The Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter Lecture With Nikole Hannah-Jones
Renowned award winning journalist and creator of The 1619 Project Nikole Hannah-Jones discusses recent projects with Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia Journalism School
Introduction by Mabel O. Wilson, chair of the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies and Nancy and George E. Rupp Professor of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia
Location: Auditorium, Lee C. Bollinger Forum, 601 W.125th St New York, NY 10027
Free & open to the public with registration
REGISTRATION OPENS AUGUST 21, 2026
REGISTRATION REQUIRED FOR ENTRY TO BOLLINGER FORUM
Nicole Hannah-Jones is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of “The 1619 Project” and a staff writer at “The New York Times Magazine.” Her deeply researched reporting on racial inequality and injustice has also earned her a MacArthur Fellowship, a Peabody Award, the Knight Award for Public Service, two George Polk Awards and the National Magazine Award three times. Her six-episode Hulu documentary series, “The 1619 Project,” won the Emmy for best documentary series. Hannah-Jones was also named one of “Time Magazine's” 100 most influential people in the world. An institution builder, Hannah-Jones is a founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting; founder of the 1619 Freedom School, a free-afterschool literacy program in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa; and founder of the Center for Journalism & Democracy at Howard University, where she serves as the inaugural Knight Chair in Race and Journalism.
Jelani Cobb is dean of the Columbia Journalism School and has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2015. He is the author of “The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress,” “To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic” and most recently, “Three Or More Is a Riot: Notes on How We Got Here: 2012-2025.” He is the editor or co-editor of several volumes including “The Matter of Black Lives,” a collection of “The New Yorker’s” writings on race and “The Essential Kerner Commission Report.”
He received a Peabody Award for his 2020 PBS Frontline film “Whose Vote Counts?” and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary in 2018. He has also been a political analyst since 2019. He is producer or co-producer on a number of documentaries including “Lincoln’s Dilemma, Obama: A More Perfect Union, Policing the Police and THE RIOT REPORT.”
