Brooklyn Councilmember Letitia James to Speak
At Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus, Tuesday, May 4

Brooklyn, N.Y. — During National Public Service Week, City Councilmember Letitia "Tish" James will discuss "Revitalizing Downtown Brooklyn" as part of the Maxwell Lehman Memorial Lecture at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus.

The Campus’s School of Business, Public Administration and Information Science is presenting the lecture on Tuesday, May 4, from 6 to 8 p.m. in Humanities Building Room 206. It is free and open to the public.

The subject of re-energizing the downtown area is close to the heart of the councilmember, who was born and raised in Brooklyn. "I love my community, in all its diversity, and I’ve devoted my life to helping it thrive," she says.

Councilmember James has had an extensive public service career. After attending law school at Howard University in Washington, D.C., she served as a public defender for the Legal Aid Society, representing young people in the criminal justice system. Under New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, she was appointed assistant attorney general in charge of the Brooklyn Regional Office, where she resolved hundreds of consumer complaints and investigated predatory lenders who preyed on first-time homebuyers.

Later, as counsel and chief of staff to state assembly members, where she found "that government could be made to work in the public’s interest," James worked on a law that gave grandparents rights in Family Court and negotiated a bill that allocated money for reconstruction of Franklin Avenue Shuttle and Atlantic Terminal Station. She also negotiated legislation pertaining to childcare, healthcare and the protection of transit workers.

In Albany, James worked with the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus, and with the caucus of progressive Democrats. She founded the Urban Network, a coalition of minority professional organizations that raises money and distributes college scholarships to inner city youth.

The Lehman Lecture is named for a professor who taught public administration at the Campus during the 1960s, and who served for 13 years as editor of The Civil Service Leader, a newspaper for government employees. The lecture is co-sponsored by the Public Administration Society, Pi Alpha Alpha, M.P.A. Alumni Association and M.P.A. Program. For more information, call Maria Yangas at (718) 488-1071.

Long Island University opened its Brooklyn Campus in 1926, welcoming a diverse population at a time when other major universities enforced quota systems against racial and ethnic minorities. Some 31,000 students currently are enrolled at the university’s three residential and three regional campuses, including more than 11,000 at the Brooklyn Campus. Located at the corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and DeKalb Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, the Campus is accessible to all major bus and subway routes and the LIRR.