The Washington University School of Medicine Office of Diversity Programs will host its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Lecture 4 p.m. Monday, January 20 in the auditorium at the Eric P. Newman Education Center, 320 South Euclid Ave.
The guest speaker will be Michel Martin, an award-winning journalist and correspondent for ABC News and National Public Radio.
Her lecture will address public education and workforce diversity in medicine and public health. “We’re very interested in education,” Martin said. “It’s been one of the signature issues we’ve followed since the program was launched six years ago.”
She is best known for scholarly insight and debates on a wide range of topics, from immigration to parenting in a multicultural family, as part of “Tell Me More,” the one-hour daily NPR news and talk show that made its national premiere on April 30, 2007 on public radio stations around the country.
“When we first started this program, I said that we wanted to talk about the news and what’s going on in your life, that we wanted to bring you the kinds of conversations you aren’t hearing in other places, that we wanted to go around the world and to try to find out what’s deep within your heart,” Martin wrote when the show celebrated its fifth anniversary.
“I said we’d deal with what some people called the third-rail issues of American life, issues like immigration, race, education, ethnicity, religion and so many of the other things that mark and sometimes divide us. Why? I said then, and I say now, it’s all part of the American story – because we are affected by those issues, whether we like it or not, whether we wish we were or not.”
She added, “I said then, and I say now, that we want to talk about those things because they are real. Because it’s where we live. Because when we refuse to ask the uncomfortable questions, we’re missing an opportunity to understand the world as it is.”
Martin, who came to NPR in January 2006 to develop the program, has spent more than 25 years as a journalist, first in print with major newspapers and then in television. “Tell Me More” marked her debut as a full-time public radio show host.
Martin joined NPR from ABC News, where she worked since 1992. She served as correspondent for “Nightline” from 1996 to 2006, reporting on such subjects as the Congressional budget battles, the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, racial profiling and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
At ABC, she also contributed to numerous programs and specials, including the network’s award-winning coverage of September 11, a documentary on the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas controversy, a critically acclaimed AIDS special and reports for the ongoing series “America in Black and White.”
Before joining ABC, Martin covered state and local politics for the Washington Post and national politics and policy at the Wall Street Journal, where she was White House correspondent.
“I’ve covered earthquakes, floods and hurricanes,” Martin has written. “I’ve interviewed golf pros, gangbangers, heads of state, artists, geniuses, as well as people who have done some of the dumbest things you can ever imagine.”
A native of Brooklyn, NY, Martin graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College at Harvard University in 1980 and has done graduate work at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.
“When we refuse to ask the uncomfortable question, we’re missing an opportunity to really understand the world as it is,” Martin wrote in her first essay for her NPR show. “Understanding is what it’s all about, and the only way to get there is to talk.”
Free event parking is available on Washington University School of Medicine surface lots, validated parking available in the North Garage, across the street from the Center for Advanced Medicine (CAM) Building or the Metro Garage. Please bring your parking ticket to the lobby.
To RSVP please call Michelle Patterson at (314) 362-6854 or email mpatterson@wustl.edu.
