Published on April 10, 2012  

Samford's Sociology Department will host an examination of U.S. extremist/hate groups with speaker Mark Potok April 16 at 7 p.m. in Brooks Hall Auditorium.

Potok, Senior Fellow at Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC,) is one of the country’s leading experts on the world of extremism and serves as the editor-in-chief of the SPLC’s award-winning, quarterly journal, the Intelligence Report, its Hatewatch blog, and its investigative reports.

Journalists often cite Potok's work and he has testified before the U.S. Senate, the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights and in other venues.

Before joining the SPLC staff in 1997, Potok spent 20 years as an award-winning journalist at major newspapers, including USA Today, the Dallas Times Herald and The Miami Herald. While at USA Today, he covered the 1993 Waco siege, the rise of militias, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the trial of Timothy McVeigh.

The Samford event is free-of-charge and open to the public.
 
Samford is a leading Christian university offering undergraduate programs grounded in the liberal arts with an array of nationally recognized graduate and professional schools. Founded in 1841, Samford is the 87th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Samford enrolls 6,101 students from 45 states, Puerto Rico and 16 countries in its 10 academic schools: arts, arts and sciences, business, divinity, education, health professions, law, nursing, pharmacy and public health. Samford fields 17 athletic teams that compete in the tradition-rich Southern Conference and ranks 6th nationally for its Graduation Success Rate among all NCAA Division I schools.