March 3: Redding Lecture
Author Geoffrey Canada to discuss challenges facing American public education
Editor's note: This article was updated at 1:05 p.m., Jan. 29, 2015.
11:46 a.m., Jan. 9, 2015--Author and educator Geoffrey Canada, president and former CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, will deliver the annual Louis L. Redding Lecture on Civil Rights and Social Justice at 5 p.m., Tuesday, March 3, in Mitchell Hall on the University of Delaware campus in Newark.
His topic will be the challenges surrounding American public education and the widespread poverty plaguing public school children.
This lecture is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Tickets for members of the University community will be available beginning Monday, Feb. 9, at the Bob Carpenter Center and Trabant University Center box offices. There is a ticket limit of two. For the general public, tickets will be available at both box offices beginning Monday, Feb. 16, with a two-ticket limit.
At this program, the University’s Louis L. Redding Diversity Award will be presented to Jose Aviles, director of admissions. This award honors individuals or units at UD whose efforts have promoted, enhanced and implemented diversity programs or activities, resulting in a significant change in the campus climate and composition within the University community.
Geoffrey Canada
Events Stories
June 5: Blue Hen 5K
June 6-9: Food and culture series
Canada is known for his visionary leadership and pioneering efforts to enhance the quality of life for children and families in Harlem, New York, through education reform. The New York Times called the Harlem Children’s Zone “one of the most ambitious social-policy experiments of our time.” In 2011, Canada was named to Time Magazine's list of the 100 list most influential people in the world; and in 2014, he was named one of Fortune’s 50 greatest leaders in the world.
A graduate of Bowdoin College and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he was featured in the award-winning documentary Waiting for ‘Superman.'
The University of Delaware Honors Program will be sponsoring a Winter Session writing contest for students using Canada’s book, Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America. Winners of the writing contest will have the opportunity to meet Canada while he is on campus. For contest details, like UDHP on Facebook.
The Louis L. Redding Lecture
Each year, this lecture is held to recognize the civil rights efforts of Louis L. Redding, the first African American attorney admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1929. Mr. Redding would be the only African American attorney practicing law in Delaware for the next 25 years. In 1954, Mr. Redding became part of the legal team that argued the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1961, Mr. Redding successfully argued another case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which held that segregating public spaces is not allowed. In 1998, the University of Delaware created the Louis L. Redding Chair for the Study of Law and Public Policy, and in 2013 a residence hall was named in his honor on the Newark campus.
The Louis L. Redding Lecture is being sponsored by the vice provost for diversity, the Office of Student Life, the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Education and Human Development, the Honors Program and the Center for the Study of Diversity.
For more information regarding the lecture, please email Dana Brittingham in the Office of the Provost at dbritt@udel.edu.