Advocate for environmental justice to present next President’s Lecture Nov. 15

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

Beverly Wright, a leading scholar on and advocate for environmental justice, will be the next speaker in the President’s Lecture Series. Her talk, “An Evening with Beverly Wright,” will be at 8 p.m. Nov. 15 in McNair Hall’s Shell Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Wright is a professor of Sociology and founding director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ), formerly at Xavier University, now at Dillard University in New Orleans. The DSCEJ is one of the few community/university partnerships that addresses environmental and health inequities in the Lower Mississippi River Industrial Corridor, known as “Cancer Alley.” Since Hurricane Katrina, much of the work at the DSCEJ has focused on research, policy, community outreach and education of displaced African-American residents of New Orleans.

Wright’s accomplishments include conducting groundbreaking research in the area of environmental justice and developing an elementary school curriculum used by New Orleans public schools. She also manages hazardous waste worker training programs and provided valuable input for President Clinton’s Environmental Justice Transition Paper. Among Wright’s many awards are the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leaders Award in 2006, the EPA Environmental Justice Achievement Award in 2008 and the prestigious Heinz Award in 2009. In 2010, she was recognized by the Grio’s 100 History Makers in the Making.

Each year the President’s Lecture Series brings to the Rice University campus a variety of stimulating speakers on a range of topics as a means of enhancing the intellectual life not only of the Rice community but of the Houston community as well.

The President’s Lecture Series is sponsored by the Office of the President and is supported by the J. Newton Rayzor Lecture Fund. For more information, visit www.rice.edu/pls, email ricepls@rice.edu or call 713-348-5585.