RAHSAAN HALL is the President and CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts. He leads the Urban League’s efforts to enable communities to overcome racial and social barriers that cause economic inequities and are exacerbated by sexual and domestic violence, by creating employment and economic development opportunities. Previously, Rahsaan served as the Director of the Racial Justice Program for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and prior to that Rahsaan was the Deputy Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice. He also served as an Assistant District Attorney for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office. Rahsaan also serves on the boards of the Who We Are Project and the Hyams Foundation and is an ordained reverend in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Rahsaan is a highly sought-after public speaker and has received multiple awards and recognitions for his work, including Boston Magazine’s Top Lawyers 2021, Equal Justice Coalition’s 2019 Beacon of Justice Award, Get Connected‘s 2018 GK100 Boston’s Most Influential People of Color, and the Massachusetts Communities Action Network 2018 Carry It On Leadership Award. ARLINE ISAACSON is a Co-Chair of the Massachusetts GLBTQ Political Caucus (formerly the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus), where she has lobbied on every major LGBTQ+ issue in Massachusetts. Arline advocated for the groundbreaking 1989 gay and lesbian civil rights bill and domestic-partnership benefits for Massachusetts public employees. Her fights have included LGBTQ+ parental rights, anti-bullying bills, hate crimes bills, transgender rights, HIV/AIDS legislation, and banning conversion therapy for minors. Arline also led the legislative battle for marriage equality, making Massachusetts the first state in the nation to defeat a marriage equality ban. SEAN SIMONINI is the founder of the Massachusetts Association of Student Representatives (MASR), an organization that uplifts and empowers student representatives serving on local and state school boards across the Commonwealth. Sean saw firsthand how powerful student sentiment can be after serving on his own school committee during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic and sought to establish a network that encourages students to be leaders in creating the change they want to see. He believes that students are essential partners in building better school environments and uniting communities around our common pursuit of a more accessible and impactful education system.
Old South Meeting House
Susan Wilson is a widely respected photographer, author, and public historian who has written and lectured about Boston history for the past three decades. She is the official House Historian of the Omni Parker House, an Affiliate Scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center, and an Honorary Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Her most recent books are Heaven, By Hotel Standards: The History of the Omni Parker House (2019) and Women and Children First: The Trailblazing Life of Susan Dimock, M.D. (2023).
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
Carl Sferrazza Anthony, historian and author of Camera Girl: The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy. Eileen McNamara, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Boston Globe columnist and Brandeis professor emerita of the practice of journalism.
John F. Kennedy Library
Sharron Wilkins Conrad, professor of history at Tarrant County College and Senior Fellow at Southern Methodist University’s Center for Presidential History. Kellie Carter Jackson, professor of African Studies at Wellesley College.
John F. Kennedy Library
Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history at Boston College and author of Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America. Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic.
John F. Kennedy Library
Kate Brown
Boston College - Gasson 100
About Stacy Schiff: Stacy Schiff is the author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize and the Ambassador Book Award; Cleopatra: A Life, winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for biography; and most recently, The Witches: Salem, 1692. Schiff has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and named a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French Government, she lives in New York City.
Old South Meeting House
The evening’s panelists are Hubie Jones, former Director of Roxbury Multi-Service Center; Jean McGuire, Director of METCO, 1973-2016, Zebulon V. Miletsky, PhD, Stony Brook University and author of Before Busing: A History of Boston’s Long Black Freedom Struggle: Lyda Peters, a key aide to the legendary organizer for equity and desegregation Ruth Batson: Vernita Carter-Weller, daughter of Rev. Vernon Carter, who picketed the Boston School Committee for 114 consecutive days in 1965 to help win passage for the 1965 State Racial Imbalance Law: Charles Glen, who served as coordinator at his church for School Day Out Freedom School held on June 11, 1964; Gloria Lee, who as a 12-year-old, participated in the School Stay Out and attended a Freedom School, and Jim Vrabel, Boston historian and author of A People’s History of the New Boston. The evening’s moderator is former Boston Mayor Kim Janey who was bused as a Boston Public School Student.
Virtual
David Allen is a historian of U.S. foreign relations. He was most recently a fellow in the International Security Program at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. David earned a PhD in History from Columbia University in 2019, with distinction. Before that, he took an MPhil in Historical Studies, with distinction, as well as a BA in History, with a double first, from Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Previously, David has held appointments as an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Belfer Center; an Eisenhower Roberts Graduate Fellow at the Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College; a History and Policy Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation; and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Project on Grand Strategy, Security, and Statecraft, appointed jointly by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program and Belfer Center. David taught as a core Lecturer at the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs in Spring 2021. David has published academic articles in the International History Review, the Historical Journal, the Journal of Cold War Studies, the state-of-the-field volume Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, and an edited volume on international organizations. His work has received grants and honors from the Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Previously a resident tutor at Leverett House, Harvard University, he lives and works with his family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Outside academia, David has been a freelance classical music critic at The New York Times since 2014. He tweets on music, mostly, at @fafnerthekite.
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
Moderator - Nina Yoshida Nelsen, Boston Lyric Opera Artistic Advisor and Mezzo-Soprano; Panelists - Paul Chihara, Composer; Michael Sakamoto, Choreographer; Erin Aoyama, Scholar, American Studies;
John F. Kennedy Library
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