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"Combustible Mixture"

Charles Ogletree picked fruit as the child of a farmworker family and learned patience while fishing with his grandfather.

A career in trial law was inspired by the Angela Davis trial, which Ogletree attended while a student at Stanford University. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he became an influential voice, weighing in on some of America's most charged racial-political issues of the past 60 years, including Brown v. Board of Education and Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Oct. 7, he will speak at ILR.

"The Combustible Mixture of Race, Gender, Religion, and Politics: Lessons Learned from the 2008 Political Campaign" is the title of Ogletree's address, the 2008 Milton Konvitz Memorial Lecture in American Ideals.

Ogletree is the Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko Professor of Law.  He is also the founding executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School.

The Konvitz lecture begins at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 7 in the Pepsi Auditorium, located at 305 Ives Hall. It is free and open to the public. A reception in the auditorium lobby will follow.

ILR will broadcast the lecture on line.  Registration for the webinar is available at  http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/alumni/events/Milton_Konvitz_Lecture_083108.html.

The Milton Konvitz Lecture is made possible through Irwin Jacobs '54 (BEE '56) and Joan Jacobs (BS HE '54).

Recent books by Ogletree include From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America, which he edited with Austin Sarat and published in 2006.  He wrote All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education, published in 2004.

Ogletree heads an institute described on its website as a hub for scholarship, strategy, socially concerned legal education, and open, engaging and original public forums on matters central to civil rights in the 21st Century.

The institute is named in honor of Charles Hamilton Houston, vice dean of Howard Law School in the 1930s.  Under Houston's leadership, many of nation's top black litigators and teachers were recruited to work at the school and the school was accredited.

Ogletree's professional roles include:  District of Columbia Public Defender Service, Washington, DC, staff attorney, 1978-82, director of staff and training, 1982-83; American University, Washington, adjunct professor, 1982-84, deputy director, 1984-85; Antioch Law School, Washington, adjunct professor, 1983-84; Jessamy, Fort & Ogletree (law firm), Washington, partner, 1985-89.

Also, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA, visiting professor, 1985-89, director, introduction to trial advocacy workshop, 1986, assistant professor, 1989-93; director, Criminal Justice Institute, 1990-present; professor, 1993; director of clinical programs, 1996; Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, 1998; associate dean for the clinical programs, 2002; vice dean for the clinical programs, 2003; director, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice, 2004.

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