Journalist Jelani Cobb will speak and answer questions on the complex dynamics of race in America. Audience members will be invited to text in questions during the event.
Jelani Cobb is an American writer, author and educator. A professor of journalism at Columbia University, Cobb was previously an associate professor of history and director of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut from 2012 to 2016. Since 2015, he has been a staff writer at The New Yorker.
Cobb's books include The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress (Walker, 2010), To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic (2007), which in 2007 was a finalist for the National Award for Arts Writing of the Arts Club of Washington. His collection The Devil & Dave Chappelle and Other Essays was published the same year. He is editor of The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader, which was listed as a 2002 Notable Book of The Year by Black Issues Book Review. Cobb has contributed to a number of anthologies, including In Defense of Mumia, Testimony, Mending the World and Beats, Rhymes and Life, and his articles and essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Essence, Vibe, Emerge, The Progressive, The Washington City Paper, One Magazine, Ebony and TheRoot.com. He has also been a featured commentator on National Public Radio, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CBS News, and other national broadcast outlets.
Presented by the Dean's Fellows of the College of Arts and Letters, with the support of:
Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts | College of Arts and Letters | College of Science | Center for Philosophy of Religion | Africana Studies | Campus Ministry | Toqueville Program for the Study of Religion and American Public Life | Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy | Theology Department | Program of Liberal Studies | Political Science Department | Philosophy Department | Multicultural Student Programs and Services | Institute for Latino Studies | Center for Civil and Human Rights | Hesburgh-Yusko Scholars Program | Hesburgh Libraries | College of Engineering | Center for Social Concerns | Catholic Social Teaching Minor | American Studies Department | American Constitution Society