Council of Black Seniors chooses legal scholar Patricia Williams to speak at baccalaureate service. Saturday, May 26, 2007

Poughkeepsie, NY – The renowned Columbia University law professor Patricia Williams, a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" winner, will be the featured speaker at the Council of Black Seniors Baccalaureate Service, on Saturday, May 26 at 4:00 p.m. in the Vassar College Chapel. The Council has hosted a baccalaureate service as part of Vassar's commencement week since 1991, and the program is free and open to the public.

[Left: Patricia Williams] When the MacArthur Foundation selected Williams in 2000 for their prestigious 5-year fellowship, they remarked, "Her voice has created a new form of legal writing and scholarship that integrates personal narrative, critical and literary theory, traditional legal doctrine, and empirical and sociological research."

Williams is known for using stories from her life, from the experience of friends and relatives, and from the news, to personalize and contextualize key social, political, and legal issues. Her self-described "parables" are often about the homeless, the poor, people of color, exploited women, political prisoners, and victims of police brutality. She herself was raised in Boston's highly segregated Roxbury neighborhood in the period immediately following the U.S. Supreme Court's watershed desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education.

Williams joined the Columbia Law School faculty in 1991, where she is now the James L. Dohr Professor of Law. Also that year, she published her first book, The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor, which was named one of the 25 best books of 1991 by the Village Voice Literary Supplement, earned the Bruce K. Gould Book Award, and was cited by Ms. magazine's Twentieth Anniversary Edition as one of the "feminist classics of the last twenty years." Her other books include The Rooster's Egg: On the Persistence of Prejudice, and Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race. Her most recent title, Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and a Search for a Room of My Own, is a personal collection of stories, essays, anecdotes, and biography.

Alongside her academic work, Williams is extremely active and outspoken in the public realm. She serves as a consultant and coordinator for a variety of public interest lawsuits, writes a regular column for The Nation magazine, and has regularly published articles in such outlets as USA Today, Tikkun, the New York Times Book Review. Williams is also a noted commentator for radio, television, and documentary films. Among her projects, she wrote and narrated the documentary film That Rush!, a short study of American talk show hosts that was part of an installation at London's Institute of Contemporary Art.

After completing degrees at Wellesley College and Harvard Law School, Williams practiced law as a consumer advocate and deputy city attorney for the City of Los Angeles, and then as a staff lawyer for the Western Center on Law and Poverty. Her shift to teaching began at Golden Gate College, followed by positions at the City University of New York in Queens and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Williams has received the Pioneer of Civil and Human Rights Award from the National Conference of Black Lawyers, and the Exceptional Merit Media Award from the National Women's Political Caucus. She has held fellowships at the School of Criticism and Theory at Dartmouth College, the Humanities Research Institute of the University of California at Irvine, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact the Office of Campus Activities at (845) 437-5370. 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 Monday, May 14th, 2007.