'Morning Edition' Correspondent To Deliver Albaugh Lecture Feb. 21
Juan Williams, one of America's leading journalists and senior correspondent for NPR's Morning Edition, will deliver the Roy B. Albaugh lecture at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 21, in the Jones Theater at the Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Building on the Baylor University campus. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by Baylor's Phi Beta Kappa chapter, Zeta of Texas.
A graduate of Haverford College, Williams received a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1976. During his 21-year career at The Washington Post, he served as an editorial writer, op-ed columnist and White House reporter. He has won an Emmy award for TV documentary writing and received widespread critical acclaim for a series of documentaries including Politics - The New Black Power. Articles by Williams have appeared in magazines ranging from Newsweek, Fortune, and The Atlantic Monthly to Ebony, Gentlemen's Quarterly, and The New Republic.
From 2000-2001, Williams hosted NPR's national call-in show Talk of the Nation. In that role, he brought the program to cities and towns across America for monthly radio "town hall" meetings before live audiences. The town hall meetings were a part of The Changing Face of America, a year-long NPR series that focused on how Americans are dealing with rapid changes in society and culture as the United States enters the 21st century.
Williams also is the author of the critically acclaimed biography Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, which was released in paperback in February 2000. Additionally, he is the author of the nonfiction bestseller Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, the companion volume to the critically acclaimed television series. This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience appeared in February 2003. This book was the basis for a six-part public broadcasting TV documentary that aired in June 2003. In 2004, Williams became involved with AARP's Voices of Civil Rights project, leading a veteran team of reporters and editors in the production of My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience. The book presents the harrowing and haunting eyewitness accounts of some 50 activists who served as foot soldiers and field generals in the Civil Rights Movement.
Williams continues to be a contributing political analyst for the Fox News Channel and a regular panelist on "Fox News Sunday." He has also appeared on numerous television programs, including "Nightline," "Washington Week in Review," "Oprah," CNN's "Crossfire" (where he frequently served as co-host), and "Capitol Gang Sunday." Currently, he sits on a number of boards, including the Haverford College Board of Trustees, the Aspen Institute of Communications and Society Program, Washington Journalism Center, and the New York Civil Rights Coalition.
The Roy B. Albaugh Phi Beta Kappa Lectureship was endowed in the late 1970s by Mrs. Oma Buchanan Albaugh in memory of her late husband, a Waco business and civic leader. Previous Albaugh speakers have included John Updike, Stephen J. Gould, Stanley Hauerwas and Liz Carpenter.