- When I live Blackness, I'm drawing from deep wellsprings, as in the source of something life-giving.

- The political afterlives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. continue to shape American democracy.

- Unfortunately, we live in what some call an age of lies.

(relaxed jazz music) (audience applauding) - Nine years ago, "Blackademics Television" was started as a corrective.

By a number of measures in a number of arenas the representation of Black folk has been limited and skewed.

Limited in the sense that we are over and over underrepresented relative to our overall population in positive spaces.

I think of elite universities.

I think of corporate and nonprofit boards.

I think of coaching and collegiate in professional sports.

I think of advanced classrooms in our schools.

Meanwhile, the representation of Black folk is often skewed as well.

In that the representations of Blackness in popular media often tend toward several specific negative tropes.

Tropes that are often gendered, as well as raced.

Tropes that I will not repeat here because part of the politics and part of our investment is encountering those negatives with alternative representations.

So we created "Blackademics Television" and each year a wonderful diverse team pulls together an evening where we listen to speakers from around the country.

Some speak directly to the lives, cultures and experiences of Black folk.

Some speak to issues that are not narrowly Black studies but that are certainly of interest to Black folk among others.

For my part, I attempt to follow through on my politics of bringing people together in thoughtful joy.

I am as always anchored in Blackness, but there are plenty of seats at the table.

I rely upon amazing coaches to work with our presenters.

Denise Hart, playwright and theater professor from Howard university in DC, my former student, Dr. Courtney Robinson, executive director of the Excellence and Advancement Foundation, housed in Huston-Tillotson University.

These are scholars from historically Black colleges who serve as our presenter's coaches.

I rely upon Jameson Pitts.

Yes, Jameson founded, runs and owns his own media company, but before that, he was a first year student in my public education class at the University of Texas at Austin.

I also rely upon former student, dear colleague and meticulous project logistician, Kendra Chambers, our show's assistant producer.

As a side note with regards to Kendra, between producing this event and serving as project director for the Rather Prize in Education, which we run on behalf of Dan Rather and his family, Kendra also happens to run really fast.

(audience chuckles) This past week she placed 7th in the nation in the USA Track and Field Indoor Nationals in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Yes, my assistant producer is also a professional athlete.

All right, pause.

What am I doing here?

I'm two minutes in to an eight minute talk and you heard a little bit about the why of "Blackademics" and then a whole lot of acknowledgement.

Is this just a matter of following rule number three in the secret speaker protocol handbook that I keep in my back pocket?

No, this my friends is the work.

Recognizing the greatness that surrounds you, being part of a group that brings that greatness to bear in order to accomplish something powerful and positive.

Thank you's aren't an introduction to a talk, thank you's are the talk.

When I think Blackness, when I live Blackness, I'm drawing from deep wellsprings, as in the source of something life-giving, and wellsprings in the source, as in the source of something abundant.

I'm also by the way, living a conception of what it means to be other things that have been deeply problematic, or at least have had problematic aspects to them.

As I choose Blackness and choose to counter limited and skewed representations thereof, I also choose, but want to be quite particular and careful about particular other identities, for instance, American, straight, male.

These are conceptions and identities that out the gate carry a lot of well-earned toxic weight, but I'm allowed.

Now in fact, I'm compelled to acknowledge that toxic weight and then choose to live into these ideas differently.

And hopefully more beautifully.

All right, caveat over, that was the theoretical piece, now back to the talk called gratitude.

By my count, "Blackademics" has taken this historic stage 11 times and amplified the voices of over 80 presenters and that's special in and of itself.

But also special that this is the last time we will do this show on this stage.

Next year, we will be in a facility and a partnership between Austin PBS and Austin Community College in a new facility, brand new facility.

And I love the democratization of knowledge that this represents and what better place to do it than a location that actually includes parking.

(audience chuckles) So another set of thank you's, go straight to Austin PBS.

In 2011, we approached Station Manager, Bill Stotesbery, to ask if we could borrow his stage.

Oh and film, and a few camera operators.

Can we have a director, audio, and other production folk?

They came together or Bill said, "Yes."

When we came back a year later and said, "Hey, can we do that again?"

He said, "Yes."

And after we shot a second time he had a kinda smile on his face and he said, "That was really fun, do you want a TV show?"

And I said, "Yes."

