Two Publications, Reflections on Civil Rights and Gorbachev at Lafayette, Honored in National Design Competition

Publications produced by the Communications Division in connection with campus appearances by distinguished leaders have been selected as winners in the 2012 American Inhouse Design Awards competition.

Reflections on Civil Rights and Gorbachev at Lafayette were designed by Donna Kneule, director of design services. Sponsored by Graphic Design USA magazine, the American Inhouse Design Awards is the nation’s biggest showcase for outstanding work by inhouse designers.

Reflections on Civil Rights features remarks by the late Nicholas deBelleville Katzenbach, the former U.S. attorney general, who died May 8 at age 90. Katzenbach delivered the keynote address at the rededication of Kirby Hall of Civil Rights Oct. 20, 2010.

Katzenbach also spoke on campus in November 2007. Lafayette awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the 173rd Commencement in 2008. His father, Edward L. Katzenbach, who served as attorney general of New Jersey from 1924 to 1929, spoke at the dedication of Kirby Hall of Civil Rights in 1930. The College awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1928.

“Lafayette was honored to have Nicholas Katzenbach serve as keynote speaker at the rededication ceremony. His remarks are of enduring importance. In reflecting on our history with keen insight (including insight gained through personal experience), Katzenbach also extracts essential lessons from earlier struggles over civil rights and, in so doing, offers us a framework for the future,” writes Lafayette President Daniel H. Weiss in the introduction to Reflections on Civil Rights.

“As one of the central figures in the administration of the two presidents most engaged in the issue of civil rights and as a leading legal scholar on the subject, Nick Katzenbach is perhaps uniquely qualified to teach us all,” Weiss continues.

At the U.S. Department of Justice in the 1960s, Katzenbach was, President Lyndon B. Johnson said, “one of the key participants in the inner councils of all the important decisions of the Presidency” for six years. President John F. Kennedy appointed Katzenbach assistant attorney general in 1961 and then deputy attorney general in 1962. In February 1965, Johnson named Katzenbach the 65th attorney general of the United States.

Katzenbach played a key role in the desegregation of the nation’s Southern universities. He was present during the 1962 riots at the University of Mississippi following the enrollment of James Meredith, the university’s first African American student. In 1963, he escorted James Hood and Vivian Malone, the first African American students to enroll at the University of Alabama, onto the Tuscaloosa campus. He played a key role in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and helped draft the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Katzenbach stepped down as attorney general in October 1966 and was named under secretary of state. He remained in that post, his last with the government, until 1969.

Gorbachev at Lafayette commemorates the visit to campus by Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union, on Oct. 19, 2011, to celebrate the launch of Lafayette’s Oechsle Center for Global Education. The Oechsle Center will provide a dynamic, collaborative learning environment that builds on the College’s existing strengths. Interdisciplinary in its orientation and innovative in its approach to learning and to global citizenship and service, it will include state-of-the-art instructional facilities, formal and informal meeting spaces, and offices for faculty members whose teaching and research interests advance the center’s mission. The Oechsle Center will enable the College to globalize the curriculum and add a global perspective to the educational experience of every Lafayette student.

“It is hard to imagine a more fitting way to mark the creation of the Oechsle Center for Global Education than with an address by Mikhail Gorbachev. This memorable event on Oct. 19 was experienced by more than 3,600 people on our campus and by alumni and friends gathered in locations from coast to coast in the United States and abroad via streaming internet broadcast,” writes Weiss in the introduction to Gorbachev at Lafayette.

“Our students were among the most enthusiastic attendees, and this is not surprising. They see the world as a global community, and they are engaging with it energetically in a wide variety of ways. Indeed the impetus for a new, vibrant, interdisciplinary academic center has come from them. President Gorbachev exemplifies the type of visionary, transformative leadership which we hope the Oechsle Center for Global Education will inspire—and prepare—our students to emulate as they engage with the world throughout their own lives and careers.”

In 2009, two designs by Kneule were honored in the American Inhouse Design Awards competition, The Building Blocks of Excellence: A Report from the President, January 2008 and banners created to promote the Lives of Liberty Lecture Series. The lecture series was launched in 2007-08 during the College’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of the Marquis de Lafayette.