Presidential Lecture Series

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, MacArthur Fellow "Genius Grant" Recipient

The Northeastern community welcomed back one of its own, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, for the 2022 Presidential Lecture Series. Awarded one of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation’s “genius grants” in 2021, Taylor is an acclaimed author, historian, scholar and activist who writes and speaks about Black liberation politics, social movements and racial inequality.

Her prize-winning books include: “Race For Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership,” “From #Blacklivesmatter to Black Liberation,” and “How We Get Free: Black Feminism and The Combahee River Collective.” She is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Boston Review, Paris Review, Guardian, The Nation, and other notable periodicals. She is a former Contributing Opinion Writer for The New York Times.

In addition to her MacArthur Fellowship, Taylor also received a Guggenheim Fellowship. After earning her undergraduate degree from Northeastern through the Board of Governor’s program, known today as the Interdisciplinary Studies program, she earned her master’s and doctoral degrees from Northwestern

University. She was a professor of African American Studies at Princeton University for eight years. Last year, Taylor returned to Northwestern as the Leon Forrest Professor of African American Studies.

Northeastern Illinois University’s Presidential Lecture Series was created in 1995 by President Emerita Salme Harju Steinberg to bring world-class authors and thinkers to the institution and invite the larger Chicago community to experience Northeastern Illinois University’s values in action.

Previous Presidential Lecture Series speakers include:

• Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker (1998)

• Scholar and activist Dr. Cornel West (2000)

• Navajo Code Talker Dr. Samuel Billison (2001)

• Author Margaret Atwood (2002)

• Primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall (2005)

• Urban farmer and MacArthur Fellow Will Allen (2014)

The last Presidential Lecture Series was held in 2016. With the launch of the University’s new Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, the intention is to once again make the Presidential Lecture Series a hallmark University event.