News release prepared by: Katie Mayes, 785-532-6415, kmayes@k-state.edu

Monday, March 1, 2010

HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST TO LECTURE AT K-STATE MARCH 8

MANHATTAN -- Human rights activist Gay Seidman will present "Citizens, Markets and Transnational Activism: Can Consumer Boycotts and Independent Monitoring End Sweatshops?" at 7 p.m. Monday, March 8, at Kansas State University. The presentation will be in Forum Hall at the K-State Student Union.

Seidman's appearance is part of the Donald J. Adamchak Distinguished Lecture Series, which is sponsored by K-State's department of sociology, anthropology and social work. It is co-sponsored by K-State's Lou Douglas Lecture Series on Public Issues. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Seidman, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researches labor and gender issues in developing regions, particularly in southern Africa and Latin America. Her most recent book, "Beyond the Boycott: Labor Rights, Human Rights and Transnational Activism," is a comparative study of transnational labor monitoring schemes drawing on fieldwork in India, Guatemala and South Africa.

She, who also is director of African studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been recognized for her teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and is an experienced anti-apartheid and human rights activist. In 1976 she became the first female president of the Harvard Crimson newspaper, which under her leadership began covering the anti-apartheid movement earlier than most other student newspapers.

The Adamchak lecture series honors the memory of a longtime former K-State faculty member who was known for his dedication in preparing graduate students for research and for teaching social demography. He also was known internationally as a scholar in the areas of aging and intergenerational support; fertility and family planning; gender relations and the status of women; and knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding HIV/AIDS.