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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Oregon State University will host the 2005-06 Horning Conference this Saturday, April 29, which will focus on historically significant moments in history when science and race influenced legal ideas.

The daylong conference, "Race, Science and Law," begins at 9 a.m. in the Memorial Union's Joyce Powell Leadership Center. It is free and open to the public.

The conference has drawn a wide range of scholars, including Pulitzer Prize-winner Ed Larson, from the University of Georgia, who will discuss the debates over race framing the U.S. Constitution.

Other prominent scholars include John Jackson, from the University of Colorado, who will examine the ideas of Earnest Servier Cox, who argued in the 20th century that blacks should be repatriated to Africa; Fay Yarbrough, the University of Kentucky, who will explore Native American legal attitudes toward African Americans in the 20th century; and Michael Kenny, of Simon Fraser University, who will discuss forensics and race.

Several other sessions are scheduled, with topics ranging from legal definitions of race in antebellum law reforms in Virginia, to Darwin's theories of evolution.

Werner Sollors, of Harvard University, will comment on the papers. Paul Farber and Andrew Valls, both of OSU, are chairing the conference.

The annual Horning Conference at OSU is supported by the Mary Jones and Thomas Hart Horning Endowment in the Humanities. The endowment was established through a gift by the late Benjamin Horning, an OSU graduate who went on to receive an M.D. from Harvard and directed the Kellogg Foundation's division for improving health care in Latin America.