Author, civil rights activist to visit OU

The event is at 5 p.m. at Beaird Lounge inside Oklahoma Memorial Union, 900 Asp Ave.

Bunch is the founding director and senior scholar at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University. Former President Bill Clinton selected her to receive the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights in 1999, three years before she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

The Center for Social Justice was formed to educate students about social justice relating to all groups of people and inspire them to respond to local and global challenges.

"The idea of a center came from students,” said Jill Irvine, Women’s and Gender Studies director. "Students came to the program after seeing films about the working conditions in sweatshops, or after having read about the systematic rape of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"They wanted to take it to another level. The center offers them a way to bring these issues to the campus and community.”

The center will offer internships, mentoring, service learning and an activist-in-residence program, and it expects to offer a minor in social justice beginning in fall 2010.