MLK lecture features Melissa Harris-Perry on inequality

Melissa Harris-Perry
Harris-Perry

Author, scholar and political commentator Melissa Harris-Perry will discuss inequality in America as the featured speaker at the 2015 Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture, Feb. 23 from 4:45 to 6 p.m. in Sage Chapel.

The lecture, “We Can’t Breathe: The Continuing Consequences of Inequality,” is free and open to the public.

Harris-Perry is a professor of politics and international affairs at her alma mater, Wake Forest University in North Carolina. She previously taught at Tulane University, Princeton University and the University of Chicago. Her scholarly interests include African-American politics and political thought, U.S. public opinion and elections, gender and politics, religion and politics, black religious ideas and practice, and political psychology. She is the founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South, based at Wake Forest.

Since February 2012, she has hosted the MSNBC weekend news and opinion show “Melissa Harris-Perry,” and is a fill-in host on “The Rachel Maddow Show.” She also provides political commentary for other media outlets on elections, racial and religious issues, and gender concerns.

A regular contributor to The Nation with her column “Sister Citizen,” Harris-Perry is the author of two books, “Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America” (Yale University Press), published in 2011; and (as Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell) “Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought” 
(Princeton University Press). The latter title won the National Conference of Black Political Scientists’ 2005 W.E.B. Du Bois Book Award and the American Political Science Association’s 2005 Best Book Award (Racial and Ethnic Political Identities, Ideologies and Theories).

The annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture at Cornell provides a public forum on campus to make the life and legacy of Dr. King accessible for contemporary times. Past speakers have included National Public Radio journalist and race relations expert Michele Norris; Arun Gandhi, grandson of Indian independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi; author Wes Moore; civil rights leader Vincent Harding; and Ithaca resident Dorothy Cotton, who worked with King for 12 years.

The lecture is sponsored by Cornell United Religious Work and by Student and Academic Services, the Africana Studies and Research Center and the Office of Academic Diversity Initiatives.

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