Convo: Derrick Bell January 20, 2006

Nationally known constitutional law specialist and author Derrick Bell will present a convocation titled ?Martin Luther King, Jr: The Twentieth Century Jesus?? at 10:50 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 20, at the Carleton College Skinner Memorial Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.

Bell, now a visiting professor at New York University School of Law, is a compelling voice on issues of race and class in society. Throughout his 40-year career as a lawyer, activist, teacher and writer, he has provoked his critics and challenged his readers with his uncompromising candor and original progressive views. Bell became the first tenured black professor at the Harvard Law School in 1971. He relinquished his professorship in 1992, when he refused to return from a two-year, unpaid leave of absence he took to protest the lack of women of color on the faculty.

In 1980 he left Harvard for five years to accept the deanship at the University of Oregon School of Law. He left that post over a hiring situation where, after an extended search, the top two candidates (both white males) declined the position and the faculty decided to reopen the search and directed that Bell not extend an offer of the position to the third candidate on the list, an Asian American woman.

Bell?s first book, titled ?Race, Racism and American Law? (1973) is considered a classic text in the field. He is known for his allegorical stories featuring fictional heroine Geneva Crenshaw. His most recent non-fiction book is ?Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth? (2002), a series of meditations on the tensions between achieving success and maintaining one?s integrity.

Bell has received six honorary degrees in the last decade and has been voted Teacher of the Year by the Society of American Law Teachers.

For more information and disability accommodations, call the Carleton college relations office at (507) 646-4308.