Current Fellows

Anna Deavere Smith is University Professor in Art and Public Policy at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. 

André Holland is an acclaimed actor, theater director, and film producer. He produced and starred in High Flying Bird, The Eddy, Exhibiting Forgiveness and the Sundance-premiered Love, Brooklyn. Known for his roles in Moonlight and Selma, Holland has also...

Hollis Robbins is Professor of English and Special Advisor for Humanities Diplomacy at the University of Utah, where she was Dean of Humanities from 2022-2024. Previously she was Dean of Arts & Humanities at Sonoma State University (2018-2022) and...

Jordan Taliha McDonald is a Doctoral Candidate in the English Department with a secondary field in History of Science at Harvard University. Her scholarship primarily examines how literary, scientific, and aesthetic ideas of complicity and fidelity were...

Cheryl Townsend Gilkes is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and African American Studies Emerita at Colby College. 

Arlette Frund is Professor Emerita at the University of Tours, France. 

Her scholarly and teaching specializations are in African American literature and culture. She is the author of Phillis Wheatley et Olaudah Equiano: Figures pionnières de la diaspora...

Charles Blow is a writer, journalist, and former Opinion columnist for The New York Times.

Ted Widmer is an historian and former presidential adviser who writes widely on history, politics and their intersection.  He is Distinguished Lecturer at the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York.  

From 1997 to 2001, he was a foreign...

Aurora Vergara-Figueroa is Colombia’s first Afro-Colombian Minister of National Education and former Deputy Minister of Higher Education, where she advanced equity and access in higher education while shaping national policy. She is the founder of the...

Charmaine A. Nelson was appointed a Provost Professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2022 where she founded the Slavery North Initiative. Her nine books include The Color of Stone: Sculpting the Black Female Subject in...