May 13, 2004

Guinier will give Crain lecture; Van Zelst lecture features Pulitzer Prize winner

Civil rights attorney Lani Guinier — the first black woman appointed to a tenured professorship at Harvard Law School — will discuss issues of race in America at 4 p.m. Monday, May 17.

Her speech, titled “The Miner’s Canary,” will be delivered at the McCormick Tribune Center Forum. It is part of the popular Crain Lecture Series organized by the Medill School of Journalism. It is free and open to the public.

Guinier came to the nation’s attention in 1993 when President Clinton nominated her to head the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and then, without a confirmation hearing, withdrew her nomination after conservatives represented her as a “quota queen.” Today Guinier is one of the most sought after speakers on issues of race, gender and democratic decision-making.

Guinier is author of a personal memoir titled “Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Vision of Social Justice.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning sociologist and American Prospect magazine co-founder Paul Starr will deliver the 21st annual Van Zelst Lecture in Communi-cation Wednesday, May 19.

Titled “The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications,” his lecture will be presented at 8 p.m. in the auditorium of Annie May Swift Hall. It is free and open to the public.

Starr, professor of sociology at Princeton University, has written extensively on American society, politics and public policy. In 1990, he co-founded The American Prospect, a liberal magazine about politics, policy and ideas, with former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and writer Robert Kuttner. The magazine sponsors www.movingideas.org, a Web site about policy.

Starr served as a senior advisor at the White House in 1993, where he worked on the formulation of the Clinton health plan.

The Van Zelst Research Chair in Communication, established with an endowment from Mr. and Mrs. Theodore W. Van Zelst, provides a professor with the opportunity to devote a year to research on an important issue in communication, and provides funds for the Van Zelst Lecture.