Prominent Activist and Legal Scholar to Visit UA
Derrick Bell Photo courtesy of David Shankbone.
Derrick Bell, who supervised hundreds of school desegregation cases during the 1960s, will present during the first Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program's Vine Deloria Jr. Lecture.
Derrick Bell has built an international reputation for his stringent and long-term commitment to fighting racial discrimination across the United States.
Bell, who in the 1960s served as a lawyer with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Legal Defense Fund, will be at The University of Arizona to give a public talk Friday.
The James E. Rogers College of Law organized Bell's visit as part of a new lecture series created in memory of Vine Deloria Jr., the late American Indian scholar and anthropologist who was respected internationally for advocating indigenous peoples rights.
Deloria served as the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy, or IPLP, Distinguished Scholar in Residence and visiting professor from 2001 to 2005. He was among those who established the IPLP degree program in 2001.
Bell's talk, which will launch the lecture series, is titled “Interest Convergence: A Shooting Star Scenario" and will be held at the UA College of Law.
While with the Legal Defense Fund, Bell supervised hundreds of school desegregation cases.
Bell later became the first African-American professor to be granted tenure at Harvard Law School. He now teaches and writes on constitutional law issues as visiting professor at the New York School of Law. Previously, Bell served as dean of the University of Oregon School of Law.
Bell is a leading voice in civil rights debates and national policy discussions on race and the law. He has played a major role in the examination of race and ethnicity in the context of contemporary U.S. economic, social and political conditions.
He has worked alongside Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and the late Constance Baker Motley, a civil rights activist and judge. Also, during his four decades working as a lawyer, activist, teacher and writer, Bell has challenged the legal establishment with his original and progressive views and ideas.
More recently, his famed book, "Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform," published in 2004, took a critical look at the effects of the Brown decision.
He is also one of the foremost scholars who have contributed to "critical race theory," a body of sociological thought that emphasizes that race is a social construct. The theory has been applied to various fields, including education, anthropology and business.
et cetera
- What | IPLP Vine Deloria Jr. Lecture Series
- When | March 14, 12 p.m.
- Where | James E. Rogers College of Law, Room 140
- Extra Info |
The James E. Rogers College of Law is currently under construction, so attendees should enter from the northwest side of the building at East Helen Street and North Santa Rita Avenue.
Seating is limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis.
For those who cannot attend, the lecture will be available after March 19 at ArizonaNativeNet, the UA's virtual outreach and distance learning telecommunications center that focuses on issues that affect indigenous populations.
James E. Rogers College of Law - Contact Info
Nancy Stanley
James E. Rogers College of Law
520-621-8430