Past Events
2025 Theme: Collective Community Vision
This year’s theme for the Black Faculty Speaker Series is Collective Community Vision, featuring renowned historian Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. This series aims to give a powerful exploration of community building as a collective practice, guided by an inclusive vision that often transcends societal expectations. Based on his groundbreaking PBS series "Finding Your Roots", Dr. Gates shares insights from his influential series about genealogy, genetics, and history’s impact on our lives today. His keynote features a stunning visual presentation, including Professor Gates’ favorite moments from the show, such as the memorable appearance of the late Congressman John Lewis.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. | Wednesday, May 7, 2025
Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, and journalist Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is an acclaimed cultural critic and institution builder. Professor Gates is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Among his dozens of books are the recent New York Times bestsellers Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow and The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song. He has also produced and hosted an array of documentary films. The Black Church (PBS) and Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches (HBO), which he executive produced, each received Emmy nominations. His latest history series for PBS is Making Black America: Through the Grapevine. Finding Your Roots, Gates’s groundbreaking genealogy and genetics series is now in its tenth season on PBS.
Professor Gates has received countless awards and honors, including a George Polk Award for his social commentary in The New York Times, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Chicago Tribune Literary Award for lifetime achievement, and the prestigious Gold Medal from the National Institute of Social Sciences, among many others. His filmmaking has received Emmy, Peabody, and NAACP Image Awards and an Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Award. Recently, he the coveted Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. Professor Gates serves on the boards of many notable institutions, including the New York Public Library, the Aspen Institute, and the Brookings Institution, and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. A consummate scholar and esteemed public intellectual, Professor Gates is a highly sought-after keynote speaker for his riveting addresses to audiences of all kinds.
Planning Team
This series was organized by faculty members:
• Dr. Mamadou Baro, Chair of BARA, Associate Professor, School of Anthropology
• Dr. Jenna Hatcher, Vice Provost, Office of the Provost and Professor, College of Public Health
• Dr. Amy Kraehe, Associate Vice President, Organizational Excellence and Impact, Professor, School of Art
• Dr. Tarnia Newton, Assistant Clinical Professor, College of Nursing
Coordination of the series is supported by the Office of the Provost.
Nina Bates, Director of Operations and Strategic Initiatives, Office of the Provost
Odette Vargas, Event Planner, Office of the Provost
Sponsors & Collaborators include: Office of the Provost, Arizona Arts, TenWest by Startup Tucson, Department of Astronomy & Steward Observatory, College of Humanities, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Blue Lotus Artists’ Collective, Marshall Foundation, Arizona Institute for Resilience, College of Architecture, Planning & Landscape Architecture, College of Education, College of Social & Behavioral Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, Community Foundation for Southern Arizona, University Libraries
2022-2023 Theme: Afrofuturism
Out of this World: Afrofuturist Expressions across Science, Art, Tech and Design
The Black Faculty Speaker Series will create a campus culture in which Black thought, experience, and creativity are visible and vital. Each visiting speaker provides a unique voice and perspective on Black futurity.
Afrofuturism is this year’s theme for the Black Faculty Speaker Series. It is an orientation or a way of thinking that defies simple classification. It is expansive, interdisciplinary, and revolutionary beyond conventional notions of resistance. Afrofuturism’s practitioners blend imagination, research, experimentation, and Black ancestral knowledge to invent worlds that transcend our present condition and fuel new possibilities for a more just and sustainable planet.
Ibrahim Thiaw | Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Ibrahim Thiaw was appointed as the Under Secretary General of the United Nations and the Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) on January 31, 2019. With four decades of experience in sustainable development and environmental governance, he is well-prepared to spearhead global initiatives focused on land restoration, drought resilience, food security, gender equality, and the protection of land rights for vulnerable populations. Prior to this role, he served as the Special Adviser to the Secretary-General for the Sahel, where he supported the UN Integrated Strategy for the Sahel and developed a comprehensive UN Support Plan for the region. From 2013 to 2018, he held the position of Assistant Secretary General and Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and earlier in his career, he has held various leadership positions at UNEP and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Ruha Benjamin | Wednesday, January 25 & Thursday, January 26, 2023
Ruha Benjamin is a Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and author of the award-winning book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, among many other publications. Her work investigates the social dimensions of science, medicine, and technology, focusing on the relationship between innovation and inequity, health and justice, and knowledge and power. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award and the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton. Her most recent book, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, was born out of the twin plagues of COVID-19 and police violence, and offers a practical and principled approach to transforming our communities and helping us build a more just and joyful world.
Race/Remix Podcast Episode 1: "When Justice Goes Viral: Ruha Benjamin"
Listen to the podcast "When Justice Goes Viral: Ruha Benjamin" featured on Race/Remix, a program of Racial Justice Studio, an initiative of Arizona Arts Division.
Silas Munro | Tuesday, November 29, 2022
Silas Munro is an artist, designer, writer, curator, and partner of Polymode, a studio that leads the edge of contemporary graphic design for clients in the cultural sphere. Collaborations include the City of Los Angeles, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, David Kordansky Gallery, MoMA, and MOCA. He is a curator and author of Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest which opened at Letterform Archive in 2022. Munro’s writing appears in the book, W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America. Munro expanded this research as a co-author of the first BIPOC-centered Design History course: Black Design in America: African Americans and the African Diaspora in Graphic Design, which will be published in book form in 2023. Munro holds an MFA from CalArts and a BFA from RISD. Munro is the Founding Faculty and Co-Chair for the MFA in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Race/Remix Podcast Episode 2: "A Typeface for Change: Silas Munro"
Silas Munro was featured in the podcast "A Typeface for Change: Silas Munro" on Race/Remix, a program of Racial Justice Studio, an initiative of the Arizona Arts Division.
This series was organized by a subcommittee of the Black Faculty Affinity Group, including:
- Dr. Mamadou Baro, Chair of BARA, Associate Professor, School of Anthropology
- Dr. Amy Kraehe, Associate Vice President, Equity in the Arts and Associate Professor, School of Art
- Dr. Tarnia Newton, Assistant Clinical Professor, College of Nursing
- Dr. Gloria J. Wilson, Associate Professor, School of Art
Planning Team
- Judy Marquez Kiyama, Ph.D., Associate Vice Provost, Faculty Development, Office of the Provost and Professor, Center for the Study of Higher Education, Dept of Educational Policy Studies & Practice
- Odette Vargas, Event Planner, Office of the Provost
Coordination of the series was supported by Faculty Affairs and funded by the Office of the President.
Co-Sponsors & Collaborators include: Racial Justice Studio – Arizona Arts, Arizona Institute for Resilience, Biosphere 2, BIO5 Institute, Beyond Juneteenth Committee, Center for Digital Humanities, College of Fine Arts, College of Education, College of Science, Department of Africana Studies, Faculty Affairs, Honors College, Indigenous Resilience Center, John and Sandi Flint, The Nurse-Midwifery Specialty - College of Nursing, The Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Research, Innovation & Impact (RII)