UST faculty are invited to a Breakfast Round Table Discussion, “A Conversation with James Loewen," author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong, on Tuesday, March 16.
The discussion, co-sponsored by Multicultural Student Services, American Culture and Difference, Faculty Development, and the Office for Service-Learning, will be held from 8:30 to 10 a.m. in the Leyden Room, Murray-Herrick Campus Center.
Dr. James Loewen
Copies of Lies My Teacher Told Me will be provided for the first 15 people who register for the session. To register, contact Katie Ngumba, (651) 962-6800, with name, department and mailbox number, by Wednesday, March 10.
Loewen is a sociologist who spent two years at the Smithsonian surveying 12 leading high school textbooks of American history. He is a best-selling author and, in addition to Lies My Teacher Told Me, wrote Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. The Gustavus Myers Foundation named his new book, Sundown Towns, a "Distinguished Book of 2005." He co-wrote Mississippi: Conflict and Change, which won the Lillian Smith Award for Best Southern Nonfiction. The book was rejected for public school text use by the state of Mississippi, leading to the path-breaking First Amendment lawsuit Loewen et al. v. Turnipseed, et al. He also wrote The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White, Social Science in the Courtroom, and The Truth About Columbus.
Loewen attended Carleton College and has a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University. He taught race relations for 20 years at the University of Vermont and taught previously at Tougaloo College in Mississippi. He now lives in Washington, D.C., continuing his research on how Americans remember their past.
He has been an expert witness in more than 50 civil rights, voting rights, and employment cases. His awards include the First Annual Spivack Award of the American Sociological Association for "sociological research applied to the field of intergroup relations," the American Book Award (for Lies My Teacher Told Me), and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship. He also is Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians.
Loewen also will speak on campus in a free public address at 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 15, in the O'Shaughnessy Educational Center auditorium. He also will be part of the UST Challenge Day activities.
