Civil Rights Commissioner Will Serve as Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Residence

Mary Frances Berry, chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, will visit the College October 22-26 to initiate the distinguished visiting scholar in residence program. Designed to bring to campus a prominent figure from the ALANA (African, Latino, Asian, Native American) community, the program will give Berry a chance to speak in classes, meet with students and faculty, and present a free public talk as part of the yearlong lecture and discussion series "Race and Its Meanings." Berry’s presentation, "America in the 21st Century: Demographic Reality and Social Change," will take place on Thursday, October 25, at 7:00 p.m. in Ford Hall in the James J. Whalen Center for Music.

Trained in history and the law, Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania. Before her appointment to the civil rights commission in 1980, she served in the Carter administration as the assistant secretary for education in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, supervising the National Institute of Education, the Office of Education, and the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education. Prior to her service at HEW, she was provost of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Maryland at College Park and chancellor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The author of seven books focusing on civil rights, feminism, and the law, Berry has appeared as a guest on numerous television shows, including Nightline, Face the Nation, and Today. She has received the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins and Image Awards, the Rosa Parks Award of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Ebony Magazine Black Achievement Award. In 1986 Ms. magazine honored her as one of its "women of the year."

Berry earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Howard University. She received a doctorate in history and a juris doctorate from the University of Michigan.

The next "Race and Its Meanings" event will take place December 4 with a screening of Black Narcissus, a 1947 film about Anglican nuns trying to establish a religious community in the Indian Himalayas during British rule of the subcontinent.

Further events are being scheduled for the spring semester. The series is sponsored by the Ithaca College Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity, Office of Multicultural Affairs, and Office of the Provost, in collaboration with the Cinema on the Edge series in the Roy H. Park School of Communications.

A list of readings about race and its meanings is available on line.