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The University of Colorado鈥檚 perennially popular rite of spring is returning for its sixty-seventh year. The Annual Conference on World Affairs will be held April 6-10, 2015, on the CU-Boulder campus. Last year鈥檚 CWA attendance was 77,700 at 200 sessions over five days.

This year's keynote address,听titled听鈥淚n a Single Garment of Destiny鈥�, will be delivered by Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. in Macky Auditorium on Monday, April 6, at 11:30 a.m.

Pitts is a nationally syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald and winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize听for commentary. Pitts has won dozens of awards in a career that has spanned more听than 35 years as a columnist, professor, radio producer, author and public lecturer.听He has published four books:听Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to听Fatherhood听(2006);听Forward from This Moment: Selected Columns, 1994-2008听(2009);听Before听I Forget听(2009); and most recently,听Freeman听(2012).

The keynote title is inspired by a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.:听鈥淎ll life is interrelated. We are all caught听in an听inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly,听affects all indirectly.鈥�

According to Pitts, 鈥淭he speech will be about deconstructing the myth of race.鈥澨鼿e goes on to say,听鈥淲e tend to believe it is something somehow predestined and discernible with scientific exactness. It is actually something completely arbitrary, totally fabricated and, according to scholars, relatively new (about 300 years or so) in human experience. It is, in other words, something we chose. I submit that if we chose to believe in it, we can just as easily choose not to."

Preceding the opening keynote will be the traditional keynote procession into Macky through the CWA鈥檚 colorful 鈥渁venue of international flags鈥� in Norlin Quad at 11:10 a.m.

The keynote procession and address is a time-honored Boulder tradition. Past keynote speakers include Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry Kissinger, Arthur Miller, Charles Krauthammer and Chuck Hagel.

CWA Director John Griffin says, "We are thrilled to have Leonard Pitts join the distinguished history of CWA keynote speakers. His address could not be more timely, as the issue of race has once again regained center stage in this country. We are so very pleased to have this opening keynote address kick off our 2015 event, which will also feature some well-loved, past CWA speakers and an exciting new roster of guests."

All Conference on听World听Affairs sessions are free and open to the public, making the CWA the largest, most accessible event of its kind in the country. A listing of participants confirmed to date is now online听. The full CWA schedule will be posted to in late March.

Piper Jackson-Sevy
Advertising and Media Liaison
Conference on World Affairs
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