OPENING CONVOCATION
Aug. 29, 2007, 11a.m. - Weaver Chapel
BISHOP MARK HANSON
“Service & Engagement in the World,
A Lutheran Tradition”
In August 2001 & August of 2007, the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) elected Mark S. Hanson to serve as presiding bishop.
Before being elected presiding bishop, he served as bishop of the Saint Paul Area Synod (3H). He had been elected to serve a second term in Saint Paul earlier that same year.
Prior to being elected synod bishop, he served as pastor of three Minnesota congregations: Prince of Glory Lutheran Church, Minneapolis; Edina (Minnesota) Community Lutheran Church; and University Lutheran Church of Hope in Minneapolis.
He has served as president of the Minnesota Council of Churches; vice chair of the ELCA Conference of Bishops; vice president of the Lutheran World Federation, and is a member of the executive council of the National Council of Churches USA. In 2003, he was elected president of the Lutheran World Federation, a position he holds concurrently with his position as presiding bishop of the ELCA. In this position, Bishop Hanson has the opportunity to speak with Lutherans throughout the world about the social, economic, and political injustices that we, the people of God, are called to confront.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. CONVOCATION
Sponsored by Barnes & Noble College Booksellers
Jan. 21, 2008, 11 a.m. - Weaver Chapel
MS. LANI GUINIER
“Commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
In 1998, Lani Guinier became the first black woman to be appointed to a tenured professorship at Harvard Law School. Before joining the faculty at Harvard, she was a tenured professor for ten years at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. During the 1980s, she was head of the voting rights project at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and served in the Civil Rights Division during the Carter administration as special assistant to then-Assistant Attorney General Drew S. Days. Guinier came to public attention when she was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1993 to head the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, only to have her name withdrawn without a confirmation hearing. Guinier turned that incident into a powerful personal and political memoir, Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Vision of Social Justice. Dean of Yale Law School Anthony Kronman calls Lift Every Voice a “moving personal testimony, a story of dignity and principle and hope, from which every reader can take heart.”
A graduate of Radcliffe College of Harvard University and Yale Law School, Guinier has received numerous awards, including the 1995 Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award from the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession; the Champion of Democracy Award from the National Women's Political Caucus; the Rosa Parks Award from the American Association for Affirmative Action; the Harvey Levin Teaching Award, given to her by the 1994 graduating class at the University of Pennsylvania; and the 2002 Sacks-Freund Teaching Award from Harvard Law School. She is the recipient of 11 honorary degrees from schools which include Smith College, Spelman College, Swarthmore College, and the University of the District of Columbia.
Visit the Official Martin Luther King Observance Web Site