Moderator - Nina Yoshida Nelsen, Boston Lyric Opera Artistic Advisor and Mezzo-Soprano; Panelists - Paul Chihara, Composer; Michael Sakamoto, Choreographer; Erin Aoyama, Scholar, American Studies;
John F. Kennedy Library
Matthew Delmont, Dartmouth professor of history and author of Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad Renée Graham, associate editor and columnist at The Boston Globe
John F. Kennedy Library
About the Director Daniel Goldhaber is a director, writer, and producer based in Los Angeles and New York. The child of climate scientists, Daniel started making movies in high school, and worked as an editor on the Sundance documentary Chasing Ice. He went on to graduate from Harvard University where he studied Visual and Environmental Studies. He directed the Netflix horror film, CAM, which won Best First Feature at the 2018 Fantasia Film Festival. Daniel went on to be named as one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Film 2018.” He is passionate about finding ways to tell provocative, challenging stories in thrilling and accessible ways. His new film, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, premiered in the Platform Section of the 2022 Toronto Film Festival.
Old South Meeting House
The Beantown Swing Orchestra
John F. Kennedy Library
Ronald W. Bailey is a Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois, serving as department Head from 2012 to 2022. He is a 1965 graduate of Evans County History School in Claxton, GA and a 1969 Phi Beta Kappa graduate with a BA in Liberal Arts (Cross-Cultural Studies) from Michigan State University’s Justin Morrill College. His undergraduate major included fluency in Russian and a certificate from Moscow State University. He holds an MA in Political Science from Stanford and a Ph.D. in Black Studies from Stanford, one of the first such degrees awarded in the United States. He has taught at Fisk, Cornell, Northwestern, University of Mississippi, and Northeastern, where he chaired the Department of African American Studies for eight years. He also served as Vice President for Academic Affairs at South Carolina State University and at Knoxville College, and as a senior scientist with the Education Development Center, Inc. Bailey’s publications include Introduction to Afro-American Studies: A Peoples College Primer; Remembering Medgar Evers . . . For a New Generation; Let Us March On: Civil Rights Photographs of Ernest Withers, Jr.; and Black Business Enterprise: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Social Issues, Journal of Negro Education, Agricultural History, Review of Black Political Economy, Black Scholar, Souls: Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, and the Journal of African American History. NSF and NEH grants supported the development of two website projects he initiated: www.dignubia.org and www.nubianet.org. He was also a co-founder of ACT-Roxbury (Art, Culture, and Trade—Roxbury), an organization that now operates the Roxbury Center for the Arts @ Hibernia Hall and the Roxbury Film Festival. Bailey has consulted on museum, curriculum, and technology projects. He was also the principal investigator of a project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to build capacity in six African American museums in the Savannah area. He is the current co-principal investigator of a six-year digital tools project called AFRO PUBLISHING WITHOUT WALLS, or AFRO PWW-2, funded for the past six years by the Mellon Foundation.
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
About the Participants DR. JOAN DONOVAN is a leading public scholar and disinformation researcher, specializing in media manipulation, political movements, critical internet studies, and online extremism. She is the Research Director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and the Director of the Technology and Social Change project (TaSC). Through TaSC, Dr. Donovan explores how media manipulation is a means to control public conversation, derail democracy, and disrupt society. She is the co-author of Meme Wars, and she has appeared on The Problem with John Stewart on Apple+. MATTHEW WILDING is the Director of Interpretation & Education at Revolutionary Spaces, and curator of the upcoming exhibit "Impassioned Destruction: Politics, Vandalism & The Boston Tea Party" at the Old State House.
Old South Meeting House
RYAN BUSSE, a former firearms executive pulls back the curtain on America's multibillion-dollar gun industry, exposing how it has fostered extremism and racism, radicalizing the nation and bringing cultural division to a boiling point. Busse provides consulting services to progressive organizations with the aim of undoing the country's dangerous radicalization. He lives in Montana.
Virtual
Clancy Martin is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. He is also a happily married father of five children. His latest book, How Not to Kill Yourself is a portrait of the suicidal mind – his own – and in it he provides both a personal account of the multiple attempts he had made to end his life but also the positive strategies he has devised to safeguard his future and that of others.
Virtual
ELI MERRITT is a political historian at Vanderbilt University who specializes in the founding era of the United States and the intersection of demagogues and democracy. He has written for the American Journal of Legal History, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune, among other publications. The editor of How to Save Democracy: Inspiration and Advice from 95 World Leaders, he also writes an online newsletter called American Commonwealth that explores the origins of the United States’ political discontents and solutions to them.
Old South Meeting House
Dr. Joe Roman
New England Aquarium
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