fbpx
Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

Khalil Gibran Muhammad

Bringing people of color into our companies isn't enough. We must transform our cultures so they can achieve their full potential.

Professor of African American Studies and Public Affairs at Princeton University | Author of The Condemnation of Blackness | Co-Host of Some of My Best Friends Are

Play VideoNow Playing

The Power Gap: What Real DEI Looks Like, and How to Foster It (12:30)

Play VideoNow Playing

The Centrality of Slavery to the American Story (4:00)

Play VideoNow Playing

Race as an Aggravating Factor in Sentencing (2:31)

Play VideoNow Playing

The Importance of Race Education (5:46)

Lavin Exclusive Speaker

Widely known as one of the most influential authorities on racial justice in America, Khalil Gibran Muhammad is redefining our understanding of inclusion. He’s the award-winning author of The Condemnation of Blackness, a “brilliant work that tells us how directly the past has formed us” (The New York Review of Books), and his work has been featured in the landmark New York Times “1619 Project” as well as Ava DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary 13th. An incredibly dynamic, humorous, and grounding speaker, this Princeton professor explains how companies invested in true inclusion can break down the three barriers holding them back—efficiency, color-blindness, and investment—and free themselves for success.

“[The Condemnation of Blackness] is the most significant work in the study of race and American society to have appeared in the past decade.”Glenn C. Loury, author of The Anatomy of Racial Inequality

Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. This vital book has been called “a mandatory read” (David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author) and “a poignant reminder of how these inequalities were shaped and how deeply they reach back into the nation’s history” (Journal of African American Literature).

He is also the co-host, alongside his long-time friend Ben Austen, of the podcast Some of My Best Friends Are. Today a Princeton professor (Khalil) and an award-winning journalist (Ben), the two interracial best friends show us how we can have conversations about race and racism with levity—that we can stumble and still move forward.  Some of My Best Friends Are is a thoughtful and compassionate exploration of the issues that divide us, showing us that we can come together, however imperfectly, in the process of learning.

After graduating from college, Khalil worked as a public accountant at Deloitte & Touche LLP for three years, giving him a lens into how businesses work, why diversity is crucial to company success, and how to actually implement it. As nearly every organization in America pushes for diversity and inclusion, why are people of color still vastly under-represented in senior leadership? “It takes courage to redistribute power and it takes candidness to reflect on the fact that we do have a problem in our society,” Khalil says. With both a corporate and academic background, Khalil’s talks break down the three barriers that must be overcome for organizations to transform and harness the best ideas for success in the 21st century.

Khalil is the inaugural Professor of African American Studies and Public Affairs at Princeton University, and was previously Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He is the former Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of the New York Public Library and the world’s leading library and archive of global Black history. His writing and scholarship have been featured in a number of national print and broadcast media outlets, including The New York Times—notably as one of the contributors to its landmark “The 1619 Project,”  which explores and exposes the true history of slavery in America—The New YorkerThe Washington Post, NPR, and MSNBC. He holds two honorary doctorates, and is on the board of The Museum of Modern Art, The Vera Institute of Justice, and The Nation magazine.

Testimonials

Dr. Muhammad was absolutely amazing. He left our community pondering all the information and reflections that were shared. Moreover, we anticipate that his information will be a catalyst for future dialogue in the community. He is probably one of the best, if not the best speaker we have had in my 18 years of doing this event. His intellect is as sharp as any I have encountered. What an evening!

Evansville-Vanderburgh County Human Relations Commission

Speech Topics

Inclusion
The Power GapHow Leaders Can Embrace Diversity and Inclusion in Today's America

Just as there is a wealth and income gap, a health and achievement gap, and a punishment and opportunity gap, there is also a power gap in our civic and corporate institutions. In a nation where nearly every organization values diversity and inclusion (or at least gives lip service to them), and most every individual believes in “opportunity for all,” people of color are vastly under-represente...

Read more
Race
Systemic Racism 101What It Is, and How to Fix It
As the world begins to reckon with racial injustice, the terms “systemic racism” or “structural racism” have gained common usage, but many people remain unsure how to define the terms or how to address a growing cohort of critics who say neither exist in the United States. Every leader knows you can’t solve a problem you don’t understand or don’t want to fix.
In this talk...
Read more
Race
The Legacy of JuneteenthReflecting on the Past and Looking to the Future

Juneteenth commemorates the last African Americans to gain their freedom from slavery. Like so much of American history, it was a moment of great promise and impending peril. Black freedom was not embraced by those who long benefited from slavery, even in the aftermath of a destructive war and a devastated nation. Slavery, the original sin of America, was not an aberration in the DNA of the nat...

Read more
Grit at School
Diversity is Not EnoughHow Bias Education Makes Us Smarter, Fairer, and Kinder

The biggest bias of all? It’s thinking that we’re ‘unbiased.’ To social psychologists, there’s no such thing as a clean slate—individually, or institutionally. Compelling evidence tells us that even babies discriminate, absorbing skin color differences at infancy. And over time, children begin to interpret these differences through the cultural frameworks of their social environments: at h...

Read more

Featured Books

Related Posts

Interested? Read more news and articles about this fascinating keynote speaker

Other News