Futures Forum

Our guest this week is Dorian Warren, an expert on community organizing and the co-president of Community Change, a national organization that builds the power of low-income people, especially people of color, to create a multiracial democracy and a fair economy. He talks us through the difference between mobilizing and organizing, and explains why building relationships are the foundation to coll...

Our guest this week is Liz Neeley, founder of Liminal, a science communication collective that focuses on sensemaking. We discuss the ways storytelling can help us make meaningful change from our research, navigating risks of speaking out, and tools for working against the strategic onslaught of information overload. Liz also guides us through planning a security party, so you can take practical s...

Victor Ray is one of the leading voices on race and racial justice in the United States. Jamila Michener and Neil Lewis, Jr. talk with Victor about the current backlash to DEI initiatives in a conversation that connects research and personal experience to systems and power structures. Tune in to this wide-ranging episode to hear more about the current turn toward resegregation in the US, how organ...

This Women's History Month, Jamila Michener and Neil Lewis, Jr. spoke with Marcia Easley, a long-time Ithacan and Assistant Dean for Human Resources in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. Marcia told us about the history of Black women at Cornell and students like Ruth Peyton, who could study, but not sleep, here. Marcia shares the struggles and accomplishments of Black students, t...

Keisha N. Blain, author of Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights, is a professor of Africana Studies and History at Brown University, and has been hailed as one the most innovative and influential historians of her generation. Jamila Michener and Neil Lewis, Jr. speak with Dr. Blain, the Center's 2026 Black History Month keynote speaker, about her new book, the writing process,...