[280]MSNBC ANALYST, NEWSPAPER COLUMNIST TO SPEAK AT MTSU

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Jan. 29, 2009
EDITORIAL CONTACT: Gina Logue, 615-898-5081

MSNBC ANALYST, NEWSPAPER COLUMNIST TO SPEAK AT MTSU
Eugene Robinson Comments on Race in America for Black History Month Event

(MURFREESBORO) – Eugene Robinson, associate editor and columnist for the Washington Post and MSNBC political analyst, will speak at 10:20 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 4, in MTSU’s Keathley University Center Theater. This event is free and open to the public. Robinson, whose twice-weekly Post column is syndicated in 145 newspapers across the country, will speak on “We’re Someplace We’ve Never Been: Race, Diversity and the New America.” His address, a Black History Month event, is co-sponsored by the Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies and the MTSU Black History Month Committee. The address will focus on Robinson’s upbringing in segregated South Carolina with reviews of the educational and economic progress made by African-Americans, the increase in interracial marriage, the rise of Latinos as the largest minority group in the U.S., the polarization of Americans according to class, and the scientific consensus that race is meaningless except as a social construct.
According to his Post biography, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the newspaper’s Style section. He is the author of Coal to Cream: A Black Man’s Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race (1999) and Last Dance in Havana (2004). For more information, contact Dr. Sekou Franklin, assistant professor of political science, at 615-904-8232 or franklin@mtsu.edu.


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ATTENTION, MEDIA: For a color photo of Eugene Robinson, contact Gina Logue in the MTSU Office of News and Public Affairs at 615-898-5081 or gklogue@mtsu.edu.