1968: A Global Year of Student Driven Change
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Featured Speakers

Haki R. Madhubuti

Haki R. Madhubuti

Keynote Speaker / Diversity Lecturer

Madhubuti is not only an award-winning author, educator, and poet, but he is also the founder and president of Third World Press, the largest independent black-owned press in the United States. A prolific writer, Madhubuti has published over 28 books, including Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous?: The African American Family in Transition, which has sold more than 1 million copies since its publication in 1990. His latest release, YellowBlack: The First Twenty One Years of a Poet’s Life, is a memoir of his early life experiences.

Other books by Madhubuti include:

  • Run Toward Fear: New Poems and a Poet’s Handbook
  • Tough Notes: Letters to Young Black Men
  • Groundwork: Selected Poems of Haki R. Madhubuti Don L. Lee (1966-1996)

He has received numerous awards for his literary contributions, including the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, the American Book Award, and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award. Madhubuti is also a dedicated educator who currently holds the title of University Distinguished Professor at Chicago State University.

Other organizations Madhubuti is involved with include:

  • Institute of Positive Education/New Concept Development Center, established 1969 (co-founder)
  • National Association of Black Book Publishers (founder and board member)
  • The International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent (founder and chairman of the board)
  • Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing (Distinguished University Professor, founder and director emeritus)  
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Jean-Pierre Duteuil

Jean-Pierre Duteuil

Jean-Pierre Duteuil was born in 1944 in the outskirts of Paris. He becomes politically active as early as 1960 in high school, protesting against the war and colonialism, and for the independence of Algeria. He studied at the University of Nanterre from 1964 to 1969, with Professors Henri Lefebvre, Jean Baudrillard and Rene Lourau, majoring in Sociology. While a student, he was also an activist with the Liaison of anarchist students, and in 1968, co-founder of the Mouvement du 22 mars (March 22nd movement). He co-authored the pamphlet Pourquoi des sociologues? (Why sociologists?)

He taught Psycho-sociology at the experimental University Paris-Dauphine from 1970 to 1980. He was also active within the libertarian movement, in publications such as Information Correspondance Ouvrière – in continuation of Socialisme ou barbarie–La Lanterne Noire, etc.

He left education in 1980 and became a publisher in the French Pays Basque; he is the founder of Acratie Editions, which have published over 50 works to this day. He went back to Paris in 1990, and then to Poitiers, where he lives today. Since then, he has been an activist in anti-nuclear and anti-colonialist movements; he has written several articles on contemporary and social issues, mainly in libertarian publications, especially Courant Alternatif, where he is a member of the editing team. He has remained an activist in the “Organisation communiste libertaire”, (the libertarian communist Organization)

He has co-authored:

  • La révolte étudiante, éd. Seuil, 1968 avec Alain Geismar, Sauvageot et Cohn-Bendit.

He has written:

  • 1965-66-67-68, vers le mouvement du 22 mars, éd. Acratie, 1988.
  • Mai 68, un mouvement politique, éd. Acratie, 2008  
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Dr. Monifa Love Asante

Monifa Love Asante

Dr. Monifa Love Asante, coordinator of the creative writing program at Morgan State University in Baltimore, is a student and product of the Black Arts Movement. She has published two collections of poetry, Provisions and Dreaming Underground. She is the author of an award-winning novel, Freedom in the Dismal, as well as several fine arts catalogues. She curated the traveling exhibition, “my magic pours secret libations,” and produced the accompanying video broadcast on public television stations. Love Asante has lectured widely on African American poetry, film, and art. She collaborated frequently with visual artist Ed Love on community based arts projects, and co-founded Free Zone Productions with him. She is also founding director of Home Base Women, a performance poetry chorus. She is at work on Waiting on Langston, a collection of essay about the life and work of Langston Hughes.

Love Asante lives in Maryland with her family.

Awards won by Dr. Love Asante include:

  • Plover’s Fiction Contest (1997)
  • Naomi Madgett Poetry Award (2003)
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George Lipsitz

George Lipsitz

George Lipsitz studies social movements, urban culture, and inequality. Lipsitz received his Ph.D. in History at the University of Wisconsin and has held positions at universities such as UC Santa Cruz, where he was professor and chair of the Department of American Studies, as well as UC San Diego, where he was professor and chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies. He has also served as an editor of the Critical American Studies series at the University of Minnesota Press, which published Singlejack Solidarity, a collection of writings by longtime labor activist Stan Weir, in 2004. In addition to his literary contributions, Lipsitz has also been active in struggles for fair housing and educational equity. Dr. Lipsitz is currently a professor in the Black Studies department at UC Santa Barbara.

Other books by Lipsitz include:

  • The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics
  • A Life in the Struggle: Ivory Perry and the Culture of Opposition
  • Dangerous Crossroads
  • Time Passages
  • American Studies in a Moment of Danger
  • Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s