Morris Dees, founder and director of the Southern Poverty Law Center and a noted fighter against violent hate groups, will deliver the keynote address for a conference on religion and human rights Wednesday, Nov. 8, at 7:30 p.m. in Sage Chapel. The talk is free and open to the public.

Dees' talk is one of the highlights the conference, "Religion and Human Rights: Ideology, the Rhetoric of Hate and the Languages of Reconciliation," Nov. 8-11 at Cornell. The conference, sponsored by the Cornell Religious Studies Program in collaboration with the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy and Cornell United Religious Work (CURW), focuses on the intersections of religious traditions and communities and the complex issues of human rights as a global concern. The conference will feature panels and workshops by scholars, activists, clergy and educators committed to genuine intervocational dialogue, from Cornell and from around the world, including as far away as Guatemala and Tibet.

Conference participants will have a choice of several panels to attend during each session as well as a series of five lectures throughout the event titled "Perspectives on Human Rights," which will explore human rights issues through several major religious traditions. The conference is designed to allow ample opportunity for dialogue and interaction among attendees, with working groups, workshops and discussion sessions planned into each day's schedule.

Conference panels and lectures are open to the public, but registration is required by either accessing the web site or by calling the CURW office at (607) 255-4214. To see a full conference schedule, including a list of all panels, speakers and session locations, or to get more information, use the web site or phone number listed above.

Conference participants will present case studies relating to four basic themes: the uses of religious ideology, language, scripture and imagery to further hate movements in the United States and around the world, in both contemporary and historical contexts; oppression of particular groups (religious, ethnic or gender defined), with a focus on the role of organized religion in fostering that oppression; religious communities formulating responses to religiously based hate movements; and effective responses and reconciliation efforts from within religious communities in the aftermath of human rights abuses.

Dees devotes much of his time to suing violent white supremacist groups and developing ideas for Teaching Tolerance, the Southern Poverty Law Center's education project. The center distributes, free, Teaching Tolerance magazines and teaching kits that include two videos: "A Time for Justice," which won an Academy Award for best short documentary in 1991, and "The Shadow of Hate, a History of Intolerance in America," nominated for best short documentary in 1996. Dees has written an autobiography, A Season for Justice (Scribner's, 1991), and in 1992, Villard Books published his Hate on Trial , a chronicle of the $12.5 million judgment against white supremacist Tom Metzger and his White Aryan Resistance group charged in the beating death of a young black student in Portland, Ore. Dees' latest book, Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat , exposes the dangerous increase of terrorist groups in America today. In 1991, NBC aired Line of Fire , a movie based on Dees' life.

Dees has received numerous awards and honors, most recently the Civil Rights Award from the National Bar Association in 1998 and the Faith and Humanity Award from the National Council of Jewish Women in 1999.