The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Distinguished Lecture Series
The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Distinguished Lecture Series includes lectures from prominent leaders in higher education.
FALL 2025
Where do we go from here?
Tuesday, October 14, 2025, at 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM ET
with Ruth Simmons, Distinguished Presidential Fellow, Rice University.
The question of how to respond to the current challenges facing universities is bedeviling the most experienced leaders in higher education. Is there a way forward that preserves and enhances what universities have contributed to the betterment of the world while owning up to serious omissions and mistakes the sector has made?
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FALL 2024
Disrupting the Status Quo My Own Way Because the Master’s Tools Will Not Dismantle The Master’s House
Wednesday, October 16, 2024, at 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM ET
with Menah Pratt
Drawing from her two recent books, From Cotton Picking to College Professor: Lessons about Race, Class, and Gender in America and Blackwildgirl: A Writer’s Journey to Take Back Her Superpower, Menah Pratt will share reflections on disrupting the status quo and developing tools to elevate the experiences, perspectives, strategies, and voices of marginalized and minoritized communities.
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FALL 2023
Black Colleges and the Future of American Democracy: Two Legacies and an Imperative
October 11, 2023, at 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM ET
with John Silvanus Wilson, Jr. Executive Director, Millennium Leadership, Visiting Lecturer at Morgan State University.
Drawing from his new book, Hope and Healing: Black Colleges and the Future of American Democracy, John Silvanus Wilson will explore three topics: the HBCU Endowment Legacy, the HBCU Democracy Legacy, and the HBCU Encore Imperative. He will highlight past HBCU fundraising mastery and the shoulders upon which HBCU leaders should consciously stand when engaging today’s philanthropic landscape. He will also discuss the current mandate facing higher education worldwide – that is, to shape a new kind of college graduate using an approach that is thematically consistent with the very best of HBCU traditions.
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FALL 2022
Young, Gifted, & Diverse: Origins of the New Black Elite
November 3, 2022, at 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM ET
with Camille Z. Charles, Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences in the Departments of Sociology and Africana Studies, and the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.
Rutgers Hillel, Cole Tribute Hall, 70 College Ave, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Despite their diversity, Black Americans have long been studied as a uniformly disadvantaged group. In this talk, Camille Charles highlighted diversity among the new educated Black elite—those graduating from America’s selective colleges and universities in the early 21st century. Members of the new Black elite come from myriad backgrounds and have varied views on American racism, but as they progress through college and toward the Black professional class they develop a shared worldview and group consciousness. They graduate with optimism about their own futures, but remain guarded about racial inequality more broadly. This internal diversity alongside political consensus complicates assumptions about both a monolithic Black experience and the future of Black political solidarity.
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SPRING 2022
From Moments to Movements to Revolutionary Thinking and Action: Our Long Struggle to Dismantle Racism in Society and Life
February 24, 2022, at 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM ET
with Christopher M. Span, Chief of Staff and Associate Chancellor for Administration and PreK-12 Initiatives, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
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FALL 2021
