Bell, who has written extensively on law and race in both scholarly works and in allegorical fiction, will discuss commitment to an important cause as a mark of personal success.
Admission is open to the public without charge.
In 1969 he joined the faculty of Harvard Law School and became the school's first black tenured law professor two years later. He taught there until 1980, when he resigned to become dean of the University of Oregon Law School, where he served until 1985. He returned to Harvard in 1986, and in 1990 he went on an unpaid leave of absence in support of student efforts to achieve more racial and gender diversity on the faculty. When his protest continued beyond the school's two-year limit on leaves of absence, Bell was dismissed. A visiting professor of law at NYU since 1991, Bell is known for a teaching style that emphasizes student participation, and his courses are designed to resolve what is regarded as the teacher-student contradiction in which both are simultaneously teachers and students.