Carter to Give Lambeth Lecture on Public Policy

Posted on Aug. 27, 2008

Noted journalist and policy expert Hodding Carter III, a professor of leadership and public policy at UNC, will deliver the second annual Thomas Willis Lambeth Lecture in Public Policy on Sept. 16.

Carter will speak at 5:30 p.m. in Gerrard Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Carter joined the faculty in 2006 as professor of leadership and public policy after spending eight years as president and chief executive officer of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a Miami-based organization that promotes excellence in journalism.

He was a reporter, editor and associate publisher of his family’s newspaper in Greenville, Miss., for 17 years. In 1961, he won the Society of Professional Journalists’ national award for editorial writing. He was a Harvard University Nieman Fellow from 1965 to 1966.

He also was an Emmy-winning television anchor and documentarian based in Washington, D.C., and served four years as assistant secretary of state of public affairs and department spokesman under President Carter.

He was closely involved in civil rights-related political work in Mississippi in the 1960s and 1970s and was co-chairman of the biracial delegation to the l968 Democratic National Convention that was seated in place of the all-white regular delegation. He has written two books, contributed to nine others and written for numerous magazines and newspapers.

The Lambeth Lectureship honors Thomas Willis Lambeth ’57, who served as administrative assistant to N.C. Gov. Terry Sanford ’39 and to U.S. Rep. Richardson Preyer and later for more than two decades as executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. During Lambeth’s tenure, the foundation awarded grants totaling more than $260 million to address many of North Carolina’s most pressing policy issues, particularly social justice and equity, governance and civic engagement, community-building and economic development, education, and protection of the state’s natural environment.

Lambeth has had a strong personal impact on many key public policy issues in North Carolina and nationally, including leadership of the Public School Forum of North Carolina, Leadership North Carolina, the N.C. Rural Center and a task force of the national Institute of Medicine on the problems of people who lack medical insurance. He also has been a national leader in improving the management and effectiveness of family philanthropic foundations themselves.

Lambeth is a recipient of the GAA’s Distinguished Service Medal, the University’s Distinguished Alumnus Award and the Davie Award for service to UNC. He chairs the GAA-sponsored Tar Heel Network, which supports the University’s goals and priorities through advocacy with legislators.

The lectureship was endowed in 2006 to bring to the campus distinguished speakers who are practitioners or scholars of public policy, particularly those whose work touches on the fields of education, ethics, democratic institutions and civic engagement.

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Related coverage is available online:

• Fleishman to Give Inaugural Lambeth Lecture on Public Policy
  September 2007 news report

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