Dec 16, 2004 - Claremont, Calif. -

Legal scholar, author and "ardent protester" Derrick Bell will speak to students of Harvey Mudd College and the Claremont Colleges consortium on Thursday, January 27, 2005, at 7 p.m., as part of the Colleges' series of events honoring the late Martin Luther King, Jr. Bell will sign books after his address, which will be held in Galileo Hall.

In 1959, Derrick Bell left his position at the U.S. Justice Department rather than being forced to resign from the NAACP. Under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall, Bell joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to supervise over 300 cases, including James Meredith’s desegregation of the University of Mississippi. He was the first African-American tenured faculty member at Harvard Law School, where he took a two-year, unpaid leave of absence from that position to protest the lack of women of color on the faculty. He was dismissed at the end of that leave in 1992. He is now in his 14th year as a visiting professor at New York University School of Law.

His latest book is "Silent Covenants: Brown V. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform" (2004), Oxford University Press. His other books include: "Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth" (2002); "And We Are Not Saved: The Exclusive Quest for Racial Justice" (1987); "Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism" (1992); "Confronting Authority: Reflections of an Ardent Protester" (1994); "Gospel Choirs, Psalms of Survival in Alien Land Called Home" (1996); and "Afrolantica Legacies" (1998). He also authored the civil rights law text "Race, Racism & American Law," first published in 1973 and now in its 5th edition (2004), and a constitutional law text, "Constitutional Conflicts" (1997).