Former Black Panther Kathleen Neal Cleaver to speak at Vassar, February 27

Human rights activist and former Black Panther Kathleen Neal Cleaver will deliver the Helen Kenyon Lecture at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 27, in the Villard Room, Main Building, Vassar College. The lecture, titled "Memories of Love and War," is sponsored by the office of the Dean of the Faculty, the departments of political science and history, and the programs in women's studies, Africana studies, and American culture.

Cleaver has spent most of her life participating in the human rights struggle. While teaching law at Emory University, she served on the Georgia Supreme Court Commission on Racial and Ethnic Bias in the Courts and became a board member of the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights. She devoted many years to the defense of Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, a former Black Panther Party leader who won his habeas corpus petition in 1997 after being imprisoned for 27 years following a conviction for murder, a charge Cleaver believed to be unfounded.

Cleaver has been a visiting professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York and at the graduate school of Yale University, where she taught in the history department. In the spring of 1998, she was the Joanne Woodward Professor of Public Policy at Sarah Lawrence College. She has taught legal ethics, litigation, torts, and a legal history seminar entitled "The American Law of Slavery and Anti-Slavery," as well as a course on women in the Black freedom movement.

Her writing has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including Ramparts, The Black Panther, The Village Voice, The Boston Globe, and Transition. She has contributed scholarly essays to the books "Critical Race Feminism," "Critical White Studies," "The Promise of Multiculturalism," and "The Black Panther Party Reconsidered," as well as co-edited a special issue of the journal New Political Science.

As a college sophomore in 1966, Cleaver dropped out of Barnard College to work full time with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). From 1967 to 1971, she was the communications secretary of the Black Panther Party, the first woman member of their central committee. After sharing years of exile with her former husband the late Eldridge Cleaver, she returned to the United States in 1975.

She earned a B.A. in history from Yale College in 1984, where she graduated summa cum laude. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1989. She then became an associate at the New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine, and Moore, and afterwards clerked for Judge A. Leon Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Cleaver has held a Wallenberg fellowship in human rights at the Center for Historical Analysis at Rutgers University. She has been awarded fellowships at the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute of Harvard University, and the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to complete her memoir "Memories of Love and War," forthcoming from Random House. She currently holds a fellowship at the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers.

For additional information, call the office of campus activities at (845) 437-5370. Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Cathy Jennings at (845) 437-5370, as far in advance as possible to request appropriate and reasonable accommodations.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations or information on accessibility should contact Campus Activities Office at (845) 437-5370. Without sufficient notice, appropriate space and/or assistance may not be available.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.

This article was posted on Tuesday, February 27th, 2001.