Wilkerson to deliver keynote at CU Boulder’s Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and critically acclaimed nonfiction writer Isabel Wilkerson will deliver the keynote address at CU Boulder's Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation 2025. Wilkerson is the author of the bestsellers “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” and “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.”

The campus convocation will take place 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 16 at Macky Auditorium and is free and open to students, staff, faculty and members of the local community. A registration link and additional information are available on the convocation webpage. Students, staff and faculty are encouraged to register early to ensure seating before registration closes on Jan. 2.

Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns” won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, was among Time magazine’s 10 best nonfiction books of the 2010s, and was on The New York Times magazine’s list of the best nonfiction books of all time. Her critically acclaimed book “Caste” inspired the biographical drama “Origin” directed by filmmaker Ava DuVernay. Following her keynote address, Wilkerson will answer questions and sign copies of her books.

David Humphrey, assistant vice chancellor for diversity, equity and inclusion, said the convocation would aim to address important questions Wilkerson posed in “Caste,” including: “How do castes continually empower themselves across the boundaries of time and space, and what might it look like to disrupt these patterns?”

“Our goal,” Humphrey said, “is to illuminate the nuanced ways in which global themes of power and intersectional solidarity have informed the drumbeat of justice that underpins both present-day and historical freedom movements. Now more than ever, we must become students of history or we will be destined to repeat it.”

The eponymous annual campus convocation honors King’s legacy and provides educational and community-building opportunities. The theme for the 2025 event is “Freedom Intersections,” an exploration of the geneses of global freedom movements.

King, a Baptist minister, activist and political philosopher, was one of the country’s most influential and celebrated civil rights leaders. Before his murder in Memphis on April 4, 1968, he became the youngest man to win the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 35. His iconic “I Have a Dream” speech and his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” continue to resonate today.

Leading up to and during the convocation, Humphrey said participants would be asked to consider within the present-day context a passage from the letter King wrote while he was jailed for leading nonviolent, anti-segregation demonstrations in Alabama in 1963.

The renowned passage is, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

Co-sponsors of the 2025 convocation include the Center for African and African American Studies, Strategic Resources and Support, University Libraries and the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.