2025 Keynote - Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price with Dr. Anthony Jack
Join us in person or online on Thursday, January 30 from 4- 5:30 PM for acclaimed author, scholar, winner of numerous literary awards, and first generation student, Dr. Anthony Abraham Jack as he makes connections to Dr. King's legacy.
Keynote Details
Thursday, January 30, 2025
4:00 - 5:30 PM
Ira Allen Chapel & Online
This event is free and open to the public.
More on Dr. Anthony Abraham Jack
Self-proclaimed as a sociologist, first generation student and avid knitter, Dr. Anthony Abraham Jack is also a celebrated author of the books The Privileged Poor and Class Dismissed.
Dr. Jack is the inaugural faculty director of the Newbury Center and associate professor of higher education leadership at Boston University. His research documents the overlooked diversity among lower-income undergraduates: the “doubly disadvantaged”—those who enter college from local, typically distressed public high schools—and the “privileged poor,” or those who do so from boarding, day, and preparatory high schools. His scholarship appears in the Common Reader, Du Bois Review, Social Problems, Sociological Forum, and Sociology of Education and has earned awards from the American Sociological Association, American Educational Studies Association, Association for the Study of Higher Education, Eastern Sociological Society, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
Dr. Jack held fellowships from the Ford Foundation and the National Science Foundation and was a 2015 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow. In 2016, the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan named him an Emerging Diversity Scholar. In 2020, Muhlenberg College awarded him an honorary doctorate for his work in transforming higher education.
Dr. Jack is the author of The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students and Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price. The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Chronicle of Higher Education, Huffington Post, the Nation, American Conservative Magazine, National Review, the Washington Post, Vice, Vox, and NPR have featured his research and writing as well as biographical profiles of his experiences as a first-generation college student.
2024 Keynote - Creating a Beloved Community with Dr. Damon A. Williams
Visionary and inspirational leader, and Dr. Williams is one of the nation’s most recognized experts in strategic diversity leadership, youth development, corporate responsibility, and organizational change.
More on Dr. Williams
Dr. Damon A. Williams is a visionary and inspirational leader, and one of the nation’s recognized experts in strategic diversity leadership, youth development, corporate responsibility, and organizational change.
For four years, he led a $250M social impact portfolio for the world’s largest youth development company, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, representing the interests of nearly 4M diverse youth and teens as Senior Vice President for Programs and Chief Education Officer.
One of the original architects of the Inclusive Excellence concept in American higher education, he is author of the best-selling Strategic Diversity Leadership and the Chief Diversity Officer, he is a global thought leader having worked with more than 1,000 colleges and universities, Fortune 100 companies, foundations, and government agencies, as keynote speaker, strategist, educator, and social impact leader.
As the University of Michigan celebrates her 200-year anniversary, he was recently awarded the Bicentennial Leadership Award, a one-time honor given to 20 trailblazing alumni, who exemplify the best of the academic and leadership values of the Universities 200,000 living alumni.
He is currently chief catalyst for the Center for Strategic Diversity Leadership and Social Innovation and a Senior Scholar and Innovation Fellow at the Wisconsin Equity, and Inclusion (Wei) Laboratory of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he previously served as Associate Vice Chancellor and inaugural Chief Diversity, Equity, and Educational Achievement Officer.
Dr. Williams received his PhD from the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Higher and Post-Secondary Education (CSHPE) in Organizational Behavior and Management, and his MS and BS degrees from Miami University in Educational Leadership and Sociology and Black World Studies, respectively.
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