MEDIA ADVISORY

Subject: Forty-First Commencement Exercise

RAMAPO COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY

Date: Thursday, May 27, 1999

Time: 10:00 A.M.

Location: Bandshell, Main Campus

Keynote Speaker: Annette Gordon-Reed, author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings: An American Controversy, and Law Professor at New York Law School

Undergraduate Commencement Candidates: 815

Student Commencement Speaker: Paul Hamell, Ringwood Returning Adult Student; 4.0 GPA, Literature major from the School Of American and International Studies

Receiving honorary degrees: Elaine and Myron Adler, Founders Myron Manufacturing, Inc., Annette Gordon-Reed

1. This will be the first graduating class from the Master of Science in Educational Technology program. Thirty-two candidates.

Background Information on Annette Gordon-Reed to follow. About the Commencement Speaker:

Annette Gordon-Reed

Annette Gordon-Reed was born and grew up in east Texas. She became interested in Thomas Jefferson in elementary school after reading a children's biography of him, narrated by a fictional slave boy. At fourteen, she joined the Book-of-the Month Club (concealing her status as a minor) to receive Fawn Brodie's biography, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Portrait. She continued her study of Jefferson's life at Dartmouth College, where she majored in history, graduating in 1981. She attended Harvard Law School, where she was a member of the Law Review. Gordon-Reed spent her early career as an associate at a law firm and as Counsel to the New York City Board of Corrections. Her interest in Jefferson has never diminished over the years and she was moved to write about the Sally Hemings story because of the ontroversy over Merchant-lvory's "Jefferson in Paris," which, treated the liaison as truth. Even before the film was released it was denounced by commentators, both within the field of history and without. The vehemence of their denials rekindled her long-felt frustration about the way Jefferson scholars had handled the matter. She felt that history should be able to record both Jefferson's enormous contributions and the lives and voices of the blacks who were part of his life and his society. Having left legal practice in 1992, Gordon-Reed teaches Property, American Slavery and the Law, and Criminal Procedure at New York Law School. She currently lives in Manhattan with her husband, daughter, and son.

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