The Baptist Theological Union has named Robert M. Franklin Jr., PhD'85, the Divinity School's Alumnus of the Year. Each year since 1947, the Baptist Theological Union's board of trustees has given the Alumnus of the Year award.
To celebrate the honor, Franklin, now the president of Morehouse College, will present the lecture, "Nurturing Citizens through Liberal Arts Education: Reflections on Dr. King's Unpublished Papers." Franklin will examine the impact of King's Morehouse education on his work.
"Robert Franklin has combined scholarly excellence and administrative accomplishment in ways that have proven to be of fundamental import to churches, to foundations, and to higher education," said Richard Rosengarten, the dean of the Divinity School. "I applaud the enthusiastic consensus of the Divinity School's Alumni Council and the Baptist Theological Union that his career richly warrants his selection as our Alumnus of the Year."
Prior to assuming the Morehouse presidency in 2007, Franklin served on the faculties of Emory University, Harvard Divinity School, the University of Chicago Divinity School, and the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School.
Franklin is the author of three books: Crisis in the Village: Restoring Hope in African American Communities (2007); Another Day’s Journey: Black Churches Confronting the American Crisis (1997); and Liberating Visions: Human Fulfillment and Social Justice in African American Thought (1990). He co-edited The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther King Jr., forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
The lecture takes place at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 29, in the Swift Lecture Hall. For more information, please visit http://divinity.uchicago.edu/alumni/awards/franklin.shtml.
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
