**PRESS RELEASE**

Contact: Michael Goldstein (718) 368-5666
Michael.Goldstein@kingsborough.edu

Brooklyn, N.Y.- K.C. Johnson, Professor of History at Brooklyn College, will be giving the annual Leon M. Goldstein Memorial Lecture at Kingsborough Community College on Monday, May 3rd, 2004 at 11:30 a.m. in room U219/U220 on the college campus.

Dr. Johnson, a scholar of American History who obtained his bachelors and doctoral degrees from Harvard University and his master's degree from the University of Chicago, will lecture on the election of 1964 between Lyndon Baines Johnson and Barry Goldwater and its relationship to the upcoming election between George Walker Bush and John Kerry.

Professor Johnson was recently embroiled in a controversy at Brooklyn College concerning his tenure at the college and differing political points of view. He is the author of a recent book on the 1964 election by Norton Publishers, Running from Ahead: Lyndon Johnson and the 1964 Presidential Election . He is also the author of several prominent historical books on the United States Congress and the Cold War.

The popular and effective lecturer is considered one of the “best speakers about U.S. history” in the United States according to Dr. Bernard Klein, Chairperson of the Department of History, Philosophy and Political Science at Kingsborough. “I think this will be an exciting and educational lecture,” added Klein.

The Leon M. Goldstein Memorial Lecture is presented each year in memory of the community college's late president who served Kingsborough for twenty-seven years. Past speakers have included former NYC Mayor, Rudolph Guliani, NYC Comptroller, William Thompson and the Chancellor of the City University of New York, Matthew Goldstein.

Professor Johnson grew up in Scarborough, Massachusetts, just south of Portland, Maine and was the child of schoolteachers. He spent his first years after high school as the track announcer at Scarborough Downs Race Track earning money to pay for college and graduate school. His love of American history began as a child inspired by both teachers and family.

Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal, observed at Brooklyn College, "this son of Massachusetts schoolteachers would receive an education for which nothing had prepared him--nor, it could be argued, was most of the Brooklyn College history department prepared for anyone like Mr. Johnson."

The Leon M. Goldstein Memorial Lecture is open to the entire Brooklyn community free of charge.

The lecture is sponsored by the Department of History, Philosophy and Political Science at Kingsborough Community College. For more information please contact the college at (718) 368- 5417.

###

Kingsborough Community College (KCC) located in Brooklyn, New York, serves more than 20,000 credit students and 15,000 continuing education students each year. Kingsborough is located on a 72-acre waterfront campus in Manhattan Beach, on the southern peninsula of Brooklyn. Founded in 1963, Kingsborough is one of twenty colleges in the City University of New York (CUNY) system, the third largest system in the United States.