Marc Lamont Hill to deliver annual Martin Luther King Jr. commemorative lecture on Jan. 29

Marc Lamont Hill, Distinguished Professor of African American Studies at Morehouse College, will deliver the Claremont Colleges’ annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Lecture on Thursday, Jan. 29, at 7:30 p.m. in Garrison Theater at the Scripps College Performing Arts Center.

Hill is one of the leading intellectual voices in the country. He is the host of HuffPost Live and BET News as well as a political contributor for CNN. He is the former host of the nationally syndicated television show Our World With Black Enterprise and political contributor to Fox News Channel. An award-winning journalist Hill has received numerous prestigious awards from the National Association of Black Journalists GLAAD and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

Since his days as a youth in Philadelphia Hill has been a social justice activist and organizer. He is a founding board member of My5th a non-profit organization devoted to educating youth about their legal rights and responsibilities. He is also a board member and organizer of the Philadelphia Student Union and works closely with the ACLU Drug Reform Project focusing on drug informant policy. Over the past few years he has actively worked on campaigns to end the death penalty and to release numerous political prisoners. In 2011 Ebony Magazine named him one of America’s 100 most influential Black leaders.

Hill is the author of three books: the award-winning Beats Rhymes and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity; The Classroom and the Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America; and The Barbershop Notebooks: Reflections on Culture Politics and Education. He has also published three edited books: Media Learning and Sites of Possibility; Schooling Hip-Hop: New Directions in Hip-Hop Based Education; and The Anthropology of Education Reader. He is currently completing two manuscripts: 10 Right Wing Myths About Education; and Written By Himself: Race Masculinity and the Politics of Literacy.

Trained as an anthropologist of education Hill holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the intersections between culture politics and education.”