PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Civil rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar Michelle Alexander will deliver the 2012 Debra L. Lee Lecture on Slavery and Justice on Tuesday, Feb. 28, at 6 p.m. in Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Martinos Auditorium. Her lecture, titled “The New Jim Crow,” is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow the lecture.

Alexander is widely known for her work advocating for civil rights. In recent years, she has taught at a number of universities, including Stanford Law School, where she was an associate professor of law and directed the Civil Rights Clinics. In 2005, she was awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship, and that same year she accepted a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University.

Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, details the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States that she says has denied millions of African Americans the very rights won in the Civil Rights Movement. It challenges the civil rights community to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.

The Debra L. Lee Lecture

The Debra L. Lee Lectures serve as a key component of the University’s response to the Report of the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. It brings to the University campus the most distinguished scholars of historic and contemporary issues related to the legacy of slavery in the Americas and elsewhere. The lectureship’s sponsor, 1976 Brown alumna Debra L. Lee, is a member of Brown’s Board of Trustees and chair and chief executive officer of BET Networks, a division of Viacom Inc. BET Networks is the leading provider of media and entertainment for African Americans and consumers of Black culture globally, reaching more than 120 million households, including its music and entertainment brand. BET can also be seen in the United Kingdom and sub-Saharan Africa.