Veteran of Chavez-era United Farm Workers campaigns to give Andrews Lecture

Marshall Ganz, an expert in public policy at Harvard, discusses the leadership of social movements in the annual Andrews Lecture at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14, in the Gomes Chapel, 275 College St.

Admission is open to the public at no cost. For more information please call 207-786-8272 or email lthomps2@bates.edu.

Ganz’s talk is titled Leading Change: Story, Strategy, Action. The Andrews Lecture is sponsored by the Multifaith Chaplaincy, the Office of Intercultural Education, the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, the college’s social sciences division and the departments of politics, history and education.

Ganz, senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, has nearly 50 years of experience with the craft of leading social movements. He teaches, researches and writes on leadership, organization and strategy in social movements, civic associations and politics.

Ganz entered Harvard College in the fall of 1960, and in 1964, a year before graduating, he left to volunteer as a civil rights organizer in Mississippi. In 1965, he joined Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. Over the next 16 years he gained experience in union, community, issue and political organizing, and ultimately became director of organizing.

During the 1980s, Ganz worked with grassroots groups to develop effective organizing programs, designing innovative voter mobilization strategies for electoral campaigns at every level.

In 1991, in order to deepen his understanding of his work, he returned to Harvard and, after a 28-year “leave of absence,” completed his undergraduate degree in history and government. He received a master’s degree in public administration from the Kennedy School in 1993 and completed his doctorate in sociology in 2000.

A signature talk at Bates since 1975, the Bertha May Bell Andrews Lecture commemorates Andrews, who served on the Bates faculty from 1913 to 1917 and created the women’s physical education program at the college. Her son, Dr. Carl B. Andrews, of the Bates class of 1940, established the lectureship.