Scholar Henry Louis Gates to Deliver “Public Intellectual” Lecture

INDIANAPOLIS – African-American studies scholar and Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. will lecture at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis this fall as guest speaker for “The Role of the Public Intellectual in American Society” lecture series.

Gates will speak at 7:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 13, 2006, in the University Place Conference Center auditorium on the IUPUI campus, 850 W. Michigan Street. The event is free and open to the general public.

Gates is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. He previously visited Indianapolis in January 2000 as the keynote speaker for the 30th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dinner, an IUPUI event.

Gates' numerous works include hosting the PBS series, “African American Lives,” earlier this year. The series – said to take the “Roots” experience of tracing family lineage back to Africa to another level – chronicled the use of genealogy, oral history, family stories and DNA analysis, to trace the lineage of several prominent African Americans: Dr. Ben Carson, Whoopi Goldberg, Bishop T.D. Jakes, Dr. Mae Jemison, Quincy Jones, Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Chris Tucker and Oprah Winfrey.

Gates' lecture at IUPUI will be the final in the “Public Intellectual” series which is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. The center, part of the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI, is a research and public outreach institute devoted to the promotion of the understanding of the relation between religion and other features of American culture.