Melissa Harris-Perry on Jan 31! President Adam Falk will welcome the community to Claiming Williams Day on Thurs, Jan 31 at 9 am on the MainStage, '62 CTD. Melissa Harris-Perry will deliver a talk titled "What Difference does it Make? Politics, Activism, and Scholarship" Come at 8:30 am for refreshments! http://claiming.williams.edu/ MORE: http://web.williams.edu/messages/show.php?id=23005 from Carrie Greene, Claiming Williams

Harris-Perry's lecture is free and open to the public. All other Claiming Williams events are intended for Williams students, faculty, and staff. For full schedule of events, see http://claiming.williams.edu/ There will be a reception prior to the talk, beginning at 8:30 a.m., and a book signing afterward, both in the MainStage lobby. This event is not ticketed but seating is first come, first served. Melissa Harris-Perry, host of the self-titled show on MSNBC and a professor of political science at Tulane University. She is an author, television host, and political commentator who specializes in African- American politics. She is the founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South at Tulane University. She has previously served on the faculties of Princeton University and the University of Chicago. Her latest book is titled Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America (2011). Her book Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought won the 2005 W.E.B. Du Bois Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists and the 2005 Best Book Award from the Race and Ethnic Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. Harris-Perry received her B.A. from Wake Forest University in 1994 and her Ph.D. from Duke University in 1999. The lecture is co-sponsored by Leadership Studies, Africana Studies, Political Science, and the Class of '71 Public Affairs Forum. Claiming Williams is a day for the college to reflect on issues of inequality. No classes or athletics events are held, and students, faculty, and staff are invited to participate in lectures, performances, and discussion groups intended to provoke individual, institutional, and cultural change in order to build a more inclusive community. For more information about Claiming Williams, please visit http://claiming.williams.edu/ .