Hosted by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at BZU, Dr. Thomas Abowd from the Department of Anthropology-Tufts University in the United States, delivered a lecture on 17 April 2012. The lecture was entitled: "The Persistence of Racial Segregation and Urban Apartheid in Obama's ‘Post-Racial’ America: The Case of Detroit, Michigan (1967-2012).”

Dr. Abowd traced the transformation of racial relations in Detroit, refusing to characterize Obama’s presidential term as a post-racial period in American history. He said: “Although the legal mechanisms of segregation and apartheid in the United States have failed, it is still a dominant feature of urban planning until today."

Abowd spoke about the relations between the Arab immigrants and blacks in the City, explaining that Arab immigrants have tried to fit themselves into the American racial hierarchy. He added that the class-racial structure and cultural relations of urban planning is the most important element in reading Detroit’s realities on the ground.

The lecture was followed by a discussion in which the attendees thought through comparisons and contrasts between the reality of apartheid in Palestine with that in the United States.