Panelist:

Malcolm Kenyatta

In 2023, he was appointed by President Joe Biden to chair the Presidential Advisory Commission on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Black Americans.

Representative Kenyatta is a barrier-breaking public figure, becoming the first openly LGBTQ+ person of color and one of the youngest people elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 2018. In 2022, he became the first openly LGBTQ+ person of color to seek a U.S. Senate seat in American history. In April 2024, he made history again as the first openly LGBTQ+ person ever nominated for statewide office by a major political party in Pennsylvania when he became the Democratic nominee for Auditor General. In the general election, he earned nearly 3.1 million votes, the second-highest vote total for any Democrat on the ticket that year. In February 2025 he was elected as Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Throughout his career, Representative Kenyatta has been a vocal proponent of protecting workers’ rights and rooting out government corruption and waste. He holds multiple legislative leadership roles, including as a member of the powerful State Government Committee with oversight of state agencies and elections, where he chairs the Subcommittee on Government Operations; Chair of the Financial Services and Banking Subcommittee in the Commerce Committee; and as a member of the Finance and Judiciary Committees.

In 2020, he was chosen to give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention alongside a group o f other ‘Rising Stars,’ and in 2024, he returned to the DNC as an individual speaker, continuing to represent the next generation of Democratic leadership. His groundbreaking political career and personal life have been the subject of two award-winning documentaries, including an Emmy nominated, Al Roker-produced featurelength film, Kenyatta: Do Not Wait Your Turn.

Representative Kenyatta lives in North Philadelphia with his husband, Dr. Matthew Kenyatta, and their dog, C leo.

Moderator:

David Faris

David Faris is a Professor of Political Science at Roosevelt University and the author of It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics (2018) and The Kids Are All Left: How Young Voters Will Unite America (2020). His writing has appeared in The Nation, Slate, The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Newsweek, Washington Monthly, and more. 

Panelist:

Dr. Sue Taylor

Her award-winning writing has appeared in American Art, American Craft, Art in America, Art Journal, Art News, ArtUS, New Art Examiner, and Oregon ArtsWatch. She is the author of hundreds of catalogue essays, exhibition and book reviews, and two monographs informed by her research interest in psychoanalytic theory, Hans Bellmer: The Anatomy of Anxiety (MIT Press, 2000) and Grant Wood’s Secrets (University of Delaware Press, 2020).

Honors include the Chicago Women in Publishing Award and grants and fellowships from the American Association of University Women, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum, American Psychoanalytic Association, and the Kamelia Massih Outstanding Faculty Award from PSU.

Panelist:

Rehema Barber-Williams

Previously, Barber-Williams held positions at the Tarble Arts Center at Eastern Illinois University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Memphis, among others. She has participated in the AICA-USA Art Writing Workshop sponsored by the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Center for Curatorial Leadership Fellowship, the Getty Leadership Institute, the Japan Foundation Curatorial Exchange Program, and was a Saint Louis Art Museum Romare Bearden Fellow. Barber- Williams has contributed to numerous publications such as the Shape of Abstraction catalogue (Saint Louis Art Museum), The Commercial Appeal, Fiber Arts, International Review of African American Art, Number Magazine, and the Routledge Reader Series. Recently, Barber-Williams led the curatorial team responsible for Legendary Voices: Art for the Next Century and edited 101 Legendary Selections from the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (Hirmer Publishers), the KIA’s first handbook of its collection.

Moderator:

