Location: The Heritage Foundation's Allison Auditorium

On this 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, America's first black President resides in the White House. Moreover, Barack Obama is a Lincolnian who famously looks to the Great Emancipator's presidency for guidance in his own. Is Lincoln a spiritual "father" to Obama or is there a profound incompatibility between the two?

Shelby Steele is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he specializes in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. Steele has written widely on race in American society and the consequences of contemporary social programs on race relations. He has been published in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and is a contributing editor at Harper's magazine.

In 2006, Steele received the Bradley Prize for his contributions to the study of race in America. In 2004, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal. In 1991, his work on the documentary Seven Days in Bensonhurst was recognized with an Emmy Award. Steele received the National Book Critic's Circle Award in 1990 in the general nonfiction category for his book The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America. Other books by Steele include White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (HarperCollins 2006) and A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America. Steele holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah, an M.A. in sociology from Southern Illinois University, and a B.A. in political science from Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.