Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II will deliver the 2017 Weil Lecture
July 20, 2017 | M. Clay
The Institute for the Arts and Humanities announces Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II will deliver the 2017 Weil Lecture on American Citizenship, Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2017, at Moeser Auditorium in Hill Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Barber is pastor at Greenleaf Christian Church, Disciples of Christ in Goldsboro. He has served as president of the North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NC NAACP) since 2006 and sits on the national board of the organization. Barber is most recently well known as the architect of the Moral Mondays Movement, a weekly protest of the North Carolina General Assembly in Raleigh. He recently announced that he would step down from his role at the NC NAACP when his term ends in October to begin the national Poor People’s Campaign.
“As one of the great figures in American public life today, Rev. Barber is an ideal person to deliver the Weil Lecture,” said IAH Director Mark Katz. “We are honored and delighted that he will be in our midst come October.”
Barber graduated from North Carolina Central University (NCCU), receiving a B.A. in Political Science. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Duke University, and he was a Benjamin Mays Fellow and a Dean scholar. Barber has a Doctoral degree from Drew University in Madison, N.J., with a concentration in Public Policy and Pastoral Care and he has received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from NCCU. The Honorable Governor Beverly Purdue presented Dr. Barber with the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, North Carolina’s highest citizenship award presented to outstanding North Carolinians who have a proven record of service to the state. In 2016, he delivered a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
Activist and author Dr. Cornel West, the 1993 Weil Lecturer, has said of Barber that he is “the closest person we have to Martin Luther King Jr. in our midst.”
The lecture will be held at 5:30 p.m., followed immediately by a Q&A session. Tickets to the free event will be available beginning August. Check for updates at iah.unc.edu.
The Weil Lecture is a biennial series sponsored by the Weil Family since 1915. The first lecture was by former president William H. Taft after he finished his term but before he served on the U.S. Supreme Court. Other notable lecturers include Jon Huntsman, Jimmy Carter and Eleanor Roosevelt. The 2015 lecturer was U.S. Congressman Barney Frank.
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