April 11, 2006
To: SPIA Students, Faculty, and Staff
From: Hal Rainey, Department of Public Administration and Policy
Re: Charter Lecturer Taylor Branch
Please let me encourage all SPIA students, faculty, and staff to attend the Charter Lecture on Monday, April 17, 2006 at 3:30 p.m. in the Chapel. Taylor Branch will deliver the lecture, which should be of interest to all of us. He won the Pulitzer Prize as well as other major awards for his book, Parting the Waters, the first of a trilogy of books about the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King. Branch has a Masters Degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. He has been active in electoral politics in the past and has strong interests in political science, public affairs, and public service. His lecture will be about "Democracy in Crisis: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Future." He will discuss the application of themes from the civil rights movement, such as nonviolence, to contemporary and future issues in democratic governance and international relations.
Branch recently published the third book of his trilogy, At Canaan's Edge. All major newspapers and magazines in the U.S. have carried laudatory reviews of the book, and he has appeared on numerous talk shows to discuss it.
After the lecture, there will be a reception and book signing at the Russell Library. There were many requests for his involvement while he is on campus, so there are not as many opportunities to get him together with SPIA people as we would have liked. Taylor is friendly and enjoys talking to students, staff members, and faculty members, so this is an opportunity to meet and hear from an interesting and very significant author.
