5:15-6:15PM

The Honorable John Lewis

CUFA Keynote Speaker

Often called "one of the most courageous persons the Civil Rights Movement ever produced," John Lewis has dedicated his life to protecting human rights, securing civil liberties, and building what he calls "The Beloved Community" in America. His dedication to the highest ethical standards and moral principles has won him the admiration of many of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the United States Congress. The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has called Rep. Lewis "the conscience of the U.S. Congress." And Roll Call magazine has said, "John Lewis...is a genuine American hero and moral leader who commands widespread respect in the chamber."

During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, from 1963 to 1966, Lewis was named Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which he helped form. SNCC was largely responsible for organizing student activism in the Movement, including sit-ins and other activities.

While still a young man, John Lewis became a nationally recognized leader. By 1963, he was dubbed one of the Big Six leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. (The others were Whitney Young, A. Phillip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer and Roy Wilkins). At the age of 23, he was an architect of and a keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington in August 1963.

In 1964, John Lewis coordinated SNCC efforts to organize voter registration drives and community action programs during the Mississippi Freedom Summer. The following year, Lewis helped spearhead one of the most seminal moments of the Civil Rights Movement. Hosea Williams, another notable Civil Rights leader, and John Lewis led over 600 peaceful, orderly protestors across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965. They intended to march from Selma to Montgomery to demonstrate the need for voting rights in the state. The marchers were attacked by Alabama state troopers in a brutal confrontation that became known as "Bloody Sunday." News broadcasts and photographs revealing the senseless cruelty of the segregated South helped hasten the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

He was elected to Congress in November 1986 and has served as U.S. Representative of Georgia's Fifth Congressional District since then. He is Senior Chief Deputy Whip for the Democratic Party in leadership in the House, a member of the House Ways & Means Committee, a member of its Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, and Chairman of its Subcommittee on Oversight.

Rep. Lewis's appearance is sponsored in part by the University of Georgia/Mary Hepburn Lectureship in Social Studies Education fund.

1:15-2:15PM

Eric Foner

Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, is one of this country's most prominent historians. He received his doctoral degree at Columbia under the supervision of Richard Hofstadter. He is only the second person to serve as president of the three major professional organizations: the Organization of American Historians, American Historical Association, and Society of American Historians.

Professor Foner's publications have concentrated on the intersections of intellectual, political and social history, and the history of American race relations. His best-known books are: Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (1970; reissued with new preface 1995) Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (1976); Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy (1983); Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988) (winner, among other awards, of the Bancroft Prize, Parkman Prize, and Los Angeles Times Book Award); The Reader's Companion to American History (with John A. Garraty, 1991); The Story of American Freedom (1998); and Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (2002). His survey textbook of American history, Give Me Liberty! An American History and a companion volume of documents, Voices of Freedom, appeared in 2004. His most recent books are Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (2005), and Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World (2008), an edited collection of original essays.

In a recent book review, Professor Steven Hahn of the University of Pennsylvania wrote of Eric Foner: "Like his mentor Richard Hofstadter, he has had an enormous influence on how other historians, as well as a good cut of the general reading public, have come to think about American history. This is the result of his voluminous scholarship and of his decades as a teacher. Indeed, when one considers the chronological and topical range of Foner's many books and essays—not to mention those of his doctoral students—only Hofstadter, C. Vann Woodward, David Brion Davis, and, in an earlier era, Charles Beard (who was also at Columbia) would seem to be his genuine rivals in impact and accomplishment."

Professor Foner’s appearance is sponsored by The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

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10:15-11:15AM

Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt

Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. She is the author of History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving, Denying the Holocaust, and Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust. She represented the White House at the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and served on the American delegation to the OSCE conference on combating intolerance and anti-Semitism. She also served two terms on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and as an historical consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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12:00-1:30PM

Dr. Maleeha Lodhi

Jan L. Tucker Memorial Lecture, Dr. Maleeha Lodhi is among the most accomplished female professionals in the Muslim world, with extensive experience in diplomacy, media, and teaching. Her diplomatic experience spans eleven years, representing Pakistan as Ambassador to the United States and the United Kingdom. She is the recipient of the President’s award of Hilal-e-Imtiaz for Public Service in Pakistan.

In 1994, Dr. Lohdi was selected by Time magazine as one of a hundred people in the world—the only one from Pakistan—who will help to shape the 21st century. She has taught Politics and Political Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and is the author of two books: Pakistan’s Encounter with Democracy and The External Challenge, both collections of her essays on contemporary issues.

10:30-11:30AM

Greg Mortenson

Greg Mortenson is the founder of nonprofit Central Asia Institute, Pennies For Peace, and co-author of New York Times bestseller ‘Three Cups of Tea’ which has been a # 1 New York Times bestseller since its January 2007 release, and was Time Magazine Asia Book of The Year.

Mortenson recently received Pakistan’ highest civil award, Sitara-e-Pakistan (“Star of Pakistan”) for his courage and humanitarian effort to promote education, and literacy in rural areas for the last fifteen years.

In addition, a bipartisan group of Members of Congress has nominated Mortenson for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, which will be announced in October.

In 1992, Mortenson’s younger sister, Christa, died from a massive seizure after a lifelong struggle with epilepsy. To honor his sister’s memory, Mortenson climbed Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain in the Karakoram range. While recovering from the climb in a local village called Korphe, Mortenson met a group of children sitting in the dirt writing with sticks in the sand, and made a promise to help them build a school.

From that rash promise, grew a remarkable humanitarian campaign, in which Mortenson has dedicated his life to promote education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. As of 2008, Mortenson has established over 78 schools in rural and often volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 28,000 children, including 18,000 girls, where few education opportunities existed before.

While not overseas half the year, Mortenson, 50, lives in Bozeman, Montana with his wife, Dr. Tara Bishop, a clinical psychologist, and two children.

Mr. Mortenson’s appearance is sponsored by Penguin Group (USA), Inc.

10:15-11:15AM

Maya Soetoro-Ng

Maya Soetoro-Ng has a long and rich background in global and multicultural education. She was born in Jakarta, Indonesia and later moved to Honolulu, Hawaii.  She has a Masters degree in Secondary Education from NYU and a Ph.D in International Comparative Education from the University of Hawaii. Her doctoral research explored the politics of multiculturalism education and the critical pedagogy of creative writing. Maya has taught and developed curriculum for alternative public middle schools in New York City and Honolulu.

From 2000 to 2006, she was a lecturer in the University of Hawaii's College of Education, teaching classes about multicultural education and the history of education. Maya is currently a high school teacher at La Pietra, a school for young women and teaches World Cultures, U.S. History and the Constitution, and Peacemakers, a course she designed around one of her lifelong commitments: the power of nonviolence.

From 2007 to 2008, Maya was an avid campaigner for her brother, President Barack Obama where she worked on outreach to teachers, women and Latino and Asian Pacific Americans.  Part of her campaign work involved visiting schools and discussing Obama’s education platform.

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