Rice experts available to discuss Romney and Obama appearances at upcoming NAACP conference in Houston

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu 

Jeff Falk
713-348-6775
jfalk@rice.edu 

Rice experts available to discuss Romney and Obama appearances at upcoming NAACP conference in Houston 

HOUSTON — (July 5, 2012) — As presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama prepare to speak at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) annual conference in Houston next week, a number of Rice University experts are available to speak about this presidential “rite of passage” and other issues front and center for minority populations in the United States.

Michael Emerson, the Allyn and Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology and co-director of Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, can discuss race relations in the United States. 

Douglas Brinkley, a history fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and a professor of history, can discuss the black vote in America today and how it compares to the vote in previous generations. 

Anthony Pinn, the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and a professor of religious studies, can discuss issues of religion, liberation theology and popular culture in the African-American community.

For more information or to schedule an interview, contact David Ruth, director of national media relations at Rice, at 713-348-6327 or david@rice.edu.

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Related materials:

About the NAACP annual conference: http://www.naacp.org/pages/convention

Michael Emerson bio: http://sociology.rice.edu/Content.aspx?id=110

Douglas Brinkley bio: http://www.bakerinstitute.org/personnel/fellows-scholars/dbrinkley

Anthony Pinn bio: http://reli.rice.edu/Content.aspx?id=254

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is known for its “unconventional wisdom.” With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 4 for “best value” among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go to www.rice.edu/nationalmedia/Rice.pdf.