Michael Eric Dyson

Michael Eric Dyson is one of the nation’s most renowned professors, gifted writers, inspiring preachers, knowledgeable lecturers, and prominent media personalities. As a teacher who earned a PhD in Religion from Princeton University, Dyson has taught at some of the nation’s most distinguished universities, including Brown, UNC Chapel Hill, Columbia, DePaul, the University of Pennsylvania, and Georgetown University. He is presently Distinguished University Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies, College of Arts & Science, and Distinguished University Professor of Ethics and Society, The Divinity School, and Centennial Professor at Vanderbilt University. Dyson is one of America’s premier public intellectuals and author of over 20 books, including seven New York Times bestsellers, and is a political analyst for MSNBC. He has won two NAACP Image Awards and an American Book Award, and last year was awarded the Langston Hughes Medal.

Dyson has written bestselling volumes on Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, 2Pac, Marvin Gaye, Bill Cosby, and Barack Obama. Dyson’s New York Times bestselling "Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America," was called by the New York Times, ”one of the most frank and searing discussions on race…a deeply serious, urgent book, which should take its place in the tradition of Baldwin’s 'The Fire Next Time' and King’s 'Why We Can’t Wait'.” The book won the 2018 Southern Book Prize. In December 2020, Dyson published the instant national bestseller "Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America," which Robin DiAngelo calls a “searing cry for racial justice from one of our nation’s greatest thinkers and most compelling prophets.” Kirkus Review says it is a “sweeping overview of racism in America” and a “timely, fervent message from an important voice,” while NPR says that “the writing is smart and the research that informs it is great, but what makes this an important book is Dyson’s voice, which is strong but always pregnant with frustration, pain, admiration and, ultimately, hope.” Dyson’s latest book is “Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America.”

As a preacher and sometime pastor for more than 40 years, Dyson has mounted many of the nation’s most noted pulpits to deliver sermons, including, most recently, the Washington National Cathedral where Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his last Sunday sermon. Dyson has lectured across the country, and around the world, in many of the best colleges and universities, and in public theaters and auditoriums, and for many corporations and unions. He has also served for the last 30 years as a media commentator – and occasionally host – on every major radio and television show. 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.”