EVENTS

    Renowned educator, lawyer and activist Derrick Bell will speak at the University at Albany Thursday, April 6, at 7 p.m. in the Campus Center Ballroom on the University's main campus. His lecture is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a question-and-answer session as well as a book signing.
    Bell’s speech, titled “Why, Knowing What I Know Now, I Would Have Dissented from Brown v. Board of Education,” is part of the President’s Speakers Series of the University Commission for Affirmative Action at UAlbany. University President Karen R. Hitchcock will provide the introduction.
     A visiting professor at New York University’s School of Law since 1991, Bell has a distinguished career as a civil rights activist and scholar. Credited with advancing the academic study of race and racism as a legal issue, Bell authored, in 1973, Race, Racism and American Law, which has become a standard law school text.
    Bell became Harvard Law School’s first black tenured law professor in 1969. In 1980, he became dean of the University of Oregon Law School, and returned to Harvard in 1986. He is famous for his stance while on the Harvard Law School faculty regarding the school’s failure to have any female African-Americans among the teaching faculty. When his protest continued beyond Harvard’s two-year limit on leaves of absence, he was dismissed.
    His early career included work with the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and with the legal arm of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he was recruited by former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Assigned to Mississippi in the midst of the civil rights movement, Bell represented blacks in hundreds of suits dismantling legal segregation in schools and public facilities. He was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pa.

   A conference on “Garveyism, Malcolm X, and Nkrumahism in the New Millenium” will be held at the University from Thursday, April 6, through Saturday, April 8, at various locations in the Campus Center. The cost is $50 for non-students or $25 a day and $25 for students or $10 a day. The event is part of the 30th anniversary celebration of the Department of Africana Studies.
    The objectives of the conference are to facilitate scholarly discussions of the Pan-Africanist visions of Garvey, Malcolm and Nkrumah and to examine how relevant their visions are in the 21st century.
    The conference will begin with an opening ceremony led by Kwadwo A. Sarfoh, chair of the Department of Africana Studies; Marcia Sutherland, a professor of Africana Studies; Ed Brown, of United Africa 2020; and Tony Martin, of Wellesley College. 
    Highlights of the conference will be discussion sessions. The first, on Garveyism, will be lead by Martin, Clinton Hutton from the Department of Government at the University of the West Indies, and Marcus Garvey, Jr. The second, on Malcolm X and Nkrumah, will be facilitated by James Turner of Cornell University; and Kofi Hadjor, of the University of California at Santa Barbara.
    The event will conclude with a Pan African Village Meeting on Saturday, April 8 at 9 a.m. in the Campus Center Ballroom, where speakers and attendees will address practical strategies for the African world’s development in the new millennium.

    Erato Kozakou Marcoullis, the Republic of Cyprus’ Ambassador to the U.S., will visit the University Tuesday, April 11, at the invitation of President Karen R. Hitchcock. The ambassador will deliver an International Affairs Lecture, “Cyprus: The Goal of Reunification and Membership in the European Union,” at CESTM from 5 to 6 p.m. A reception will follow. 
    Marcoullis, who holds degrees from the universities of Helsinki (Finland) and Athens (Greece), has had a distinguished diplomatic career, serving her country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in several directorial and advisory capacities.  She has headed or joined numerous delegations to represent her nation at conferences and meetings around the world and has also been a member of the Permanent Mission of Cyprus to the United Nations. Marcoullis, who was Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Sweden for two years, has served as her country’s representative to the U.S. since September 1998.  She is also accredited as High Commissioner to Canada and Ambassador to Brazil.
    UAlbany enjoys a longstanding relationship with Cyprus.  In addition to providing graduate fellowships for students from that nation, the University houses the Institute of Cypriot Studies.