Event Faculty

Dan Charnas (CAS’89)

A former staff member of the seminal rap label Profile Records and of Rick Rubin’s Def American Recordings, author Charnas penned some of the first cover stories for The Source magazine and was part of a generation of young writers said to have created hip-hop journalism.

Joseph M. Cronin

Former Massachusetts secretary of education, Cronin is a lecturer in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership & Development, and a past president of Bentley College. Cronin is also the director of the college consulting company EDVISORS, an educational advisory service assisting colleges and universities, schools, states, corporations, and foundations with plans, strategies, and program reviews.

Walter E. Fluker

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership at the School of Theology, Fluker is also editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project. Before coming to Boston University, he was founding executive director of the Leadership Center and the Coca-Cola Professor of Leadership Studies at Morehouse College. Fluker is a widely published author, as well as a featured speaker, lecturer, and workshop leader for professionals and emerging leaders in public and private domains.

Bob Herbert

A New York Times op-ed columnist from 1993 to 2011, Herbert is the author of Waking Up from the American Dream (Times Books, 2005) and has earned a number of journalism awards, such as the Meyer Berger Award for coverage of New York City, the American Society of Newspaper Editors award for distinguished newspaper writing, the David Nyhan Prize from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University for excellence in political reporting, and the Ridenhour Courage Prize for the “fearless articulation of unpopular truths.” Previously, Mr. Herbert was a national correspondent for NBC and reported regularly on The Today Show and NBC Nightly News.

Katherine Kennedy

Director of BU’s Howard Thurman Center, which aims to “stitch together the sub-communities of our urban institution into a larger, more unified community of purpose,” Boston native Kennedy is charged with preserving the legacy of Dr. Thurman, overseeing the Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholarship, and serving as an advisor to many student groups. A former journalist, Kennedy won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of Boston’s 1974 busing crisis.

James Morris Lawson (STH’60)

Vanderbilt University Divinity School faculty member and long-time strategist for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the work of non-violence, Lawson was a prominent strategist and tactician for the American Civil Rights Movement, for which he trained a number of other leaders alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. On the eve of his assassination, King referred to Lawson as “the leading non-violent theorist in the world.” Recently, as a visiting faculty member, Lawson led the Civil Discourse and Social Change initiative at California State University, Northridge.

James C. McCann

Professor of history, associate director for development for the BU African Studies Center, and senior fellow of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer Term Future, McCann performs research on the agricultural and ecological history of Africa, Ethiopia, and the Horn of Africa; field research methods in African studies; the agro-ecology of tropical disease; and the history of food and cuisine in Africa and the Atlantic world. He is the author of five books, the most recent being the award-winning Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine (Ohio University Press, 2009).