Dickinson Black History Month Keynote Focuses on ‘The Ethics of Anti-Racism’
Eddie Glaude, Jr.
The Black History Month Keynote Address
by Layla Ilarraza ’26
One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr., will deliver Dickinson’s Black History Month Keynote, “The Ethics of Anti-Racism.” The lecture will take place on Thursday, Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. in the Anita Tuvin Schlechter (ATS) Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public. The lecture will also be livestreamed.
For Glaude, anti-racist action is a moral choice. In this keynote address, Glaude will explore the ethics of deconstructing the idea of whiteness and will challenge audience members to think carefully and systematically about the issues of racial injustice. Combining a scholar’s knowledge of history, a political commentator’s take on the latest events, and an activist’s passion for social justice, Glaude challenges all of us to examine our collective American conscience, "not to posit the greatness of America, but to establish the ground upon which to imagine the country anew."
Glaude is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul, In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America, and his most recent, the New York Times bestseller, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own, takes a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy. In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and bringing our nation’s complexities, vulnerabilities and hope into full view. Hope that is, in one of his favorite quotes from W.E.B. Du Bois, "not hopeless, but a bit unhopeful."
Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton. He is also on the Morehouse College Board of Trustees. He frequently appears in the media, as a columnist for TIME Magazine and as an MSNBC contributor on programs like Morning Joe and Deadline Whitehouse with Nicolle Wallace. He regularly appears on Meet the Press on Sundays. Glaude also hosts Princeton’s AAS podcast, a conversation around the field of African American Studies and the Black experience in the 21st century.
The program is sponsored by the Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the Office of the President, and the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.
TAKE THE NEXT STEPS
Published February 2, 2024