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CCNY President Gregory H. Williams to Receive Langston Hughes Medal

NEW YORK, March 3, 2009 – World-renowned philosopher, scholar and author Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah will deliver the second annual City College of New York President’s Lecture at CCNY 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 10. He will address “Race and The New Genomics.”

The lecture, in The Great Hall, Shepard Hall, will be preceded by the presentation of the College’s Langston Hughes Medal to Dr. Gregory H. Williams, 11th President of The City College and an award-winning author. The medal is being presented to President Williams to honor his achievement in writing his autobiographical best seller, “Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black.”

The event is free and open to the public. To attend the event, please call (212) 650-7799 or email events@ccny.cuny.edu  for reservations. CCNY is located at 160 Convent Avenue, Manhattan.

About Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah

Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah is the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.  He was appointed in 2002.  A graduate of Cambridge University, where he earned his doctorate, he previously held faculty positions at Duke, Cornell and Yale universities.  Born in London and raised in Ghana, Dr. Appiah has also taught in Germany, France and South Africa.

Dr. Appiah has published widely on ethics, African and black cultural studies, racial identity, political theory and philosophy of the mind. His writings include numerous scholarly books, essays and articles along with reviews, short fiction, three novels and a volume of poetry.  

His book, “In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture,” (1992) was honored by the African Studies Association, the Cleveland Foundation and the Modern Language Association. “Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race,” (1996) co-written with Amy Gutmann, won the North American Society for Social Philosophy’s Annual Book Award, the American Political Science Association’s Ralph J. Bunche Award and the Gustavus Myers Award for the study of Human Rights.

Most recently, Dr. Appiah authored “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers” (2006) and “Experiments in Ethics” (2008). Dr. Appiah is also co-editor, with Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., of “Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience,” which contains 3,000 articles, and the Encarta Africana CD-Rom.

About Dr. Gregory H. Williams

Since his appointment as T��ɫ��Ƶ’s 11th President in August 2001, Dr. Gregory H. Williams has brought CCNY increased national recognition. Under his leadership, the State of New York is investing more than a half billion dollars in new science facilities and a new home for the CCNY School of Architecture, Urban Design & Landscape Architecture. In addition, President Williams is leading the first capital campaign in the College’s history, and has raised close to $300 million to date. 

Dr. Williams has five earned degrees, including a J.D. and Ph.D. from George Washington University, and he holds three honorary doctorates. He has been a university administrator for over 30 years and has held a variety of positions at The George Washington University, The University of Iowa, and The Ohio State University. Immediately prior to becoming president of CCNY, he served as Dean of the Law School and Carter C. Kissell Professor of Law, The Ohio State University.

Dr. Williams has published three books and a number of articles and book reviews for “The New York Times,” “The Los Angeles Times,” and “The Washington Post.” He is best known for his award-winning and best-selling memoir, “Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black,” which in 1995 was selected as Book of the Year by “The Los Angeles Times.” The riveting autobiography, which opens doors to honest discussions of race, class and alcoholism in America, is required reading on many college and university campuses as well as a favorite of book clubs around the country.

About The Langston Hughes Medal

The Langston Hughes Medal was established by the late Raymond Patterson, Professor Emeritus of English at CCNY, to honor Langston Hughes’s life-long commitment to social change through works that reflect various cultures with roots in an African heritage. The Medal is presented to stellar writers whose work gives voice to the many cultures rooted in the African heritage, and celebrates their distinguished contribution to arts and letters.  Previous recipients include James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, Chinua Achebe, George Lamming, Toni Morrison and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka.

About T��ɫ��Ƶ

Since 1847, T��ɫ��Ƶ has provided low-cost, high-quality education for New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines.  The College motto "Access Excellence" can be seen with over 15,000 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; The School of Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture (SAUDLA); The School of Education; The Grove School of Engineering, and The Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education.

For additional information, visit www.ccny.cuny.edu.