RADFORD  - Radford University will welcome journalist, activist and political analyst Bakari Kitwana to campus on January 22, 2008 for the university's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration. Kitwana will deliver the keynote address "Dr. Martin Luther King's Legacy and the Hip-Hop Generation" in the Bonnie Auditorium at 7 p.m.

Kitwana (right) has appeared on CNN, Fox News (the O'Reilly Factor), C-Span, PBS (The Tavis Smiley Show), and heard on NPR. He is author of The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture (Basic Civitas Books), a 2002 book focused on young Blacks born after the Civil Rights Movement, which has been adapted for classroom use at over 100 colleges.  In his 2005 book Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop (Basic Books), Kitwana makes the case that there is a new reality of race.

"The younger generations of Americans (generation X and the millennium generation) who have lived their entire lives in post-segregation United States are processing race in radically different ways from their parents," Kitwana explains. "And they are beginning to set forth a new racial politics that departs from the old divide and conquer essentialism that has heretofore dominated race relations." 

Kitwana is the executive director of Rap Sessions: Community Dialogues on Hip-Hop, which tours the U.S. conducting difficult dialogues facing the hip-hop generation. He has been the editorial director of Third World Press and executive editor of The Source, the nation's top-selling music magazine.

He is co-founder of the first ever National Hip-Hop Political Convention, which brought over 4,000 young people to Newark, N.J. in 2004 to create and endorse a political agenda for the hip-hop generation. Kitwana is a consultant to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and visiting scholar at Kent State University where he teaches the course "The Politics of the Hip-Hop Generation." A native of Long Island, N.Y., he holds a B.A. and two master's degrees in English and teaching from the University of Rochester.

The event is free and open to everyone. Tickets will be available beginning January 14 at the Bonnie Student Center Information Desk.

The Office of Multicultural and International Student Services, NAACP, Black Student Affairs Council, Men of Standards and Club Programming Committee are sponsoring the event. To learn more, please call (540) 831- 5765 or e-mail diverse@radford.edu