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Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award winner and a leading scholar of racism and discriminatory policy in America, will speak on “How to Be an Anti-Racist” at 6 p.m. March 14 in Oklahoma State University’s Student Union Theater. This talk is free and open to the public.

Kendi will ask listeners to think about what an anti-racist society might look like and how to play an active role in building it.

“People are searching for candid direction about how to pour their passion into building an anti-racist society,” Kendi said.

His talk at OSU is adapted from his forthcoming book of the same title.

Kendi is a professor of history and international relations and the founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. He is an ideas columnist for The Atlantic and a frequent contributor to such publications as The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education and Time.

At 34, Kendi became the youngest winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction for Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Historian Yohuru Williams praised the book as “a highly accessible yet provocative study that seeks to complicate our understanding of racist ideas and the forces that produce them.”

The New York Times bestselling author also wrote The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972 , a groundbreaking and award-winning work illustrating the impact of African-American student activism on college and university campuses.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Africana Studies; the College of Arts and Sciences; the College of Education, Health, and Aviation; the Spears School of Business; the Division of Institutional Diversity; Edmon Low Library; and the Department of History.