Spike Lee, the New York director whose films often have been flashpoints of discussion on race in America, will speak at 8 tonight in Eisenhower Auditorium.

Lee, who directed Do the Right Thing, 4 Little Girls and Malcolm X, is the fourth of five personalities in this year's Distinguished Speaker Series.

His latest movie, 25th Hour, which opened last month, stars Edward Norton as a benign drug dealer who has 24 hours of freedom before he begins serving a seven-year prison sentence.

"We thought it would be an exciting time to bring him here," said Brian Loretz, Distinguished Speaker Series committee chair.

Born in Atlanta and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., the 45-year-old filmmaker attended Morehouse College and New York University.

In 1980, he began a career of questioning cultural assumptions by making a short film called The Answer, which reworked D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation.

His first major success came in 1986 with the comedy She's Gotta Have It.

Abigail Voorhees, the speaker series committee member who will introduce Lee tonight, said her favorite "Spike Lee joint" was 1989's Do the Right Thing. It takes place on a hot summer day in Brooklyn when racial tensions break into violence.

"It came out in a very controversial time period, when there were a lot of racial and ethnic issues going on," Voorhees said.

Tonight's speech will be Lee's second appearance before a Nittany Lion crowd this month. On Jan. 15, he spoke at Penn State Erie. "His remarks [there] seemed somewhat historical -- about his career and how he achieved his goals," Loretz said.

Lee last visited University Park in the winter of 1993.

Voorhees said all the tickets have been distributed for the free speech, but she encouraged people to arrive early at Eisenhower to pick up any returned tickets.