The Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities is delighted to announce that Nikole Hannah-Jones will be the keynote speaker for this year’s humanities theme, Freedom and Captivity.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the 1619 Project and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. She has spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the Genius grant, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and the National Magazine Award three times. Hannah-Jones also earned the John Chancellor Award for Distinguished Journalism and was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen’s Club of New York. In 2020 she was inducted into the Society of American Historians and in 2021 she was named a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She also serves as the Knight Chair of Race and Journalism at Howard University, where she is founding the Center for Journalism & Democracy.

On Tuesday April 26th at 7 PM, Hannah-Jones participated in a live zoom webinar, during which she was in conversation with Professor Cheryl Townsend Gilkes.

This event was graciously supported by the Office of the President, African-American Studies department, Colby Libraries, Colby Museum of Art, the Cultural Events Committee, Lunder Institute of American Art, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and the Office of the Provost.