The Distinguished Lecture Series presented by the Honors College at Boise State University will feature The New York Times Magazine staff writer Nikole Hannah-Jones at 7 p.m. on Monday, April 8, at the Morrison Center for the Performing Arts. The event is free – no tickets are required – and is open to the public. Free parking also will be available.
Hannah-Jones covers racial injustice for the magazine. She received a National Magazine Award for her piece on school segregation, and was awarded a Peabody Award and a George Polk Award for previous coverage on the issue. Check out some of her other select work on the New York Times website.
She was named a 2017 MacArthur Genius Grant Fellow, one of only 24 people chosen worldwide. The MacArthur board selected her for “chronicling the persistence of racial segregation in American society, particularly in education, and reshaping national conversations around education reform.” Among her many achievements and successes, Hannah-Jones also is a founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting to increase the number of reporters and editors of color.
“We look forward to welcoming Nikole Hannah-Jones to our campus as a part of the Distinguished Lecture Series,” said Andrew Finstuen, dean of the Honors College. “Her work on the persistence of segregation in housing and schools epitomizes our effort to bring speakers and thinkers who challenge us to think about and engage with critical ideas and issues of contemporary life.”
Hannah-Jones holds a Master of Arts in mass communication from the University of North Carolina, and earned her bachelor’s in history and African-American studies from the University of Notre Dame.
The Distinguished Lecture Series brings in renowned figures in the world of politics, academics and humanitarian activism to present on a range of powerful topics at Boise State. The series has featured former Deputy Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, German filmmaker Werner Herzog, political analyst David Brooks, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Carl Wieman and Australia’s first woman Prime Minister Julia Gillard, to name a few.