National Book Award Winner Ibram Kendi to Speak at W&J College

Created: March 31, 2017  |  Last Updated: January 15, 2020  |  Category:   |  Tagged: ,

DATE CHANGE: Due to travel delays, Ibram Kendi’s April 3 lecture has been cancelled and rescheduled for April 17. Details to come.

WASHINGTON, PA (March 27, 2017) – National Book Award winner Ibram Kendi will speak at Washington & Jefferson College (W&J) in a free, public lecture on April 17.

Kendi’s lecture, “Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America,” is based on his award-winning book of the same title. The event time and location will be announced at a later date.

David Kieran, Ph.D., a W&J assistant professor of history who orchestrated Kendi’s visit, said Kendi’s book is making such an impact in academic communitites that he thought it would resonate for both a W&J audience and the local community. The book provides a context for thinking and discussion of race issues, he said.

“Over the past few years we’ve seen increased attention to matters of race and questions of justice surrounding race, whether its issues of police violence, the rhetoric that accompanied the 2016 election, or discussion about inclusion on college campuses,” Kieran said. “One of the things our American Studies department can do is contribute to a productive dialog about matters of race and justice.”

Kendi, a New York Times best-selling author, has published essays in numerous books and academic journals, including: The Journal of African American HistoryJournal of Social HistoryJournal of Black StudiesJournal of African American Studies; and The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture. In addition to Stamped From the Beginning, he is also the author of The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstruction of Higher Education, 1965-1972. He also is the associate editor of Black Perspectives.

Kendi holds undergraduate degrees in journalism and African American studies from Florida A&M University, and earned his doctoral degree in African American Studies from Temple University in 2010. He was a 2013 National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow, a postdoctoral fellow at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, and has resided at The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress as the American Historical Association’s 2010-2011 J. Franklin Jameson Fellow in American History. In 2011, he was a short-term fellow in African American Studies through the Black Metropolis Research Consortium at the University of Chicago.

Kendi is currently an assistant professor of African American History at the University of Florida. More information is available at http://www.ibram.org/.

 

About Washington & Jefferson College

Washington & Jefferson College, located in Washington, Pa., is a selective liberal arts college founded in 1781. Committed to providing each of its students with the highest-quality undergraduate education available, W&J offers a traditional arts and sciences curriculum emphasizing interdisciplinary study and independent study work. For more information about W&J, visit www.washjeff.edu, or call 888-W-AND-JAY.