Race and Democracy

A prolific and energizing speaker on a range of diversity, equity, and inclusion topics, Shaun Harper has delivered hundreds of keynote addresses around the world, to audiences comprised of thousands. He also is founder and executive director of the USC Race and Equity Center. Dr. Harper has published 12 books, and is author of more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and other academic publications.

Shaun Harper, Ph.D. is the Cliff...

Danté Stewart is a minister, essayist, and cultural critic. He is author of Shoutin’ In The Fire: An American Epistle. Named by Religion News Service as one of “Ten Up-And-Coming Faith Influencers”, his work has appeared on CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN’s The Undefeated, Sojourners, and more.

He received his B.A. in Sociology from Clemson University. He is currently studying at the Candler School of Theolog...

Thomas A. Guglielmo is Associate Professor of American Studies at George Washington University. He has a PhD in History from the University of Michigan. His first book, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago (Oxford, 2003), won the Organization of American Historians' Frederick Jackson Turner Award and the Society of American Historians' Allan Nevins Prize. His second book, Divisions: A New History of...

Estevan Daniel Delgado (he/him) is the Director for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. Estevan has formal project management experience running large-scale government grants and program management experience fundraising and designing trust-based grant making opportunities and events for the Hispanic Impact Fund at Austin Community Foundation. In his pr...

Rodell Razor has over 10 years of experience in launching and coaching small and mid sized businesses. He has developed valuable skills in business strategy, operations, sales, leadership, and human resources through the businesses he launched as well as through corporate roles held at various firms. In addition to being CEO and Founder of X-Factor Capital serves as a director and co-founder on the Board of ConstructDiversity.

J...

Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times Bestseller and was longlisted for the National Book Award. He is also the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library As...

Adam Serwer is an American journalist and author. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic where his work focuses on politics, race, and justice. He previously worked at Buzzfeed News, The American Prospect, and Mother Jones.

Serwer has received awards from the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), The Root, and the Society of Professional Journalists. He was named a spring 2019 Shorenstein Center fellow, and received th...

Elise Hu is a host-at-large based at NPR West in Culver City, Calif. Previously, she explored the future with her video series, Future You with Elise Hu, and served as the founding bureau chief and International Correspondent for NPR's Seoul office. She was based in Seoul for nearly four years, responsible for the network's coverage of both Koreas and Japan, and filed from a dozen countries across Asia.

Before joining NP...

Vincent Brown is Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies.  He directs the History Design Studio and teaches courses in Atlantic history, African diaspora studies, and the history of slavery in the Americas. Brown is the author of The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Harvard University Press, 2008), producer of Herskovits at the Heart of...

Peter Beinart teaches national reporting and opinion writing at the Newmark J-School and political science at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is editor-at-large for Jewish Currents, a CNN political commentator, and a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is also a nonfiction author and former Rhodes Scholar.

His first book, “The Good Fight,” was published by HarperCollins in 2006. His second book, “The Icarus Syndrome,...

Cass R. Sunstein is currently the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. In 2018, he received the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway, sometimes described as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities. In 2020, the World Health Organization appointed him as Chair of its technical advisor...

Michael Eric Dyson is a renowned scholar, ordained Baptist minister, and public intellectual born in Detroit, Michigan. His innovative scholarship, combining cultural criticism and biography, focuses on race, religion, popular culture, and contemporary issues in the African American community. Dyson’s most recent book is April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Death and How It Changed America (2008).

He is also the author of Kno...

William Abranowicz has been a photographer for more than 40 years. His work is found in collections throughout the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Portrait Gallery in London, Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and The Smithsonian Institute.

His work has appeared in nearly every major publication in the United States, Europe, and Asia. He served as a contributing photographer to Condé Nast Traveler for ...

Charles L. Chavis, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution and History and Director of the John Mitchell, Jr. Program for History, Justice, and Race, at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University. Before joining the S-CAR, he served as the Museum Coordinator for the Lillie Carroll Jackson Civil Rights Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Chavis is a historian and museum educator wh...

An internationally known cultural critic, journalist, activist, and thought leader in the area of hip-hop, youth culture, and Black political engagement, Bakari Kitwana is the Executive Director of Rap Sessions, which for the last fourteen years has conducted over 150 town hall meetings around the nation on difficult dialogues facing the hip-hop and millennial generations.

He is the collaborating writer for pioneering hip-hop ar...

Dr. Don Carleton is the founding director of The University of Texas at Austin's Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, which was organized in 1991. Prior to the creation of the Briscoe Center, he served from October 1975 through November 1979 as founding director of the Houston Metropolitan Research Center (HMRC), an urban history archives program sponsored by Rice University, the University of Houston, and the City of Hou...

Sudhir Hazareesingh FBA (18 October 1961) is a British-Mauritian historian. He has been a fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford since 1990. Most of his work relates to modern political history from 1850; including the history of contemporary France as well as Napoleon, the Republic and Charles de Gaulle.

Hazareesingh is the son of Kissoonsing Hazareesingh, a Cambridge- and Sorbonne-educated historian in his ow...

Ken Burns calls Jonathan Eig a "master storyteller." Joyce Carol Oates calls his book, Ali: A Life, “an epic of a biography.”

Eig is the author of five books, three of them New York Times best sellers. He was born in Brooklyn and graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

A former staff writer for The Wall Street Journal, Eig has also written for The New York Times, The New Yorker online, an...