Author Michelle Alexander to speak at Purdue

Michelle Alexander  Download Photo

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" and a civil rights lawyer and advocate, will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 14 in the Purdue Memorial Union South Ballroom.

Her talk, "Mass Incarceration As The New Jim Crow," is free and open to the public and is part of the Cummings-Perrucci Lecture on Class, Race and Gender Inequality. There also will be a book signing at 9 p.m.

Alexander's book won the 2011 NAACP Image Award for best nonfiction and also has been featured on national radio and television, including MSNBC, NPR, "Bill Moyers Journal," the "Tavis Smiley Show," C-SPAN and "Washington Journal."

Alexander is a legal scholar who holds a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University. Prior to joining the Kirwan Institute, she was an associate professor of law at Stanford Law School, where she directed the Civil Rights Clinics. She served as director of the Racial Justice Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and also directed the Civil Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School, of which she is a graduate.

This year's Cummings-Perrucci Lecture is hosted by the African American Studies and Research Center. The lecture rotates between the Department of Sociology; African American Studies; and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. This event also is supported by the Black Cultural Center's Fall Cultural Arts Series, Purdue University Libraries, Purdue Division of Diversity and Inclusion, Purdue College of Liberal Arts, CLA Office of Interdisciplinary Studies and the Purdue Graduate School. 

Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, 765-494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu  

Source: Venetria K. Patton, professor and director of African American Studies and Research Center, vpatton@purdue.edu  

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