Race, Religion and Reason is the title for the forum on Wednesday, August 18, hosted and organized by seasonal resident and Harvard professor Charles Ogletree at the Performing Arts Center of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School in Oak Bluffs. The event is free and open to all.

The first session, at 11 a.m. is The Dunbar Story: Achieving Success in an Era of Segregation, a discussion with alumni of Washington, D.C.’s historic Dunbar High School. Dr. James Bowman, Laura Cole, Prof. Adelaide Cromwell, Dr. Howard Nelson and John Rector will be on the panel.

At 2 p.m. Race, Religion and Reason is the topic. Panelists will consider the intersection of these three dimensions of American life and address some of the perplexing problems we face nationally and globally in addressing race and religion-based discrimination. Prof. J. Kameron Carter, Duke Divinity School; Prof. Stephen L. Carter, Yale Law School; Prof. Eddie Glaude, Jr., Princeton University; Prof. Leslie M. Harris, Emory University; Prof. Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Princeton University; Prof. J. Bryan Hehir, Harvard Kennedy School; Prof. Mark Lilla, Columbia University; and Prof. Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton University will participate. The forum also will include a special tribute to Brother Blue, the Cambridge street storyteller and icon also known as Dr. Hugh Morgan Hill, who died last November.

For more information, call 617-495-8285 or e-mail houstoninst@law.harvard.edu.