Harvard scholar to deliver Fiscus lecture Oct. 29

Harvard Law School Professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr. will discuss "Do Black Lives Matter? Race and Justice in America Now!" at 8 p.m. Oct. 29 at Skidmore College.

Ogletree will deliver the annual Ronald J. Fiscus Lecture in Constitutional Law, sponsored by Skidmore’s Department of Government, in Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.

Ogletree is the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the founding and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. He has built an international reputation for examining complex legal issues and by working to secure equal Constitutional rights for all. His books include "When Law Fails: Making Sense of Miscarriages of Justice," "From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America," and "All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education."

In 1991, Ogletree served as legal counsel to Anita Hill during the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. A friend and former teacher of President Barack Obama, Ogletree has received honors from the National Bar Association, the Washington Bar Association, the National Law Journal, the National Conference on Black Lawyers, the Museum of Afro-American History in Boston, the National Bar Association, and other organizations and publications

The Fiscus Lecture was inaugurated in 1991 by Skidmore’s Government Department to honor the late Ronald J. Fiscus, a Skidmore faculty member from 1980 until his death in 1990. Fiscus was a constitutional law specialist and a key contributor to the development of a minor in law and society at Skidmore.