RIT's Gannett Lecture Series Looks at the Status of U.S. Inner Cities

A panel of scholars and community activists will take a critical look at the status of inner cities in the United States as part of Rochester Institute of Technology's Caroline Werner Gannett Lecture Series in the College of Liberal Arts.

The panel discussion, “The Third World within the First World?,” will start at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 14, in Webb Auditorium in the James E. Booth Building. The event is free and open to the public. Featured panelists will include Eugene “Gus” Newport, executive director of the Institute for Community Economics in Springfield, Mass., Hanif Abdul-Wahid, NorthEast Neighborhood Alliance Council member, and M. Ann Howard, associate professor of public policy and science, technology and society at RIT, and program director of the NENA-RIT Community Outreach Partnership Center.

“America's inner cities are a 'third' world in the midst of our affluent 'first' world,” says Paul Grebinger, Gannett lecturer and coordinator of RIT's Senior Seminar. “Faced with poverty and starved of resources to change their economic fortunes, citizens of inner city America have begun to act in their own interest, as in the Dudley Street neighborhood in Boston and with the NorthEast Neighborhood Alliance in Rochester. Building inner city communities is the subject of the panel discussion.”

For more information call 585-475-2057 or visit www.rit.edu/gannettseries, where the lectures will be available online.