Dr. Michael Eric Dyson
Dr. Michael Eric Dyson is a Georgetown University sociology professor, a New York Times contributing opinion writer and a contributing editor of The New Republic and of ESPN's The Undefeated website. His rise from humble roots in Detroit to his present perch as a world class intellectual, noted author of 19 books, prominent leader and national media fixture testify to his extraordinary talent. Dyson has also taught at other elite universities like Brown University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Columbia University and The University of Pennsylvania.
He will speak on his latest book “What Truth Sounds Like: RFK, James Baldwin and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America” which has been called “an incisive look at the roles of politicians, artists, intellectuals, and activists in confronting racial injustice and effecting change,” and an “eloquent response to an urgent – and still-unresolved – dilemma.”
Dr. Dyson has won many prestigious honors including an American Book Award and two NAACP Image Awards. Ebony magazine cited him as one of the 100 most influential African Americans and as one of the 150 most powerful blacks in the nation.
His legendary ascent - from welfare father to Princeton PhD, from church pastor to college professor, from a factory worker who didn’t start college until he was 21 - may help explain why writer Naomi Wolf terms Dr. Dyson “the ideal public intellectual of our time."