Because being a professor who just so happens to produce a TV show is really, really cool.

(audience chuckles) So thank you to Bill.

Thank you to Senior Vice President, Sarah Robertson, Director, Michael Emery.

To my Co-Producer on the Austin PBS side, JJ Weber.

Thank you to Floor Director, Steve Maedl.

And I'm naming these folks by the way, because I see them year in and year out.

I come here and it's like seeing old friends again.

And I wanna just take a minute to thank them.

Camera Operators, Rob, Doug, Jay, Billy.

Audio, Jeff, Doug, Randy, Emily running the teleprompter and we put her to work today.

Our coaches are scholars and we strive for perfection.

So even up to today, there were these edits, it was, I was kind of not feeling good about it 'cause I just wanted it done.

But my assistant producer, the other producers, the coaches wanted it perfect.

So even up to today, we were editing these talks.

So the work of Dan and Rob, their work allows us to record multiple streams and put together the best shots for broadcast from Anchorage to El Paso.

And to Paul Sweeney, over who's shoulder I will sit in the editing bay next month, as he takes out all my stumbles and gaffes, all the little imperfections and make us look really good on TV.

So just one more thank you, or a couple more to Dr. Cherise Smith, who's the Chair of African and African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin, they help underwrite this work.

Cherise is an art historian of considerable renown, a stellar administrator and leader and a steadfast supporter of not just "Blackademics Television," but of the possibility for art to illuminate the experiences of Black folk, of women and of others.

It's an honor to have Cherise among our supporters.

Sitting council members come out and join our audience.

Long-term friends come out and join our audience.

Colleagues come out, students come out, former assistant producers come out.

Students come out, but I don't know if you guys count since I make you.

(audience chuckles) But thank you to all of you.

"Blackademics Television" fills information gaps about the Black experience in this country.

"Blackademics Television" counters misinformation.

"Blackademics Television" lives into the beauty of who we are and who we can be.

"Blackademics Television" is possibility.

And you, my friends, make it possible.

Thank you.

(audience applauding) (relaxed jazz music) (audience applauding) - I stand here tonight as the proud son of Haitian immigrants who came to the United States in 1965.

My mother, Germaine Joseph, raised me and my older brother in a New York City landscape marked by high crime, racial segregation and poverty.

Mom worked at Mt.

Sinai Hospital on East 92nd Street and immediately joined SCIU Local 1199, a labor union that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. both supported.

I grew up in an activist household.

I joined my first picket line in elementary school and listened to histories of black activism from my mother.

My mother offered unconditional love, profound inspiration and the practical discipline that made it possible for me to be here.

She is 80 years young, still lives in Queens, New York and remains a committed warrior for social justice and human rights.

The assassination of Malcolm X on February 21, 1965 broke the secret hearts of millions of African Americans who quietly claimed him as their unspoken champion, alongside the tens of thousands who publicly did so.

Malcolm inspired Black folk to love ourselves deeply.

He set a fearless example in this regard, offering his story of individual triumph against racism and poverty as a chance at collective redemption for the entire Black community.

Martin Luther King Jr's assassination on April 4, 1968 was a global tragedy.

His untimely death indelibly altered American history, evoking a national trauma that we have yet to recover from.

Over 100 million Americans watched King's funeral on television as major cities convulsed in violence and mourning after his death.

Shortly after King's assassination, Congress passed a national crime bill that planted the seeds for the contemporary crisis of mass incarceration.

The Safe Streets Act of 1968 reimagined the nation's domestic priorities over the next half century.

Diverting tens of billions of dollars from antipoverty programs into the world's largest prison system.

America's criminal justice system punishes the same Brown and Black faces Malcolm and King challenged the entire world to embrace in love.

Malcolm and Martin had warned against the specter of massive racial uprisings if the nation remained unwilling to commit to guaranteeing Black dignity and citizenship.

They became the two most visible and important leaders of the civil rights movement's heroic period.

King's presence anchors a national story of racial progress.

From bus boycotts and sit-ins, to the March on Washington and voting rights.

Malcolm's activism disrupts this story, forcing us to gaze into the hidden bowels of Black America that shaped him.

Malcolm identified anti-Black racism as an institutional dilemma that required the kind of public truth-telling that many Whites and some Blacks did not wanna hear.

