January 21, 2009

NAACP chief executive officer to speak at Purdue

Benjamin Todd Jealous is guiding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People through its 100th year anniversary as president and chief executive officer. He will speak at 7 p.m. at Stewart Center's Fowler Hall.

Jealous was named in May 2008 as the NAACP's chief executive officer at the age of 35, making him the youngest to hold the position in the organization's history.

"We are pleased to have such a national figure as Benjamin Jealous address us," said Renee Thomas, the Black Cultural Center's director. "He not only represents the past, as the leader of the NAACP, but his youthfulness also represents a new beginning and a new future. I look forward to his presentation as he shares with the Purdue community some of the complex challenges facing the NAACP in a contemporary landscape."

Jealous has served as executive director for the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a federation of more than 200 black community newspapers across the country.  He also has served as president of the Rosenberg Foundation and director of the U.S. Human Rights Program at Amnesty International.

Jealous graduated from Columbia University with a degree in political science in 1997. He worked for the Jackson (Miss.) Advocate, an African-American newspaper, where he rose from a reporter to managing editor.  He was accepted as a Rhodes scholar and earned his master's degree in comparative social research at Oxford University.

While at Amnesty International, he led efforts to pass federal legislation against prison rape, brought additional attention to racial profiling in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks and fought against the sentences of children to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Jealous is a board member of the California Council for the Humanities and Association of Black Foundation Executives.

Established at Purdue in 1969, the Black Cultural Center is nationally recognized and acknowledged by the Association of Black Cultural Centers as one of the best centers of its kind. Thomas said the center helps the community gain a greater understanding of African-American heritage and supports and enhances cultural diversity on campus and in the community.

Writer: Clyde Hughes, (765) 494-2073, jchughes@purdue.edu

Source:  Renee A. Thomas, (765) 494-3019, rathomas@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

To the News Service home page