University to celebrate Day of Human Understanding

Shippensburg  University will celebrate diversity with its annual Day of Understanding Sept. 29.

This year's topic is "More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City." The day will feature a 7:30 p.m. lecture by William Julius Wilson, a noted researcher, author and professor who recently published a book by the same name. The lecture in Memorial Auditorium will be followed by a book signing.

"It is a day we set aside to be particularly mindful that we are a diverse community and that we truly endeavor to be inclusive," said Dr. Melodye Wehrung, executive director of social equity. "I think we are mindful of that on a daily basis but we set this time aside to be particularly mindful."

After receiving his doctorate from Washington State University in 1966, Wilson taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst before joining the faculty of the University of Chicago. In 1990 Wilson was appointed the Lucy Flower University Professor and director of the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Urban Inequality.

He is the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University and director of the Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.  He joined the faculty at Harvard 1996.

Wehrung noted that Wilson is just one of 19 University Professors, the highest professional distinction for a Harvard faculty member.

Wilson, a past president of the American Sociological Association, has received 41 honorary degrees. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, the American Philosophical Society, the Institute of Medicine and the British Academy. He was one of Time magazine's 25 Most Influential people in 1996.

Wilson received the country's highest scientific honor, the 1998 National Medal of Science, and was awarded the Talcott Parsons Prize in the Social Sciences by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003.

For more information contact the office of social equity, 477-1161.