Forty Years in the Wilderness: Martin Luther King and the Misdirection of the Negro*

Speaker: 
Jonathan Farley
 
01 Feb 2007
 
8:00 PM
 
Sun Room, Memorial Union

Jonathan Farley is a professor of mathematics at the University of the West Indies (Jamaica) and a former senior fellow at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation. His work focuses on applying mathematics to problems in counterterrorism and homeland security. It has been profiled in such publications as The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Economist, and USA Today as well as on Fox News Television and Air America Radio. Farley is Chief Scientist of Phoenix Mathematics, Inc., a company that develops mathematical solutions to homeland security-related problems. He is also a cofounder of Hollywood Math and Science Film Consulting. In 2001-2 he was one of four Americans to win an appointment as a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar to the United Kingdom. In 2004 he received the Harvard Foundation's Distinguished Scientist of the Year Award for outstanding achievements and contributions in the field of mathematics. *The title of the 2007 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday Celebration Keynote Address refers to both Carter G. Woodson's "The Miseducation of the Negro" and Lauryn Hill's debut CD, "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill."


This lecture was made possible in part by the generosity of F. Wendell Miller, who left his entire estate jointly to Iowa State University and the University of Iowa. Mr. Miller, who died in 1995 at age 97, was born in Altoona, Illinois, grew up in Rockwell City, graduated from Grinnell College and Harvard Law School and practiced law in Des Moines and Chicago before returning to Rockwell City to manage his family's farm holdings and to practice law. His will helped to establish the F. Wendell Miller Trust, the annual earnings on which, in part, helped to support this activity.