Michael Eric Dyson

Michael Eric Dyson, an American Book Award recipient and two-time NAACP Image Award winner, is one of the nation’s most influential and renowned public intellectuals. He has been named one of the 150 most powerful African Americans by Ebony magazine.

Dyson’s pioneering scholarship has had a profound affect on American ideas. His first book, Reflecting Black: African American Cultural Criticism (1993), helped establish the field of black American cultural studies. His next book, 1994’s Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X, was named one of the most important African American books of the 20th century. Dyson’s first book on Martin Luther King Jr., I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King Jr. (2000), made a significant contribution to King scholarship by recovering the radical legacy of the slain civil rights leader.

Not only has Dyson taught at some of the nation’s most prestigious universities— including Brown, Chapel Hill, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania—but his influence has carried far beyond the academy into prisons ,bookstores, political conventions, union halls, church sanctuaries, and lecture stages around the world. Dyson has also appeared on nearly every major media outlet, including The Today Show, Nightline, The O’Reilly Factor, The Tavis Smiley Show, and Real Time with Bill Maher.

Dyson is currently a professor of sociology at Georgetown University. His life story is legendary—he rose from welfare father to Princeton Ph.D., from church pastor to college professor, and from a factory worker who did not start college until he was 21 to a figure who has become a renowned writer.