Professor Anderson is the author of Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955 (Cambridge University Press, 2003), which was awarded both the Gustavus Myers and Myrna Bernath Book Awards, and was a finalist for the W.E.B. Du Bois and Truman Book Awards. She is an associate professor of history at the University of Missouri and a fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, and the recipient of research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, Ford Foundation, National Humanities Center and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Professor Anderson is fascinated by policy, and is particularly intrigued with the ways that domestic and international policies intersect through the issues of race, justice and equality. She has received numerous teaching awards, including the William T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence. In her forthcoming book, Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941-1960, Professor Anderson uncovers the long-hidden and important role of the nation's most powerful civil rights organization in the fight for the liberation of peoples of color in Africa and Asia.

This lecture series is named in honor of Valerie Gordon '93, an activist for human rights internationally, domestically and locally. Valerie passed away shortly after graduation, and this event commemorates the remarkable contributions she made in her short life.

Reception to follow.