One of America’s most influential and widely read scholars, Professor Manning Marable, will deliver the opening address during the Center for the Study of Citizenship’s Fourth Annual Conference in Citizenship Studies on Thursday, March 1, at 7 p.m. Marable’s lecture is titled "Racializing Justice, Disenfranchising Citizens: Dismantling Democracy through America\'s Criminal Justice System." He will focus on issues of citizenship, disenfranchisement, the permanent loss of civil rights for ex-prisoners and the long-term implications to a democracy with the incarceration of 2.3 million people.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Spencer M. Partrich Auditorium, located at the Wayne State University Law School, 471 W. Palmer, in Detroit.

Since 1993, Marable has been Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History and African-American Studies, at Columbia University in New York City. For 10 years, he was founding director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, from 1993 to 2003. Under Marable’s leadership, the Institute became one of the nation’s most prestigious centers of scholarship on the black American experience.

This year’s conference titled “Race and Citizenship,” runs March 2-3 at the WSU Law School. Other distinguished speakers include the Center for the Study of Citizenship’s Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, of Duke University; Melissa Nobles, of MIT; and Grant Farred of Duke University.

For further information, visit the Center’s website at www.clas.wayne.edu/citizenship; contact professor Marc Kruman, director, 313-577-2593, or e-mail m.kruman@wayne.edu.