Former Secretary of Defense and Author/Playwright to Host Conference on Race and Reconciliation in America

William S. Cohen and Janet Langhart Cohen are hosting leaders from politics, business, entertainment, the military, media, religion, law and academe to activate a serious, open, noncombatant chat on racial, aboriginal and religious prejudice. The appointment will be captivated at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on July 24-25, 2008. Love in Black and White Any altercation of chase or racism accordingly stirs afflictive reactions. The botheration is that ancestral ageism is not just a affair of the past, and neither whites nor blacks are over it. Our ambition is to activate a civic chat to accord with the truth, accept the charge for accountability, and apprentice how we can plan calm to absolutely accomplish a post-racial society Janet and I are actual admiring that so abounding American assessment leaders from above party, profession, cartography and ancestral heritage, will be abutting us for this discussion. We are actual admiring to abutment Bill and Janet Cohen in bringing to accomplishment this outstanding initiative, which is actual connected with our foundation's efforts to advance new cerebration on calm and all-embracing issues of continuing concern

Washington, DC -- Leaders from politics, business, entertainment, the military; media, religion, law, academe, accounts and non-profit and association organizations from throughout the country accept already accepted their absorbed to participate in a civic appointment on Race and Reconciliation in America, to be captivated at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on July 24 and 25.

The appointment was accomplished and is accepting hosted by above US Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and columnist and author Janet Langhart Cohen. The Cohens are the co-authors of "Love in Black and White," the autobiographical anniversary of their bi-racial marriage.

The purpose of the Cohens' action is to activate a serious, open, noncombatant chat on racial, aboriginal and religious prejudice. Encouraged by the favorable acknowledgment to date, Janet Langhart Cohen said: "Any altercation of chase or racism accordingly stirs afflictive reactions. The botheration is that ancestral ageism is not just a affair of the past, and neither whites nor blacks are over it."

"Our ambition is to activate a civic chat to accord with the truth, accept the charge for accountability, and apprentice how we can plan calm to absolutely accomplish a post-racial society," added Secretary Cohen. "Janet and I are actual admiring that so abounding American assessment leaders from above party, profession, cartography and ancestral heritage, will be abutting us for this discussion."

The appointment will focus on education, law, economics, the media, and adoration afore absolute on the morning of July 25 with a affair advantaged "The Next Generation Speaks."

Those who accept accepted their accord to date cover Academy Award-winning abecedarian Louis Gossett, Jr.; acknowledged authors Deepak Chopra, Richard North Patterson, Tom Allen and Tim Wise; historian-educators Lonnie Bunch (founding administrator of the National Museum of African American History and Culture); Ron Walters (Director of the African American Leadership Institute and Scholar Practitioner Program at the University of Maryland) and Jay Winik (author of the acclaimed "The Great Upheaval"); journalists Sally Quinn and Marjorie Valbrun; radio host and amalgamated columnist Armstrong Williams; religious leaders Rabbi Avi Weiss, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld and Rev. Roger Hambrick; US District Court Judge Harold Kennedy; sportswriter David Zirin; and Afghan adept and above White House Fellow Westley Moore.

The appointment will aswell cover accord by borough and amusing innovators from above the United States, including Judith Mowry, who active the "Restorative Listening Project" in Portland, Ore.; Manchester, Mo., Police Chief John Connolly; Peggy McIntosh, architect and co-director of the National SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) Project on Inclusive Curriculum; and Joshua Packwood, who afresh accustomed civic absorption as the aboriginal white valedictorian to alum from the historically black, all-male Morehouse College in the school's 141-year history

Also accessory will be Simeon Wright, accessory of Emmett Till, whose 1955 annihilation in Mississippi helped to spawn America's noncombatant rights movement. A account of Janet Langhart Cohen's new play, "Anne and Emmett" - an absurd chat amid Holocaust victim Anne Frank and Emmett Till - will be featured at the conference.

The appointment is accepting sponsored by The Howard Gilman Foundation of New York, a non-profit foundation which has acquired bulge for its White Oak conferences on accessible policy, attention and the arts.

"We are actual admiring to abutment Bill and Janet Cohen in bringing to accomplishment this outstanding initiative, which is actual connected with our foundation's efforts to advance new cerebration on calm and all-embracing issues of continuing concern," said Foundation Board Member Doug Wilson, who is confined as appointment director.

The appointment is accessible to the press. For added advice and to awning the event, acquaintance Colette Phillips Communications, 617-357-5777.