Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Observance

Featured Speaker (MLK Convocation, Jan. 21)

Dr. Iva E. Carruthers is general secretary of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, a national interdenominational organization within the African American faith tradition, and founder of Lois House, an urban retreat center. She is an active member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and has a long history of social justice ministry, fostering interdenominational and interfaith dialogue in the United States, Caribbean, South America and Africa. She currently serves as a trustee for Chicago Theological Seminary.

Dr. Carruthers is a widely-published author whose work includes The Church and Reparations, distributed by her denomination at the 2001 U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. She co-edited Blow The Trumpet in Zion: Global Vision And Action for the 21st Century Black Church and published 15 study guides on African American and African history as co-producer of an educational television program. 

She is a professor emeritus and former chair of Northeastern Illinois University's Department of Sociology, in received the institution's 1999 Life Achievement Award. Her other honors include the Year 2000 Woman Entrepreneur of the Year award of the National Foundation of Women Legislators and the Small Business Administration, appointment to a White House Advisory Council on the Internet, a ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award and Ebony Magazine’s 2001 Outstanding Mother Award for Mentoring.

Featured Speaker (School of Law, Jan. 22)

Penelope Andrews, visiting professor at Valparaiso University's School of Law, is a respected expert in international human rights law who has won several awards for her public interest work. She has served as a consultant on the effect of racism on women and governance to the United National Development Fund for Women, evaluated labor law programs sponsored by the Ford Foundation around the world, and helped draft and promote affirmative action legislation for the new South African government. Andrews is co-editor of The Post-Apartheid Constitutions: Perspectives on South Africa’s Basic Laws and the forthcoming book Comparative Constitutionalism and Rights: Global Perspectives.

Since 1993, Andrews has served on the faculty at City University of New York Law School, and has held visiting faculty posts at the University of Saskatchewan, Tuoro Law School, Columbia Law School, Sydney University School of Law and University of Aberdeen. She earned her master of laws from Columbia University School of Law, and a bachelor of laws and bachelor’s degree in economics and comparative African government and administration from the University of Natal.