Pitt Law School to Hold Inaugural Derrick A. Bell Lecture Jan. 27

PITTSBURGH—University of Pittsburgh Derrick A. Bell Fellow Richard Delgado and Pitt Derrick A. Bell Scholar Jean Stefancic will deliver the Inaugural Derrick A. Bell Lecture at 6 p.m. Jan. 27 in Pitt School of Law's Teplitz Moot Court Room in the Barco Law Building, 3900 Forbes Ave., Oakland.

Their lecture is titled "Cultural DNA." Delgado, a leader of the critical race theory movement, and Stefancic, a noted legal writer, joined the Pitt law faculty in May 2003.

Their faculty positions are named for Bell, a 1957 graduate of Pitt's School of Law, who will attend the lecture. Bell is known for resigning from his tenured faculty position at Harvard University to protest a lack of minority women faculty members. He is a visiting professor of law at New York University School of Law. His book Race, Racism and American Law, fourth edition (Aspen Law & Business, 2000), helped to ignite the critical race theory movement.

Delgado and Stefancic serve as coeditors of the New York University Press series Critical America. They also wrote Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror (Temple University Press, 1997), which won a Gustavus Myers award as the outstanding book on human rights in North America in 1998. In addition, they shared a 1993 Rockefeller Bellagio grant to complete Failed Revolutions (Westview Press, 1994).

Delgado, a founding member of the Conference on Critical Race Theory, has written more than 100 journal articles and 15 books. His books have received numerous national book prizes, including six Gustavus Myers awards. The Coming Race War (New York University Press, 1996) was the American Library Association Choice Outstanding Academic Book, and The Rodrigo Chronicles (New York University Press, 1995) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1995. Both books also won the Gustavus Myers award.

One of the leading commentators on race in the United States, Delgado has appeared on Good Morning America, the MacNeil-Lehrer Report, PBS, NPR, the Fred Friendly Show, and Canadian NPR. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently listed him as one of the three leading Latino public intellectuals.

Stefancic writes about civil rights, law reform, social change, and legal scholarship. Her 1996 book, No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America's Social Agenda (Temple University Press), was recommended by the New York Law Journal as a "clarion call to those of us who have too long remained complacent that things will return to the more humane thinking of the bygone Great Society."

Her work has been widely cited, and she has given numerous talks, workshops, and classes at law schools, universities, and conferences in the United States, Canada, Australia, and England.

The lecture provides one-hour substantive Continuing Legal Education credit. For more information, call 412-648-1400.

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