Guinier to give Fulton lecture

Author: Scott Greene

The College announced this week that Harvard University Law Professor Lani Guinier will give the John Hamilton Fulton Lecture in the Liberal Arts on Wednesday, April 30 in Mead Chapel at 8 p.m. Guinier, who became the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship at Harvard Law School in 1998 and now serves as the institution's Bennet Boskey Professor of Law, will draw from her forthcoming book to address issues of fairness in higher education for the lecture.

"I think she's raising important questions for us to consider," President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said.

Vice President for Institutional Planning and Diversity Shirley Ramirez, who discussed her own work on diversity both at the College and at the Posse Foundation with Guinier during a recent meeting at Harvard, is excited about the unique opportunity that Guinier's will provide the College community.

"She was very drawn to the work that Middlebury was doing on diversity," Ramirez said. "She really engages people in a deep way, is incredibly accessible and is very excited to meet Middlebury students."

Ramirez added that members of the community will also get a chance to interact with Guinier during her visit. Guinier will likely host a student forum and participate in a book signing to complement her lecture.

"She has been really generous with her time, so we are hoping that she will be spending most of the day with us on campus," Ramirez said.

Following an education at Radcliffe College and Yale Law School, Guinier worked in the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice before heading the voting rights project at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the 1980s. Prior to her appointment at Harvard, she taught as a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for 10 years.

Guinier first attracted public attention in 1993 when, in the midst of her tenure at the University of Pennsylvania, President Bill Clinton nominated her to be the first black woman to head the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Following a fierce political battle on Capitol Hill and in the media over Guinier's views on democracy and voting, Clinton withdrew her nomination without a confirmation hearing. ?

That experience led Guinier to use her subsequent public platform to speak out on issues of race, gender and democratic decision-making and to call for candid public discussion of these issues.

"She's quite dynamic," Liebowitz said. "She's sharp."

Guinier has been thinking and writing about issues of fairness in higher education for the past several years, and her lecture will reflect such endeavors. Her forthcoming book, "Meritocracy Inc.: How Wealth Became Merit, Class Became Race, and College Education Became a Gift from the Poor to the Rich," touches on many of the issues which will form the focus of her message.

"I am pretty confident that she will be giving us a number of things to think about," Ramirez said. "I think that she is a phenomenal scholar and voice for very difficult issues in higher education right now."

The John Hamilton Fulton Lecture in the Liberal Arts was established at Middlebury College in 1966. The late Alexander Hamilton Fulton, an emeritus member of the Middlebury College Board of Trustees, donated the gift that established the lectureship, which is named in honor of his father. Previous Fulton lecturers have included Beverly Sills, James A. Baker III, William H. Rehnquist and Wynton Marsalis.