Speakers | GTHQ

	TAVIS SMILEY
	The first American ever to simultaneously host signature talk shows on both public television and public radio, Smiley also offers political commentary twice weekly on the Tom Joyner Morning Show. He also created the Tavis Smiley Foundation, whose mission is to enlighten, encourage and empower black youth... READ MORE

	Dr. Cornel West
	Dr. Cornel West has been described as one of America’s most vital and eloquent intellectuals. A noted philosopher, he has taken his struggle for racial equity to the national spotlight, providing a gifted and stimulating voice to the ongoing debate. READ MORE

	Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.
	Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Acclaimed as an eloquent commentator and formidable intellectual force on multicultural and African American issues... READ MORE

	Jeff Johnson
	Jeffrey Johnson is a political motivator and a social commentator. He is most widely known for his appearance on "Rap City". On these shows, Johnson is known to speak of and challenge the issues of violence and voting... READ MORE

	Lee Mun Wah
	For the past twenty years, StirFry Seminars has revolutionized the field of diversity through its internationally acclaimed films and seminars. Over 30 million viewers worldwide have seen The Color of Fear, as well as many of the other groundbreaking films produced and directed by Lee Mun Wah, StirFry's founder, CEO and Master Trainer. READ MORE

Staceyann Chin

Staceyann Chin is a fulltime artist. A resident of New York City and a Jamaican National, she has been an "out poet and political activist" since 1998. From the rousing cheers of the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe to one-woman shows Off- Broadway to poetry workshops in Denmark and London to co-writer and performer in the Tony nominated, Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Chin credits the long list of "things she has done" to her grandmother's hard-working history and the pain of her mother's absence...

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	Bryonn Bain
	Bryonn Bain is Brooklyn's own prison activist, hip hop artist, spoken word poet, author, actor and educator. Described by Cornel West as an artist who "…speaks his truth with a power we desperately need to hear," Bain hosts BET-J's award-winning talk show My Two Cents... READ MORE

	Bobby Seale
	Bobby Seale, in effect, has become one of the last surviving architects of one of the most important social change movements in American and African American history... READ MORE

	Walter Mosley
	WALTER MOSLEY is the author of twenty-three critically acclaimed books and his work has been translated into twenty-one languages. His popular mysteries featuring Easy Rawlins began with Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990... READ MORE

	Dr. Julia Hare
	Dr. Julia Hare is the queen of Dr. Nathan Hare, a pioneer of black studies. The Black Think Tank has turned our talented cofounder, Dr. Julia Hare, loose on the lecture circuit in all her elocutionary preakness... READ MORE

Talib Kweli

An emcee "with a social conscience, a liquid flow, and an unending gift of wordplay," Kweli was "one of the most astute and prominent voices in the hip-hop underground," remarked Ken Capobianco in the Boston Globe. After releasing Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star with successful emcee Mos Def in 1998 and Reflection Eternal with deejay Hi-Tek in 2000, however, Kweli was ready to break out of the underground.

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	Touré
	Touré is a veteran TV and print journalist. He is a correspondent for Access Hollywood. He was the host of BET’s The Black Carpet and the host of Treasure HD’s I’ll Try Anything Once, an action-adventure reality show where he dove into wild challenges like demolition derbying, sumo wrestling, skydiving, and playing semi-pro football with women. READ MORE

Dan Choi

On March 19, 2009, Lt. Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and Iraq veteran fluent in Arabic, announced that he was gay on The Rachel Maddow Show. Because of three words – "I am gay" – Lt. Choi's life changed forever. Despite his extreme value as an Arabic speaker able to communicate quickly and clearly with the Iraqi people, one month after his announcement Lt. Dan Choi was notified that the Army had begun discharge proceedings against him. He was one of only eight soldiers from his graduating class who majored in Arabic.

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Bakari Kitwana

Bakari Kitwana is a journalist, activist and political analyst whose commentary on politics and youth culture have been seen on the CNN, FOX News (the O'Reilly Factor), C-Span, PBS (The Tavis Smiley Show) and heard on NPR. He's currently Senior Media Fellow at the Harvard Law based think tank, The Jamestown Project, and the CEO of Rap Sessions: Community Dialogues on Hip-Hop, which conducts townhall meetings around the country on difficult dialogues facing the hip-hop generation.

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