Release date: Dec. 13, 2004
Contact: Deb Hammacher, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0644 or deb.hammacher@emory.edu

Annual State of Race Event at Emory Feb. 3

WHO: Michael Eric Dyson, University of Pennsylvania; John McWhorter, University of California, Berkeley; Dwight Andrews, Emory University.

WHAT: Emory College Council 5th Annual State of Race: "Hip Hop Culture and Its Effect on Race Relations"

WHEN: 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 3, 2005

WHERE: Glenn Memorial Auditorium, 1652 N. Decatur Rd., Emory. Free parking in the Fishburne parking deck.

COST: Free and open to the public. For more information, call 404-251-6048 or 404-727-6169.

Emory College Council presents its fifth annual State of Race at 8 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 3 in Glenn Memorial Auditorium on the Emory University campus. Popular with students and the greater community, this year's event will feature a panel discussion on the culture of hip hop and its effect on race relations. The speakers will be Michael Eric Dyson, author and Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania; John McWhorter, associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley; and Dwight Andrews, associate professor of music at Emory.

Designed to engage the community in dialogue on important social and political issues pertaining to race, last year's event was a nationally televised discussion about affirmative action on college campuses between Lee Bollinger, former president of the University of Michigan, and Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunities. Past speakers have included: Dinesh D'Souza (conservative commentator), Julian Bond (civil rights activist), Alan Keyes (former Republican presidential and congressional candidate), Michelle Alexander (ACLU-California), Arun Ghandi (human rights activist) and Cornell West (scholar).

Dyson is a renowned scholar and teaches in the humanities, religion and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a best-selling author and frequent media commentator. Dyson's early years were spent in Detroit, living as a church pastor and a teen father on welfare. After starting college at age 21, he earned a Ph.D. in religion from Princeton University. He previously taught at Chicago Theological Seminary, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Columbia University and DePaul University. He has written 10 books in the last decade, among them "Holler If You Hear Me," "Searching for Tupac Shakur" and "Mercy, Mercy Me: The Art, Loves, and Demons of Marvin Gaye." He recently published "Why I Love Black Women," which earned the 2004 NAACP Image Award for outstanding nonfiction literary work. Dyson also is a Baptist minister and a commentator for National Public Radio's Tavis Smiley Show.

McWhorter is a widely published expert in Creole languages and typology. He emerged on the scene as a public intellectual, however, with his book "Losing Race." He addresses contemporary race issues in America, specifically in relation to language use, and is widely published on the topic. "Losing the Race" explores the connection between language and race relations in the United States. McWhorter also is a contributing editor for The New Republic and City Journal. He has addressed the issues of hip hop and contemporary black English with published articles such as "What Happened to English?" and "How Hip Hop Holds Blacks Back." He has a Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford University and previously taught at Cornell University.

Andrews also is a native of Detroit, and is professor of music theory and jazz studies at Emory. He is an accomplished composer and arranger, and has served as music director for the Broadway productions of August Wilson's "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," "The Piano Lesson" and "Seven Guitars." His film credits include Louis Massiah's documentary "W.E.B. DuBois: A Biography in Four Voices," Charlene Gilbert's "Homecoming," the Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie "The Piano Lesson," HBO's "Miss Ever's Boys" and PBS's "Old Settler." A multi-instrumentalist, he also has appeared on several jazz albums.

Andrews has received numerous awards, and in 1997, he was named the first Quincy Jones Visiting Professor of African-American Music at Harvard University. He continues his relationship with Harvard as a fellow of the W.E.B. Dubois Institute. He is senior minister at First Congregational Church in Atlanta. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in music from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in music theory and a master of divinity degree from Yale University. Prior to joining the Emory faculty, Andrews served on the faculty at Yale, teaching music and African-American studies.

March 3-5 Andrews will convene "An Exploration of African-American Music at the Dawn of the 21st Century," a symposium at Emory celebrating the composer William L. Dawson (1898-1990), founder of the Tuskegee School of Music and noted composer of "The Negro Symphony" among other works.

Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. For more than a decade Emory has been named one of the country's top 25 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, a comprehensive metropolitan health care system.

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