Diversity Issues

Ice T Ice T is the original embodiment of LA Hip-Hop. Through his music, his book, “The Ice Opinion”, and his lecture tours of America’s prisons, high schools and colleges, speaking to thousands of students at over one hundred educational institutions (including Harvard, Berkley, Princeton, Stanford, and Northwestern), he has become an influential spokesman for [...]

Stanley Nelson Stanley Nelson is the Emmy-Winning Documentary Filmmaker & Producer of PBS’ American Experience.  The Emmy winning MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, Nelson is widely regarded as the preeminent African American documentary film director of our age. For three decades, Nelson’s documentaries have made audiences, distributors, and television commissioner’s alike sit up and take notice. With [...]

Sonia Nazario Sonia Nazario, a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times, has spent more than two decades reporting and writing about social issues, earning her dozens of national awards. In 1998, Nazario was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series on children of drug addicted parents. And in 1994, she won a George Polk [...]

Darryl "DMC" McDaniels Darryl McDaniels, or DMC as most of the world knows him, helped transform the musical landscape as one-third of the trailblazing, multi-platinum rap group RUN-DMC. They sold more than 30 million albums and singles worldwide and the rest is now a matter of musical history. Since forming the legendary band with Joseph [...]

Spike Lee Throughout his career, Spike Lee has established himself as one of the country's most creative and talented producers, screenwriters, and directors. His forceful social vision, defined such films as Do the Right Thing, the epic Malcolm X, Miracle of St. Anna and the groundbreaking documentary film "When the Levees Broke", focusing on the [...]

Dr. Bernard Lafayette Jr. Presents "Nonviolence in a Time of Civil Unrest: Yesterday and Today" An original Freedom Rider. This is the powerful harrowing and ultimately inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever, seen through the eyes of a 20 year old college student, Bernard Lafayette. From May until November, more than [...]

Nikki Giovanni Essence magazine has called Nikki Giovanni “One of the most searning voices of the 1960’s Black Power movement”. Creating intimate, edgy and unapologetic works, she has long been known as the, “princess of black poetry”. Twenty years before the appearance of rap music, she made innovative recordings of her poems backed by some [...]

Stephanie Covington Armstrong Stephanie Covington Armstrong is a playwright and screenwriter. Her memoir, Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat, vividly describes her struggle as a black women with bulimia. Her battle with an eating disorder takes a unique perspective as this disease is consistently portrayed as a white women's problem. This insightful and [...]

Jean Kilbourne Jean Kilbourne is internationally known for her pioneering work on alcohol and tobacco advertising and the image of women in advertising. Through her illustrated lectures & her award-winning films and publications, Kilbourne explores the serious cumulative impact of advertising on individual attitudes, values, & behavior and on the society as a whole. With [...]