Hrabowski to open Clemson diversity lectures

Freeman Hrabowski III, president of University of Maryland, Baltimore County and a prominent educator, advocate and mathematician will be the inaugural speaker for the President’s Lecture Series on Leadership and Diversity at Clemson University.

Hrabowski will lecture on “Pursuing the Dream: A 50-Year Perspective on Broadening Participation in American Higher Education” in the Brooks Center for the Performing Arts at 7 p.m. Oct. 14.

Clemson President Jim Clements announced the lecture series last year as one of a number of steps Clemson is taking to improve diversity and inclusiveness on campus.

Hrabowski was named by President Obama to chair the new President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans.

“Dr. Hrabowski is a national leader in higher education and diversity, and I have learned much from him over the course of my career,” Clements said in a statement. “I know his speech will give us a lot to think about and discuss.”

Hrabowski grew up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama and was a child-leader in the civil rights movement. In 1963, when he was 12 years old, he participated in the Children’s Crusade march for civil rights, where he was arrested with many others and incarcerated for five days. He appeared in Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary “Four Little Girls” about the racially motivated bombing in 1963 of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

In 2012, Hrabowski was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine. He was named one of America’s Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Report in 2008.

Under his leadership, UMBC has been recognized by U.S. News as the No.1 “up and coming” university in the nation.