Visit by former NAACP president is latest event in Dean’s Seminar Series in Race and Policy
When Benjamin Jealous was an undergraduate at Columbia 21 years ago, he said, there were nightly shootouts in Morningside Park.
The former president and CEO of the NAACP recalled celebrating a friend’s 21st birthday against that backdrop: The group toasted to surviving into adulthood.
“But I couldn’t bring myself to raise my glass,” said Jealous, impassioned. “The notion cut me like a knife that someone thought, in this country, that to simply survive past one’s 21st birthday… was an accomplishment.”
Jealous’s remarks were entitled “At the Intersection of Tech and Social Impact”; his visit was the latest event in the Dean’s Seminar Series in Race and Policy.
