[133]HISTORY SCHOLAR DELIVERS STRICKLAND LECTURE AT MTSU OCT. 23

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Oct. 1, 2008
EDITORIAL CONTACT: Lisa L. Rollins, 615-898-2919, or lrollins@mtsu.edu

HISTORY SCHOLAR DELIVERS STRICKLAND LECTURE AT MTSU OCT. 23

(MURFREESBORO)—Dr. Carol Anderson, an author and human rights scholar, will deliver the 2008 Strickland Visiting Scholar Lecture in History at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23, in the State Farm Lecture Hall of the Business Aerospace Building on the MTSU campus.
The topic of Anderson’s free and open talk will be “Rac(e)ing Human Rights: the Role of Jim Crow in Shaping the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.”
Dr. Pippa Holloway, associate professor of history at MTSU, said, “Dr. Anderson's scholarship on the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights is part of an important and growing body of literature that places the American Civil Rights movement in the context of international politics at that time.
“Defenders of racism in the United States resisted efforts to strengthen the U.N. Declaration,” Holloway added, “while the NAACP pushed the United Nations investigate segregation and lynchings in the U.S.”
An associate professor of history at the University of Missouri, Anderson’s first book, “Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African-American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955” (Cambridge University Press, 2003), explores how the Cold War, anti-communism, the development of the United Nations, and international human rights influenced the struggle for black equality in the U.S.
In Anderson’s upcoming book, “Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941-1960,” she reportedly will uncover the long-hidden role of the national most powerful civil rights organization in fighting for the liberation of people of color in Africa and Asia.”
Regarding her Oct. 23 lecture at MTSU and the creation of the U.N. declaration, Anderson said, “Borne out of the barbarism of Nazi Germany and the realization that a nation’s atrocities could not remain bounded behind a country’s borders, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, led by Eleanor Roosevelt, and with the full blessing of President Harry Truman, set out to create an International Bill of Human Rights.
“It took years of wrangling, stalling, arguing and debating, but in December 1948 the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights was finally unveiled,” she continued. “Its opening salvo was clear and unequivocal. ‘The foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world’ was human rights. Yet, those noble words cloaked a more sordid debate raging not only within the global community, but in the United States itself, about power, race and the role of overt white supremacy in a civilized society.
“For the U.S.,” Anderson observed, “this ‘Magna Carta for the World’ was to be no more than ‘the Sermon on the Mount’ in the ideological struggle against the Soviet Union. But for those who were battling against colonialism, racism and tyranny, it meant so much more. Much more.”

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Aside from her free public Strickland Visiting Scholar Lecture in History at MTSU, Anderson also will meet for formal and informal classes and workshops with undergraduates, graduates and faculty.
At her home university in Columbia, Mo., Anderson’s regularly scheduled courses include American Survey from 1865, Black Freedom Movement, U.S. Foreign Policy during the Cold War and Afro-Americans in the 20th Century, as well as graduate readings and research seminars related to diplomatic history.
Long fascinated with policy issues, especially the ways in which domestic and international policies intersect through issues of race, justice and equality, Anderson earned her Master of Arts degree from Miami University and her Ph.D. from Ohio State University, with special interest in the areas of diplomatic, U.S. 20th century and African-American history as well as human rights.
“When you think about it, really, all around us are human rights issues—the health-care crisis, the stagnant education system, the housing meltdown—yet we don't even think of these as human rights problems,” Anderson observed. “We try to treat them as separate, distinct, phenomena. There's a reason for that, and the roots go back to the Second World War, Jim Crow and the early years of the Cold War.”
To date, her research has garnered significant support from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation, the Gilder Lehrman Institute for the Study of American History and the Eisenhower Foundation, among other entities.
The purpose of the Strickland Visiting Scholar program is to allow students to meet with accomplished scholars whose expertise spans a variety of historical issues. It was established through the support of the Strickland family in memory of Dr. Roscoe Lee Strickland Jr., a longtime professor of European history at MTSU. Strickland was the first president of the MTSU Faculty Senate.
For more information regarding Anderson’s Oct. 23 talk, please contact Professor Holloway, chairwoman of the Strickland lecture’s coordinating committee, at 615-898-2536 or via e-mail at phollowa@mtsu.edu.

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ATTENTION, MEDIA: To request jpeg of Anderson for editorial use or to request an interview with Dr. Pippa Holloway about the upcoming Strickland lecture, please direct your inquiry to Lisa L. Rollins in the Office of News and Public Affairs at lrollins@mtsu.edu or by calling 615-898-2919.