Story. This year’s theme is "Widening the Circle: Lunaape Land, Language, and History."


Presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This event was recorded on October 31, 2024.

This event is presented in Partnership by Princeton Public Library and HiTOPS. Staff from HiTOPS discuss what the outcome of the election means for LGBTQ+ folks and allies in New Jersey.

In this 90-minute informational session, the “lay of the land” for LGBTQ+ residents in New Jersey will be reviewed through an overview of existing policies and discussion of what to expect given the outcome of the election. The talk will include a look at current policy work and activism around the state. The speakers will identify helpful resources, healthy coping mechanisms and effective strategies for self-care and collective care.

About the Speakers:

AJ Fresco (they/he) is a social worker, educator, and advocate for LGBTQIA+ justice. Currently, they work to uplift and advocate for LGBTQ+ youth at HiTOPS, a nonprofit organization, where they run several support groups for queer and transgender youth and their families, provide affirming mental health care and referrals, and create a welcoming and supportive environment for youth of all identities. AJ also offers educational training and consulting centered on affirming queer and trans people for professionals, schools, and individuals through their small business, Rainbow Connected. They are a Rutgers University professor of Sexual and Gender Diversity and a doctoral candidate in social work, conducting research focused on improving support for LGBTQ+ youth and their parents, making mental health care more accessible and affirming, and increasing education around gender-affirming healthcare.

Thomas Foley (he/him) is a counselor, educator, and advocate for LGBTQIA+ justice. Currently, he works as the Senior Education Manager at HiTOPS, providing professional development in schools, businesses, and community-based organizations on how to best affirm LGBTQ+ folks. Thomas facilitates two of HiTOPS' support groups—Banner, for middle schoolers, and TransParenthood, for caregivers of trans and non-binary youth. He is a PhD student in Counselor Education and Supervision, and adjuncts as a graduate school professor at Georgian Court University and Rider University. His current research is focused on LGBTQ+-related education legislation and its impact on LGBTQ+ youth mental health.

HiTOPS, a non-profit organization that fosters strong and healthy young people of all identities by providing inclusive and youth-informed sex education and LGBTQ+ support for young people throughout New Jersey.

Yamilet Zegarra of the Family Resource Network explains how to obtain health insurance coverage through GetCoveredNJ and NJ Family Care.

Presented in partnership with The Family Resource Network.

From the presenter: Yamilet Zegarra is a bilingual Health and Housing Navigator from Family Resource Network. She has a master's degree in health administration and more than seven years working with health insurance. She is currently enrolling the community for health insurance through GetCoveredNJ.

En español: https://youtu.be/_eI0FxRIook?t=1526

Yamilet Zegarra de the Family Resource Network presenta sobre la cobertura de seguro de salud con GetCoveredNJ y NJ Family Care.

En colaboración con la biblioteca y The Family Resource Network.

De la presentadora: Yamilet Zegarra, M.H.A: Promotora de seguros de salud bilingüe / Coordinadora de Recursos. Con el grado de máster en Administración de Salud, así como una certificación en Administración de Salud de la Universidad de Capella. Yamilet obtuvo el grado de bachiller en la Universidad de Hunter College en Leguas Romanas y Estudios Latinos con especialización en Traducción e Interpretación Médica en inglés y español en mayo del 2014.