He pushed for a reckoning on the issue of Black dignity with blunt language that contrasted with King's search for Black citizenship, capable of allaying White fear and Black anger.

Dr. King's most enduring legacy is the commitment to an introduction of what I call radical Black citizenship.

For King, radical Black citizenship meant more than just voting rights.

Urban violence in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts erupted in August, 1965, less than a week after the Voting Rights Act was passed.

After Watts, King realized that the true nature of citizenship meant a living wage, decent housing, quality education, healthcare, and nourishment.

His legacy of radical Black citizenship, when that continues in the world of Moral Mondays, March For Our Lives, Me Too, and Black Lives Matter, encompassed his revolutionary life, fearless love of the poor and uncompromising stance against war and violence.

All of which offers hope for a better future.

His life also provides a framework for resistance against rising levels of inhumanity, racism and injustice that he would find all too familiar today.

Malcolm X too often remains primarily remembered for who he was not, Martin Luther King Jr.

But in reality, Malcolm was a brilliant activist, organizer and intellectual whose life reminds us of the possibilities of a liberated future in America and beyond.

His unapologetic insistence on what I call radical Black dignity, marked him as a prophetic visionary in the eyes of a global Black community and as a dangerous subversive to the American government.

Malcolm defined Black dignity as a collective goal that required bold leadership and the ability to confront America's tragic racial history.

The embrace of Black identity, history and beauty served as the first step in organizing a revolutionary movement for political self-determination.

Empowered by Africa's presence on the world stage and the courage of ordinary Black people in insisting that their lives, traditions, culture and histories mattered.

Malcolm's searing description of the pain, trauma and violence of America's racial wilderness became the crux of his political debate with King.

King fully acknowledged the panoramic nature of racial oppression.

In essence, the existence of the American racial wilderness only after Malcolm X's assassination.

The political afterlives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. continue to shape American democracy.

Their shared history offers up new ways to view the struggle for racial justice in America and around the world.

America in the Martin and Malcolm years found itself transformed by their galvanizing political rhetoric and activism.

In death, their symbolic power has launched a cottage industry trumpeting the superficial myth of the two men as opposites, which often obscures their actual political accomplishments, failures and shortcomings.

A full appreciation of Malcolm and Martin and the historical epic that shaped them requires taking them down from the lofty heights of sainthood and rescuing both of these men from the suffocating mythology that surrounds them.

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. transformed the aesthetics of American democracy through social justice advocacy that changed national conceptions of race, citizenship and identity.

By illuminating the relationship between Black oppression and White supremacy, Malcolm and Martin permanently altered America's racial landscape.

Their words both persuaded and coerced their shared rhetorical genius and organizing skills compelled large audiences to freedom's cause and attracted praise, controversy and condemnation.

In popular culture they represent opposing visions of racial equality.

Where King dreamed of carving a stone of hope from a mountain of racial despair, Malcolm forcefully identified a growing nightmare of racial injustice.

This neat juxtaposition obscures more than it reveals.

Erasing the profound ways in which their politics and activism overlap and intersected, and oftentimes helped to transform national and global debates over racial and economic justice.

The role of the criminal justice system, the use of violence and finally, the resilience of American democracy.

Thank you.

(audience applauding) (relaxed jazz music) (audience applauding) - I'm a physicist and science is my passion.

My love for science is rooted in a desire to use our understanding of how the universe works to make people's lives better.

And more fundamentally, a desire to seek out objective truth.

Unfortunately, we live in what some call an age of lies.

At a time when our world most needs evidence-based decision-making, agents of disinformation and misinformation thrive, especially online, and seemingly always working counter to the common good.

In 2008, I was a college professor in California, frustrated to have watched ideological pseudo-science find a home in the halls of Washington DC and in the White House.

One night I happened to catch on TV a campaign event, in which a young senator from Illinois spoke passionately about the importance of science in addressing the challenges facing our country.

In his inaugural address, Barack Obama called on scientists everywhere to join him in helping return science to its rightful place in domestic and foreign policy.

I knew he was speaking to me.

Soon afterwards I would leave academia and join the government.

Motivated by patriotism and the opportunity to work on important problems.

For 10 years, I was a senior analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

I had the tough job of tracking scientific developments with implications for national security.

Sometimes these issues were matters of life and death.

