9 Contemporary Black Academics You Should Know

Dr. Julianne Malveaux

Julianne Malveaux is an African-American economist, author, liberal social and political commentator and businesswoman. From 2007 to 2012, Malveaux was the president of Bennett College. She earned a Ph.D. in economics from MIT and has written columns for the last 30 years looking at the subject through the lenses of race and class.

Television appearances followed, as network and cable programs sought out the woman Cornel West referred to as “the most iconoclastic public intellectual in the country.” Her thoughts have been collected in several books, most recently Surviving and Thriving: 365 Facts in Black Economic History. It’s published by Last Word Productions, a multimedia company she founded and for which she serves as CEO.

Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan

Dr. Yosef Alfredo Antonio Ben-Jochannan is an Ethiopian-Puerto Rican writer, historian and Egyptologist. Ben-Jochannan earned a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering at the University of Puerto Rico and his master’s degree in architectural engineering from the University of Havana, Cuba. He also holds doctoral degrees in cultural anthropology and Moorish history. He taught at Malcolm King College, City College of New York and Cornell University.

Ben-Jochannan is the author of 49 books, primarily on ancient Nile Valley civilizations and their impact on Western cultures. One of his most thought-provoking works, African Origins of the Major ‘Western Religions’ (1970), highlights how the roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam originated in Black Africa.

Dr. Imani Perry

Imani Perry is a professor at the Center for African American Studies and a faculty associate in the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University. She holds a Ph.D. in history and law from Harvard, and her research looks at these subjects in the context of race. Her notable publications include: More Terrible, More Beautiful: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States and Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop.