Ibram X. Kendi, Ph.D., an award-winning author, and professor of history at American University, will speak at the University of Alabama at Birmingham February 6 at 6:00 p.m. as part of the UAB’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion's Cultural Lens: Film and Speaker series. Kendi will sit down with Paulette Patterson Dilworth, UAB’s Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to discuss a range of current event topics relating to society and culture. The event will take place in the Hill Student Center Alumni Theatre. It is free and open to the public.

Kendi currently serves as professor and director of the Antiracist Research & Policy Center in the Department of History at American University and is an award-winning scholar of racism and antiracism and a New York Times best-selling author of the book “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.” The novel examines the history of how racist ideas were created, spread and deeply rooted in American society. The book was awarded the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was named to several Best Books for 2016 lists including the Boston Globe, The Root, Buzzfeed, and the Washington Post. The Washington Post also named “Stamped” the most ambitious book of 2016.

The Cultural Lens series serves to introduce films, scholars, authors, artists and activists to campus in an effort to address diversity, equity and inclusion issues in our society and explore the accuracy of how they are defined or portrayed through the media.