Susan Weininger

Susan Weininger is Professor Emerita of Art History at Roosevelt University. She has curated exhibitions, lectured and written extensively on Chicago artists including Gertrude Abercrombie, Ivan Albright, Tunis Ponsen, Francis Chapin, Romolo Roberti, Paul Kelpe, Todros Geller, Frances Strain, Hazel and Vin Hannell, and Gladys Nilsson as well as modernist Chicago art in general, with a particular interest in women artists and Jewish artists. She was a co-curator of Chicago Modern, 1893-1945: The Pursuit of the New (Terra Museum of American Art, 2004) for which she also contributed essays to the catalog. She co-curated the 1991 retrospective of the art of Gertrude Abercrombie (Illinois State Museum) and contributed essays to the catalog. She contributed essays to Chicago Painting 1895-1945: The Bridges Collection of Chicago Painting, Art for the People: The Mural Reference book for the Chicago Public Schools. She wrote an essay for the exhibition Gertrude Abercrombie: Portrait of the Artist as a Landscape (Elmhurst Museum and Illinois State Museum, 2018) and contributed to the book published in conjunction with the Gertrude Abercrombie exhibition at Karma Gallery in New York in 2018. She co-curated and wrote an essay for the exhibition, Todros Geller: Strange Worlds (Spertus Institute, Chicago, 2018-19). She co-authored Chicago Visions: The Art Collection of Clifford Law Offices (Clifford Law Offices, 2023). She currently serves on the Board of the New Deal Center of Roosevelt University and on the advisory Board of the Illinois Women Artists Project, and is a docent at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.

Panelist:

Allida Black, Ph.D.

An expert on Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, she has published ten books and multiple articles on women, politics, and human rights policy.

Outside the academy, she works with multinational and non-governmental organizations to promote and defend human rights and women and girl’s political empowerment.

Moderator:

Margaret Rung

Panelist:

Nelson Lichtenstein

Nelson Lichtenstein is Research Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. An historian of labor, business and politics, he is the author or editor of 19 books, including State of the Union: A Century of American Labor; The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business, a biography of the labor leader Walter Reuther, and A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism. In 2019 and 2020, he co-edited Beyond the New Deal Order: From the Great Depression to the Great Recession and a companion volume, Capitalism Contested: the New Deal and Its Legacies. For nearly 20 years Lichtenstein directed the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy at UCSB. He writes opinion pieces largely for Dissent, Jacobin, New Labor Forum and The American Prospect. In 2023 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Panelist:

Sara Nelson

Sara Nelson has served as the International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO since 2014, representing 55,000 of aviation’s first responders at 20 airlines. She has been a union Flight Attendant since 1996 when she started flying at United Airlines. Sara designed the successful payroll support program that was an historic Worker’s First relief program that kept aviation workers connected to their paychecks, healthcare, and other benefits for 16 months during the COVID pandemic, while banning stock buybacks and dividends across the industry and capping executive compensation for two years after the relief period ended making aviation the only industry not to grow in inequality during the pandemic. Sara believes labor should set the agenda every time.

The New York Times called her “America’s most powerful flight attendant” for her role in helping to end the 35-day Government Shutdown, InStyle Magazine placed her on their Top 50 Badass Women list, the New Yorker did a major profile in 2022, and Fast Company made her one of their Top Ten Innovators of the last ten years. She was elected chair of the International Transport Workers’ Federation Civil Aviation Section, representing nearly 5 million aviation workers around the world. Sara often says corporations have money and control but workers have the power. She encourages women everywhere to join unions and run unions.

Moderator:

Jeff Edwards

Jeff Edwards (he/him) is a staff organizer for UIC United Faculty, a union of non-tenure system and tenure-system faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago. UICUF is committed to preserving freedom of inquiry, strengthening the voice of all faculty in university governance, and ensuring that college teaching makes for a lifelong, stable, middle-class life. Since certification in 2012, UICUF has prioritized job security, fair workloads, and raising minimum salaries. Successive contract campaigns over the last decade, including a strike in 2023, have made UIC faculty better paid than their non-unionized counterparts at the “flagship” UI campus at Urbana/Champaign—a reversal of the case before organizing. UICUF also has embraced “bargaining for the common good,” winning better access to neuropsychological testing and mental health support for students in the context of the COVID pandemic. Prior to joining UICUF in 2014 as their inaugural local staff organizer, Jeff was on the Political Science faculty at Roosevelt University for 26 years, where he was a leader in the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors. He is a proud member of The Chicago News Guild/Communications Workers of America Local 34071.

