The National Council for the Social Studies is kicking off its Centennial Celebration with the 2020 NCSS Virtual Conference: Advancing Social Justice on December 4-6, 2020, and we can’t wait!
Besides breakout sessions, networking opportunities, and a virtual exhibit hall, we’re super excited to hear from the keynote speakers. These presenters will discuss important topics related to teaching social justice.
Here’s the amazing lineup:
Chelsea Clinton & Andrea Davis Pinkney
Chelsea Clinton is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling picture book, She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World. She is also the NCSS winner of the 2019 Septima Clark Award honoring exceptional nonfiction trade books depicting women’s issues around the world.
Andrea Davis Pinkney is a New York Times-bestselling author of numerous books for children and young adults, including the upcoming She Persisted: Harriet Tubman, the first chapter book in a series highlighting several of the women featured in Clinton’s book. Clinton and Pinkney will engage in conversation about the life and accomplishments of Harriet Tubman and some of the other women featured in the She Persisted series.
Ken Burns & Lynn Novick
Ken Burns has directed and produced some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made, among them The Civil War, The Roosevelts, and The Vietnam War, the latter co-produced and co-directed with Lynn Novick. Over his more than 40-year career, Ken’s films have earned 16 Emmys and 2 Academy Award nominations. In 2008, Ken was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Lynn Novick is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning filmmaker who has produced and directed landmark PBS documentaries including The Vietnam War, Prohibition, The War, and more with her long-time collaborators Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein. Her most recent project, College Behind Bars (her first as solo director), has been called “a testament to the power of education, and why it remains such a dangerous and underrated weapon against a racially and economically unjust status quo in this nation.”
Samantha Power
Ambassador Samantha Power will partner with Facing History & Ourselves for a conversation on making a difference in times of crisis. Power served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and as a member of President Barack Obama’s cabinet from 2013 to 2017, and from 2009 to 2013 as President Obama’s human rights adviser. Power is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, and, most recently, the New York Times bestseller The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir. She is currently a Professor of Practice at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School.
Nikole Hannah-Jones
Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones will be in conversation to discuss her work as creator and lead writer of The New York Times’ major multimedia initiative, “The 1619 Project.” Named for the year the first enslaved Africans arrived in America, the project features an ongoing series of essays and art on the relationship between slavery and everything from social infrastructure and segregation, to music and sugar—all by Black American authors, activists, journalists, and more. Hannah-Jones wrote the project’s introductory essay, “Our Democracy’s Founding Ideals Were False When They Were Written. Black Americans Have Fought to Make Them True,” for which she received the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
Chuck Todd, Yamiche Alcindor, & Charlie Skyes
Noteworthy journalists Yamiche Alcindor and Charlie Sykes will join moderator Chuck Todd to discuss the results of the 2020 election, the presidential campaign, the new Congress, and the agenda for the next four years.
George Takei & Karen Korematsu
In his stunning graphic memoir, They Called Us Enemy, actor/author/activist George Takei revisits his haunting childhood in American concentration camps, as one of 120,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II. Takei will join Karen Korematsu, daughter of Fred T. Korematsu and founder of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute. Korematsu has said, “George Takei’s story reveals the important lessons of the WWII Japanese American Incarceration that still need to be learned today.”
Attend the 2020 NCSS Virtual Conference
You can access the 2020 NCSS Virtual Conference live on December 4-6, 2020. To learn more and register, just click the orange button below.