Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, will serve as Bryn Mawr College's 2026-27 Mary Flexner Lecturer, announced Bryn Mawr President Wendy Cadge today.
A writer and speaker on Black politics, social movements, and racial inequality in the United States, Taylor is author of Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, which was a semi-finalist for the National Book Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. She is author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, editor of How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, co-editor with Colin Kaepernick and Robin D.G. Kelley of Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies, and a cofounder of Hammer & Hope, a magazine of Black culture, history and politics.
Taylor is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Fellowship, as well as a Lannan Cultural Freedom Award and a Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ nonfiction.
The Flexner Lectureship, established in honor of Mary Flexner, a Bryn Mawr graduate of the Class of 1895, supports a leading humanist or humanistic social scientist whose work demonstrates the public value of the humanities. As the Flexner lecturer, Taylor will visit campus periodically during the 2026-27 academic year to present talks, visit classes, engage in faculty seminars as time permits, and otherwise enrich the intellectual life of our community. Her work will form the basis of a scholarly book to be published by Harvard University Press.
"I am thrilled to be welcoming a scholar of Professor Taylor's distinction and public engagement and grateful to the Committee on Endowed Lectures for its hard work and counsel," wrote Cadge in her announcement. "We received 23 nominations for the lectureship from faculty, students, and staff across the College, an inspiring signal of the value our community places on scholarship at the highest level."