In early 2014, I first learned of a few dozen deaths from a mysterious illness in the West African nation of Guinea.

We would soon learn that it was Ebola, a ferocious and often fatal virus.

The epidemic would eventually stretch past 14 months, killing over 11,000 people and infecting another 17,000.

The virus would hop to a few neighboring countries causing social and political upheaval in its wake.

Ebola even landed in the United States, including here in Texas.

Now accurate information is critical during any outbreak, but it's rare for health professionals to have all the necessary data to halt a rapidly spreading disease.

In the case of the Ebola outbreak it was initially misdiagnosed for another more common disease.

Luckily, science enables us to address incomplete information and expose misinformation.

And as teams of international scientists were dispatched to the region, answers to key scientific questions would be crucial for an effective response.

Was the outbreak being fed by new sources?

Or were transmissions primarily person-to-person?

Was this strain of Ebola a deadlier mutation than seen before?

And so on.

Some days were terrifying.

Several months into the outbreak I was in my office when a not yet public document popped into my inbox.

A Liberian American lawyer had become violently ill with Ebola upon arriving at the airport in Lagos, Nigeria.

Lagos is the largest city in Africa with 20 million people.

It seemed like the nightmare scenario, but that nightmare never materialized, partly by luck, but mostly because we had learned a lot about the disease and Nigeria's evidence-based response, to control and limit the outbreak, was outstanding.

Their actions almost certainly prevented many more lives being lost worldwide.

This happened just five years ago.

But we now live in a time when expertise is undermined by paid trolls, and self-appointed pundits with easy access to Wikipedia and YouTube.

When bad actors weaponize information in times of stress or tragedy, to divide us and to sow discord.

Just think, how might a similar Ebola outbreak unfold today in our current era of rampant disinformation.

The ongoing coronavirus situation may give us a clue.

Now, like Ebola, climate change poses risks that are disruptive to people in nations.

In May, 2019 I was asked to appear before Congress for an unclassified hearing on the national security implications of climate change.

This was a topic I knew well.

I had spent years studying the effects of climate change on political stability, unrest, conflict, migration, natural resource scarcity, and the like.

And most of my testimony was drawn from peer-reviewed science from US federal agencies, who I consider to be the finest scientists in the world.

As well as from summary reports drawn from thousands of scientific articles.

But the Trump administration pressured my bureau to strike all mentions of climate science in the testimony.

To withhold from Congress and the American people the scientific foundation supporting the analysis on what many considered to be the greatest threat of the 21st century.

And it was a nasty fight.

Ultimately the White House suppressed the testimony and disallowed it from being entered into the Congressional Record.

As a scientist, it was important to stand up for the integrity of science.

As a national security professional, it was important to convey the serious threats facing our country and planet.

And as a patriot, it was important to call out this latest example of well-placed ideologues using disinformation and suppression to further a political agenda.

So I resigned in protest from the government, shortly afterwards.

Now sometimes powerful actors don't like the answers that science brings.

To them truth versus nontruth is irrelevant as long a particular, political, economic or ideological agenda is executed.

And agents of disinformation are savvy and well-resourced, their tactics are many.

From I'm fabricating content, to impersonating genuine sources.

Often they blend just enough fact with the targeted fiction to make untrue sound plausible, or they appeal to pre-existing partisan or tribal bias.

In technical matters they often amplify the work of scientists that represent an extreme minority viewpoint or overstate any uncertainties or remaining unknowns.

But disinformation is ineffective unless we the public propagate it as misinformation.

Such as through Facebook posts or retweets, or unless it's pushed by bias media.

Like a disease, disinformation is the infection, but misinformation is how it spreads and takes root.

Now most people don't have the time, inclination or background to trace information back to its original source.

This makes trusted experts evermore important.

As citizens we need to find, affirm and support these trusted experts and science wants to play a role.

In 1961, John F. Kennedy said, "Truth is a tyrant.

The only tyrant to whom we can give our allegiance.

The service of truth is a matter of heroism."

Now part of servicing truth must be confronting disinformation.

We need to recognize disinformation as another form of disempowerment.

We need to ask our political leaders how they intend to address this information and hold them accountable.

But with respect to misinformation we need to hold ourselves accountable most of all.

Thank you.

(audience applauding) (relaxed jazz music) (soft flute music)