Ibram X. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and the founding director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a CBS News racial justice contributor. Kendi is the 2020-2021 Frances B. Cashin Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. He is the author of many books, including Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, making him the youngest ever winner of that award. He also authored three #1 New York Times best sellers, How to Be an Antiracist; Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, co-authored with Jason Reynolds; and Antiracist Baby, illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky. His newest books are Be Antiracist: A Journal for Awareness, Reflection, and Action; and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, co-edited with Keisha Blain, which will be out in February. In 2020, Time magazine named Kendi one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Mesmin Destin is an associate professor at Northwestern University in the Department of Psychology and in the School of Education & Social Policy. He is also a fellow of Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research. Destin directs a multidisciplinary lab group and engages in research that investigates social psychological mechanisms underlying socioeconomic disparities in educational outcomes during adolescence and young adulthood. He uses laboratory and field experiments to identify social factors and interactions that influence how young people perceive themselves and pursue their futures. At the university level, he examines how social experiences and institutional resources shape the motivation and educational trajectories of low socioeconomic status and first-generation college students. In his interactive talk, Destin will describe new studies with practical implications for effective inclusive teaching practices.