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Donna Brazile

Veteran political strategist Donna Brazile will be on campus Thursday, Feb. 18, to present “Race and Politics in America: The Past and 2016,” at 7:30 p.m. in Stirn Auditorium. Afterward she will take questions from the audience. The event is free and open to the public.

Author of the best-selling memoir Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics, Brazile is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, a syndicated newspaper columnist for Universal Uclick, a columnist for Ms. Magazine, and O, The Oprah Magazine, and an on-air contributor to CNN and ABC. She regularly appears on ABC’s This Week.

Brazile is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana. In the aftermath of the two catastrophic hurricanes that made landfall in the Gulf region in 2005, Brazile was appointed by former Governor Kathleen Blanco to serve on the Louisiana Recovery Board to work for the rebuilding of the state and to advocate for the Gulf recovery on the national stage.

Aside from working for the full recovery of her beloved New Orleans, Brazile’s passion is encouraging young people to vote, to work within the system to strengthen it, and to run for public office.

Brazile has worked on every presidential campaign from 1976 through 2000, when she became the first African-American to manage a presidential campaign. Since 2000, she has lectured at over 125 colleges and universities across the country on such topics as “Inspiring Civility in American Politics,” “Race Relations in the Age of Obama,” and “Why Diversity Matters, Women in American Politics: Are We There Yet.”

In August 2009, Brazile was named among the 100 Most Powerful Women by Washingtonian magazine, Top 50 Women in America by Essence magazine, and received the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s highest award for political achievement. She is currently on the board of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Brazile is the proud recipient of honorary doctorate degrees from Louisiana State University, North Carolina A&T State University, and Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically Black, Catholic institution of higher education in the United States. She is founder and managing director of Brazile & Associates LLC, a general consulting, grassroots advocacy, and training firm based in Washington, D.C.


This event is made possible by alumni generosity through the Croxton Lecture Fund. The fund was established in 1988 by William M. Croxton '36 in memory of his parents, Ruth L. and Hugh W. Croxton. Income from this fund is to be used to educate Amherst students and to bring publicity to the College by virtue of the renown of speakers underwritten by the fund.