William Julius Wilson speaks at Organization of Black Students' Annual Kent Lecture February 24, 2009

The University of Chicago’s Organization of Black Students continues to celebrate its 40th year anniversary with its annual George E. Kent Lecture, a FREE event for community members—both in the university and in surrounding neighborhoods—to listen, question, and discuss pertinent issues with William Julius Wilson. Wilson is offering a GREAT discourse regarding this central theme: "Framing the Issue: Political Discourse and Race Relations During the Era of Barack Obama."

William Julius Wilson joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1972. In 1990 he was appointed the Lucy Flower University Professor and director of the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Urban Inequality. He is currently Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University. He is one of only 19 University Professors, the highest professional distinction for a Harvard faculty member.

Wilson's works are still very prevalent in today's social and economic climate. In two seminal works, The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions (1978) and The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (1987), Wilson maintained that class divisions and global economic changes, more than racism, created a large black underclass. In When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (1996), he showed how chronic joblessness deprived those in the inner city of skills necessary to obtain and keep jobs.

Past President of the American Sociological Association, Wilson has received 41 honorary degrees, including honorary doctorates from Princeton University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern University, Johns Hopkins University, Dartmouth College, and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

In June 1996 he was selected by Time magazine as one of America's 25 Most Influential People.

This lecture is in honor of George E. Kent, one of the first tenured African-American professors at the University of Chicago and the first as a Professor of English. Dr. Kent should also be remembered as an intense scholar and intellectual dedicated to excellence in his work as well as in the expectations he had of the many students he taught and mentored.

COME ONE, COME ALL TO THIS FREE ANNUAL EVENT!!! OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!!!

Contact Nick Johnson at njohson113@uchicago.edu for more information.

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