Randall Robinson, African-American author and internationally respected advocate for human rights and democracy, will deliver a public talk Friday, Feb. 9, at 7 p.m. in the David Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall on the Cornell University campus. Randall's address, titled "Reparations: The Debt America Owes ," is based on his best-selling book The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks (Dutton, 1999).

"I think he's raised some very important issues about the role of African-Americans in the development of this nation," said Robert Harris, Cornell vice provost for diversity and faculty development and associate professor of Africana studies. "He also addresses the issue of reparations in a very thoughtful manner, providing the raw material for an informed discussion of a complex and controversial issue."

An excerpt from Robinson's book highlights the basic premise of his argument: "At long last, let America contemplate the scope of its enduring human-rights wrong against the whole of a people … As Germany and other interests that profited owed reparations to Jews following the holocaust of Nazi persecution, America and other interests that profited owe reparations to blacks following the holocaust of African slavery which has carried forward from slavery's inception for 350-odd years to the end of U.S. government-embraced racial discrimination – an end that arrived, it would seem, only just yesterday."

Robinson holds a bachelor's degree from Virginia Union University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He also is the author of Defending the Black Spirit – The Black Life in America. Robinson has served as assistant to U.S. congressmen, Charles Diggs in 1976-1977 and William Clay in 1975-1976. As a Ford Foundation Fellow, he lived in Africa for one year, 1970-1971, conducting research on the Africanization of European law and its social impact on the population of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Robinson is president of the Washington D.C.-based TransAfrica and TransAfrica Forum. TransAfrica is a private, nonprofit organization that promotes enlightened U.S. policies toward Africa and the Caribbean. Since its inception 1981, TransAfrica Forum has become a major research and educational institution, sponsoring educational programs that play a significant role in presenting to the general public alternative perspectives to the economic, political, and moral ramifications of American foreign policy. Its mission is to build a more informed American public and to stimulate increased public participation in the foreign policy process by sponsoring educational programs such as seminars, conferences, media events and community awareness projects.

Robinson's personal commitment to the mission of TransAfrica has been demonstrated in several major ways, including his frequent testimony before both houses of the U.S. Congress, his staging of massive daily protests for more than 400 days in front of the South African Embassy during the Free South Africa Movement, his close work with "pro-justice" congressmen and other U.S. officials, his writings and speeches.

Robinson's talk is sponsored by the African Latino Asian and Native American Students Programming Board at Cornell and by the Africana Studies and Research Center. It is supported by the Cornell Law School.