Today’s ‘fireside chat,’ a forum for Temple education students to learn about issues facing future teachers – and highlighted by an appearance by university alumnus Bill Cosby – has been postponed.

Cosby had another scheduled event, according to Valerie Gay, director of Temple’s Development and Alumni Affairs. He asked for the event to go on as scheduled – without him – so a dialogue could be developed anyway, but plans to cancel the event were already underway, Gay added.

Cosby wants the events to be less about him than about the prospective teachers, she said.

Today’s event was scheduled for 4 p.m. and to be held in a room of the Liacouras Center. Another chat scheduled for April is still expected to run, in addition to another that might be added in March to replace this.

This was the second in this fireside series.

In other recent news, Cosby has announced his plans to release a rap album criticizing the genre.

Last fall, Cosby co-authored a book – called ‘Come on People’ – which offered his views and critiques of black American culture. (See a review of it here) He made a series of highly publicized media appearances to discuss the book, in conjunction with speaking on the issues he feels plague the black community, including an Oct. 18 plug on Larry King Live and one on Meet the Press (See below)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhZve73KQpQ 350 292]

Still, The Temple News has had difficulty gaining comment from him.