Harvard Professor to Give Mudd Distinguished Lecture in Ethics at W&L
Charles Ogletree, the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard University, will give the Mudd Distinguished Lecture in Ethics for 2014-2015 at Washington and Lee University. Ogletree’s talk will be Wednesday, Oct. 1, at 4:30 p.m. in Lee Chapel.
The title of his lecture, which is free and open to the public, is “My Brother’s Keeper: Incarceration and African American Men.” The talk will be streamed live on the W&L website.
Ogletree, also the founding and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard, is a prominent legal theorist who has made an international reputation by taking a hard look at complex issues of law and by working to secure the rights guaranteed by the Constitution for everyone equally under the law.
He is the author of two books: “The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Race, Class and Crime in America” (2010) and “All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education” (2004).
Ogletree has also co-authored or co-edited five books, including his most recent publication “Life Without Parole: America’s New Death Penalty?” (ed., 2012); “The Road to Abolition: The Future of Capital Punishment in the United States” (ed., 2009); “When Law Fails: Making Sense of Miscarriages of Justice” (ed., 2009); “From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America” (co-authored, 2006); and “Beyond the Rodney King Story: An Investigation of Police Conduct in Minority Communities” (co-authored, 1995).
Ogletree was awarded the ABA Spirit of Excellence Award and the National Law Journal named him one of the 50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America. He was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame for the National Black Law Students Association, where he served as national president from 1977-78.
He also received the first Rosa Parks Civil Rights Award given by the City of Boston, the Hugo A. Bedau Award given by the Massachusetts Anti-Death Penalty Coalition and Morehouse College’s Gandhi, King, Ikeda Community Builders Prize.
Ogletree opened the offices of The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice (www.charleshamiltonhouston.org) in September 2005 as a tribute to the legendary civil rights lawyer, mentor and teacher of such great civil rights lawyers as Thurgood Marshall and Oliver Hill. The Institute has engaged in a wide range of important educational, legal and policy issues.
Ogletree earned an M.A. and B.A. (with distinction) in political science from Stanford University, where he was Phi Beta Kappa. He also holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
