UN Department of Global Communications Hosts ‘Knowledge, History and Power: In Conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones, Laura Trevelyan’, 6 December

“Knowledge, History and Power” will be the focus of a conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones, award-winning investigative reporter for the New York Times Magazine and Laura Trevelyan, former BBC correspondent, to be held during the lunchtime at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on Wednesday, 6 December, from 1:15 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. in Conference Room 1.  The highly anticipated discussion will be moderated by Columbia University History Professor, Natasha Lightfoot, PhD.

Organized by the United Nations Department of Global Communications Outreach Programme on the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slavery in collaboration with the Universities Studying Slavery Consortium, the hybrid event — in-person and online — will take place within the context of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Participants may watch the livestream on UN Web TV.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the landmark, The 1619 Project, now a Hulu original docuseries.  The project illuminates the legacy of slavery in the contemporary United States and highlights the contributions of Black Americans to every aspect of American society.  She is also the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University where she is the founding director of the Center for Journalism & Democracy.

Laura Trevelyan left BBC News in March after a 30-year career, following her family’s historic trip to Grenada in February where she led the Trevelyan’s public apology to the Grenadian people for the role of their ancestors in enslaving Africans on the island.  She is the co-founder of Heirs of Slavery, a group of British people whose ancestors profited from the enslavement of Africans in the Caribbean.  She was recently named Honorary Associate Fellow at the PJ Patterson Institute for Africa Caribbean Advocacy at the University of the West Indies.

Professor Natasha Lightfoot, PhD., is a specialist in slavery and emancipation studies, and Black identities, politics and cultures in the fields of Caribbean, Atlantic World and African Diaspora History.  She is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and a Faculty Fellow in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.  Professor Lightfoot is deeply committed to raising awareness of the global impact of the 400-year-long transatlantic slave trade.

The Outreach Programme on the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slavery was established in 2006 with the adoption of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 61/19 to mobilize remembrance of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, and to educate about the causes and consequences of the history and to communicate the dangers of racism and prejudice.  The Programme works closely with civil society, governments, educators and organizations involved in teaching the history of the transatlantic slave trade to raise awareness of the impact of the transatlantic slave trade on the modern world, including racism towards people of African descent, and the importance of standing up for human rights.

The Universities Studying Slavery is a consortium of over 100 institutions of higher learning in the United States, Canada, Colombia, Scotland, Ireland and England.  These schools are focused on sharing best practices and guiding principles as they engage in truth-telling educational projects focused on human bondage and the legacies of racism in their histories.  This collective was created by the University of Virginia President’s Commission on Slavery and the University  both to ensure that the Universities Studying Slavery’s important work would spread beyond Virginia and to respond to the calls for guidance from other schools.

For more information, please contact Omyma David at email:  david17@un.org.