SPEAKER PROFILES
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Mr. Noel Pearson Dr. Ken Henry Prof. Marcia Langton
Ms. Tania Major Mr. Sandy McCutcheon Mr. Michael Meyers
Prof. Lawrence Mead Prof. Ron Duncan Mr Wilfred Gordon
Dr. Judy Bennett
Dr. Chris Sarra Prof. Peter Saunders Mr. John Wenitong
Jane-Frances Kelly Colin Rubenstein Prof. Helen Milroy

 

MR. MICHAEL MEYERS -
Keynote Speaker

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Michael Meyers is President and Executive Director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition (NYCRC), which he co-founded in 1986.

Meyers assumed the post of NYCRC Executive Director in 1991 from his senior staff position in the New Jersey Department of Higher Education, where he had served as Special Assistant to the Chancellor of Higher Education, T. Edward Hollander. Meyers took his B.A. from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH and his J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law. He has spent his entire professional career working in the fields of civil rights, civil liberties, law and education, and urban affairs, and, as such, is regarded as an expert on civil rights matters and race relations. Born in Harlem, Michael Meyers knows first-hand the ghetto experience which, as he puts it, "contributes to the defeat of the human spirit; the only way to end the ghetto is to get out of it."

A long-time associate and protégé of the noted educator and psychologist Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, Michael Meyers was from high school through law school Dr. Clark's intern, fellow and principal assistant while Dr. Clark headed the Metropolitan Applied Research Center (MARC), from 1967 to 1975. In 1975, Meyers joined the national staff of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as Assistant Director. For more than nine years he was on the staff of the NAACP as aide to another of his mentors, the venerable Roy Wilkins, the NAACP's long-time Executive Director, and to Wilkins' successor, Benjamin L. Hooks. Meyers shares Dr. Kenneth Clark's and Roy Wilkins' philosophical outlook on civil rights and equal justice. Indeed, Michael Meyers has emerged in the New York and national dialogue about race as a strong advocate of civil rights, racial integration, and racial reconciliation.

Michael Meyers, as a columnist for THE NEW YORK POST, has published extensively on issues of race relations, urban affairs, education, housing, police abuse, civil liberties and civil rights. His articles have also appeared in law reviews, scholarly journals, periodicals and newspapers, including PARTISAN REVIEW, ACADEMIC QUESTIONS, YOUTH AND SOCIETY JOURNAL, CRISIS, CHANGE, INTEGRATED EDUCATION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, NEWSDAY and NEW YORK NEWSDAY, and CIVIL LIBERTIES. He helped research and assisted with the editorial preparation and writing of the explosive book SEARCH AND DESTROY, by Roy Wilkins and Ramsey Clark, and with Morris Milgram's book, GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD.