On Tuesday, Sept. 30, Saint Louis University’s Great Issues Committee will host its first speaker of the academic year. Rebecca Walker, a feminist author and activist, will give a lecture entitled “The New Masculinity: Obama, Gore, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and What Makes a Man in the 21st Century” in the Saint Louis Room of the Busch Student Center at 7 p.m.

Walker hopes that students will attend her speech to empower themselves.

“In order to be truly free, we must first determine how much of our identity is shaped by the ideas and desires of others,” Walker said. “Looking at our ideas about the sexes is a good place to start.”

GIC President Steve Della Camera said Walker will bring a new perspective to campus.

“We haven’t had a speaker like Walker here recently,” Della Camera said. “This is different from what we have done in the past; we are trying to broaden the issues we bring to campus.”

Una, SLU’s feminist student group, is co-sponsoring Walker’s visit. While they have not contributed to funding the event, they are helping to promote it and will be setting up a station to recruit supporters after the debate.

Katie Cushwa, co-moderator of Una, said that she is excited to hear Walker’s speech. Cushwa said that she recognized Walker as the daughter of author Alice Walker, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize wining novel The Color Purple. The Una leader expects the younger Walker’s speech to an enlightening opportunity for students.

“The title alone is assertive and the [speech] should be of great consequence,” Cushwa said.

Della Camera agrees that gender studies is a topic worthy of students’ time, commenting that the “changing roles of men and women this century are pertinent to the coming election and society and general.”

Walker said that she became interested in understanding gender identities early in life.

The author remembers “[writing] my first essay in high school after watching a couple have an argument on a street corner. My classmates read it and were inspired to organize an event about domestic violence. [Today] my passion remains the same: to share ideas and experiences that change people’s lives and make the world a better place for all.”

Walker has also been the recipient of the Women Who Could Be President Award from the League of Women Voters. In the business world, Walker has consulted on generational differences, diversity and the role of gender in the workplace for companies like Microsoft and JP Morgan Chase.