USC Law-sponsored lecture to focus on race

Columbia Law professor to speak on campus April 26

Students are invited to hear Patricia J. Williams (pictured left), James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University, present the Third Annual Law & Humanities Distinguished Lecture, "The Alchemy of Race and Rights, Fifteen Years Later."

The lecture, sponsored by the Center for Law, History and Culture, will be held on Thursday, April 26, at 4 p.m. in USC’s Davidson Conference Center, Embassy Room. A reception will follow at 5:30 p.m., at which Williams will sign copies of her new book, Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons and the Search for a Room of My Own.

Williams is a leading legal scholar, one of America's foremost commentators on race, and author of many books, including The Rooster's Egg and Seeing a Color Blind Future. She is a winner of the MacArthur Foundation's "genius grant," a columnist for The Nation, and a regular commentator for PBS and NPR. Her first book, The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of A Law Professor, changed the landscape of legal studies with its narrative style and its critique of both critical legal studies and traditional legal liberalism. Her lecture will reflect on what has changed and remained the same in the 15 years since the book was published.

Co-sponsored by the African-American Studies Program and the Center for Feminist Research, the lecture is part of USC’s 125th Anniversary Project. Between now and spring 2006, USC will host a variety of academic programs, including conferences and guest lectures, that focus on the first part of the university’s 125th anniversary theme, “inventing the future.”

For more information on the lecture, please contact Mira Hamilton at 213-821-1239 or clhc@law.usc.edu.