Presidential Lecture "Wealth, Race & Merit in Higher Education" by Lani Guinier

Harvard University Bennett Boskey Professor of Law Lani Guinier will deliver the first lecture in the 2005-2006 Presidential and Endowed Lectures in the Humanities and Arts Series. Her lecture is entitled "Wealth, Race & Merit in Higher Education." A lecture discussion will take place at the Stanford Humanities Center the following day at noon.

Professor Guinier, the first black woman tenured professor at Harvard Law School when she joined the faculty in 1998, is co-author of The Miner's Canary, her fifth and most recent book. She has also published a powerful personal and political memoir, Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Vision of Social Justice. Professor Guinier's primary teaching and writing interests include voting rights, democratic theory, law and social change, and the legal profession and the responsibilities of public lawyers.

Professor Guinier was Assistant Counsel and Head of the Voting Rights Project for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the 1980s and worked in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department in the late 1970s. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2002 Sacks-Freund Teaching Award, the 1995 Margaret Brent Woman Lawyers of Achievement Award, the Champion of Democracy Award and eight honorary degrees.