American historian and journalist Jill Lepore speaks with Cornell William Brooks, former president of the NAACP and director of a social justice collaborative at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Cornell William Brooks is the recipient of the Harvard Kennedy School Innovations in Teaching Award. Through the Trotter Collaborative, his social justice advocacy clinical class has enabled students to do pioneering policy work with mayors across the US and abroad; nonprofits from the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law to Black Voters Matter; as well as organizations from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism to the National Council of Churches. Brooks served as the 18th president of the NAACP from 2014 to 2017. Under his leadership, the NAACP secured 12 significant legal victories, including laying the groundwork for the first statewide legal challenge to prison-based gerrymandering. He also reinvigorated the activist social justice heritage of the NAACP, dramatically increasing membership, particularly online and among millennials.
Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American history at Harvard University and professor of law at Harvard Law School. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker. A prize-winning professor, she teaches classes in evidence, historical methods, humanistic inquiry, and American history. Much of her scholarship explores absences and asymmetries in the historical record, with a particular emphasis on the history and technology of evidence. As a wide-ranging and prolific essayist, Lepore writes about American history, law, literature, and politics. She is the author of many award-winning books, including the international bestseller, These Truths: A History of the United States (2018). Her latest book is The Deadline (2023), a collection of essays. Her new book, a history of the US Constitution, will be published in September 2025.
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