Media Contact: Pat JaCoby, (858) 534-7404  
                   or Jan Jennings, (858) 822-1684 

CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION CHAIRPERSON, ROSA PARKS AWARD-WINNER MARY  FRANCES  BERRY TO  SPEAK  APRIL  17 AT  UCSD’S  PRICE CENTER

Mary Frances Berry, chairperson of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, a founder of the Free South Africa Movement and recipient of The Rosa Parks Award, will speak at 6:30 p.m. April 17 in the Price Center Theater at the University of California, San Diego.

Berry’s topic is Higher Education’s Responsibility in a Global Society. The event is free and open to the public.

Sponsored by UCSD and San Diego State University, Berry’s lecture is the keynote for a spring forum, Diversity and Cultural Competence: Hear the Students’ Voices, which will include UCSD and SDSU students’ remarks and perspectives following the lecture.

Opening remarks will be presented by UCSD Chancellor Robert C. Dynes and SDSU President Stephen Webber, who will be joined by UCSD Associated Students President Jeff Dodge and SDSU Associated Students President Ron Williams.

Deborah Wingard, Ph.D., chair of the UCSD Diversity Council, will welcome guests.

A book-signing for Berry’s The Pig Farmer’s Daughter and Other Tales of Law and Justice will be held from 8:30 to 9 p.m. in the lobby.

Berry was appointed by President Carter and confirmed by the Senate as a commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights in 1980. Fired from the commission for criticizing President Reagan’s civil rights policies, Berry sued and won reinstatement in federal district court. In 1993, President Clinton appointed her chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, reappointing her to that position in 1999.

Berry also served as Assistant Secretary for Education in the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) during the Carter administration, supervising nearly 13 billion dollars of federal education programs. Prior to her HEW service, Berry was a Provost at the University of Maryland at College Park and Chancellor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

No stranger to conflict and staunch in her convictions, Berry was arrested and jailed several times as one of the founders of the Free South Africa Movement which instigated protests at the South African Embassy in the struggle for democracy in South Africa.

Currently, Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania where she teaches history and law.

Author, educator, historian, and attorney, Berry graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and earned a doctorate in history from the University of Michigan, where she also received her law degree. She is a member of the District of Colombia Bar Association. She is a past president of the Organization of American Historians.

Berry has received 30 honorary doctorate degrees. In addition to the Rosa Parks Award of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, she is the recipient of  numerous other awards for public service and scholarly activities, including the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins and Image Award and the Hubert Humphrey Award of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. The San Diego City Council Proclamation praises her for working “tirelessly to voice the frustrations and hopes of the nation on such issues as education, affirmative action, parenthood, women’s rights, law enforcement and race relations.”

In addition to The Pig Farmer’s Daughter and Other Tales of Law and Justice, Berry’s books include Race and Sex in the Courts 1865 to the Present; Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (with co-author John W. Blassingame), and Black Resistance/White Law: A History of Constitutional Racism in America.

For further information on the April 17 Berry lecture call (858) 534-1698.