Panelist:

Kennedy Blashill

Panelist:

Larke Johnson

Panelist:

Asher McMaher

Asher McMaher (they/them/theirs) is the Executive Director of Trans Up Front IL, the only deaf and trans led organization in the State of Illinois, and Senior Advisor of Development and Regional Strategy for Brave Space Alliance, with over 10 years of advocacy experience supporting transgender and gender-expansive youth, teens, and young adults. A passionate advocate with a background in legal research, Asher has been instrumental in shaping policies and initiatives that protect and empower transgender individuals through the lens of access and equality. 

As a deaf and disabled organizer, Asher is deeply committed to disability justice and ensuring access, inclusion, and autonomy for all members of the TGNC community. Their advocacy is rooted in intersectionality and lived experience, and they work to uplift the voices of those most impacted by systemic harm.

They have led multiple campaigns, including organizing the Trans Day of Visibility protest in Chicago, the rapid action response for U.S. v Skrmetti in partnership with ACLU National and Lamba Legal, and were recently a featured speaker at the Human Rights Conference in Washington, DC for World Pride. Asher also spearheaded the rapid response support system for the gender affirming care crisis throughout the State of Illinois and its boarding states including starting its first fund to support families in need. Asher is also a frequent speaker at conferences and workshops, sharing their expertise on transgender issues, disability justice, legal protections, and community empowerment.

Moderator:

Dr. Sami Schalk

Dr. Sami Schalk is a professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Bodyminds Reimagined (2018) and Black Disability Politics (2022), both available open access from Duke University Press. Dr. Schalk’s research focuses on disability, race and gender in contemporary American literature and culture. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Schalk writes for mainstream outlets and makes art as a form of pleasure activism. Her current research project focuses on the creation and impact of pleasure spaces for multiply marginalized people. 

Panelist:

Dr. Adam Lupel

Adam Lupel is Executive Director, Coalition for the UN We Need (C4UN). Previously, he was Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at the International Peace Institute, 2016-2025. He served as IPI Acting President and CEO from October 2020 to March 2021. Between 2014 and 2016 he was the director of research for IPI and the Independent Commission on Multilateralism. In 2015, he also led IPI’s support to the General Assembly-mandated “Lessons Learned Exercise” on the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, working in close collaboration with the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General.

He is the author of Globalization and Popular Sovereignty: Democracy’s Transnational Dilemma (2009) and the co-editor of Peace Operations and Organized Crime: Enemies or Allies? (2011) and Responding to Genocide: The Politics of International Action (2013).

Prior to 2006, when he joined IPI as Editor, he was the Managing Editor ofConstellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, and he taught modern and contemporary political theory at The New School’s Eugene Lang College in New York. He has a PhD in political theory and an MA in liberal studies from the New School for Social Research and a BA in international relations with a concentration in Latin America from Boston University.

Panelist:

David B. Woolner

David B. Woolner is Professor of History and the Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation Fellow of Roosevelt Studies at Marist University, and Senior Fellow and Resident Historian of the Roosevelt Institute. He is the author of The Last 100 Days: FDR at War and at Peace and is editor/co-editor of five books including Progressivism in America: Past, Present, and Future; FDR’s World: War, Peace, and Legacies and FDR and the Environment.

His reviews and op-ed pieces have appeared in The Washington Post, TIME, The Nation, The Irish Times and other publications. He served as historical advisor to the Ken Burns films The Roosevelts: An Intimate History and The US and the Holocaust and for numerous special exhibitions at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum.

He is a member of the Scholarly Board of the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History; the Editorial Board of the International History Review; the Advisory Group to the Churchill Archives Project; is a faculty member of the Bard Prison Initiative; and has held several overseas fellowships, most recently as a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar at the University of Southern Denmark.

Moderator:

Ian Hurd

Ian Hurd is Professor of Political Science and President of the Faculty Senate at Northwestern University. He is the director of the International Studies program and was the founding director of the Weinberg Center for International and Area Studies. 

His research is on international law and politics, including on the international rule of law, international order, and the United Nations and other international organizations. His textbook International Organizations: Politics, Law, Practice, now in its fifth edition, is a standard in college courses on international politics.

He has been chair of the International Organization section of the International Studies Association and a visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, WZB-Berlin, Sciences Po in Paris, and elsewhere. He is a frequent contributor to media on current events.