|
Central State University is pleased to announce the 2023 Commencement speaker: Michael Eric Dyson, one of the nation’s most renowned professors, knowledgeable lecturers, and prominent media personalities.
A professor at Vanderbilt University with a Ph.D. in religion, Dyson is one of the United States’ premier public intellectuals and the author of over 25 books, including seven New York Times bestsellers.
Over the course of his career, Dyson has written bestselling volumes on Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, 2Pac, Marvin Gaye, Bill Cosby, Jay-Z, and Barack Obama. Recently, he has written insightful books on race and structural racism in the United States: Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America (2020), Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America (2021), and Unequal: A Story of America (2022).
Dyson has lectured across the country and around the world, in many of the best colleges and universities, in public theaters and auditoriums, and for many corporations and unions. He has also served for the last 30 years as a journalist, media commentator, and host, on every major radio and television show, from NPR’s Morning Edition, The Takeaway, and Fresh Air with Terry Gross, to television’s Meet the Press, Face the Nation, Today Show, Good Morning America, and Real Time with Bill Maher. Dyson has even found time to make guest appearances on scripted cable and network television programs such as Soul Food, The Game, and Black-ish. While feminist author Naomi Wolf calls Dyson "the ideal public intellectual of our times," writer Nathan McCall captures it best when he says that Dyson "is a street fighter in suit and tie."
We are excited to welcome Michael Eric Dyson to inspire and send off our 2023 graduating class as they enter the next step of their journey as proud, accomplished Centralians.
| 
