This roundtable brings together distinguished senior academics from different fields to reflect on their experiences with making a vision for academic innovation into a reality. By what steps does a shared vision emerge, and what does it take to bring it to fruition? Are there predictable challenges in realizing an innovative idea, and how can they be overcome? We hope to brainstorm together about successful practices that allow a vision to take root and flourish. Can our past experiences offer insight about how to turn vision into practice as we confront the challenges to free and vibrant intellectual life posed by the current moment?

Speakers

Farah Jasmine Griffin is University Professor and the inaugural Chair of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. She earned her B.A. in History and Literature from Harvard and her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale. She is the author or editor of eight books, including Who Set You Flowin’?: The African American Migration Narrative (Oxford, 1995), If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery (Free Press, 2001), and Harlem Nocturne (Basic Books, 2013). Her most recent book, Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature (W.W. Norton, 2021), was published to critical acclaim. A 2021–22 Guggenheim and Mellon Foundation Fellow, Griffin has also collaborated with Geri Allen and S. Epatha Merkerson on theatrical projects celebrating jazz women, such as those performed at the Apollo Theater (2013) and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (2016).

Jean E. Howard earned her B.A. from Brown, M.Phil. from the University of London as a Marshall Fellow, and Ph.D. from Yale as a Danforth Fellow. She began teaching at Syracuse in 1975 before joining Columbia, where she directed the Institute for Research on Women and Gender from 1996 to 1999 and later served as Vice Provost for Diversity Initiatives and Chair of English and Comparative Literature. A recipient of Guggenheim, NEH, Mellon, Folger, Huntington, and Newberry Library Fellowships, she has received Columbia’s Graduate Mentoring Award (2006) and Presidential Teaching Award (2020). Howard has published extensively on Shakespeare, early modern drama, feminist and Marxist theory, and the history of feminism. Her books include The Stage and Struggle in Early Modern England (1994), Engendering a Nation (with Phyllis Rackin, 1997), Theater of a City (2007), and King Lear: Language and Writing (2021). She is co-editor of The Norton Shakespeare and serves as a Trustee Emerita and member of the President’s Diversity Advisory Council at Brown University, and a member of the Advisory Board for the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women and Gender, also at Brown.

Bruce A. Shapiro was Executive Director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a project of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, from 2009-2025. He now directs the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma, an independent nonprofit organization encouraging innovative reporting on violence, conflict and tragedy worldwide. Shapiro is a recipient of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies for “outstanding and fundamental contributions to the social understanding of trauma.” An award-winning reporter on human rights, criminal justice and politics, Shapiro is a contributing editor at The Nation and U.S. correspondent for Late Night Live on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National. At Columbia Journalism School Shapiro also was Adjunct Professor of Journalism and Senior Advisor for Academic Affairs, and for more than 25 years he taught investigative journalism at Yale University. His books include Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America and Legal Lynching: The Death Penalty and America’s Future.

Louise Yelin (moderator) is Professor Emerita of Literature at Purchase College. During her distinguished career at the college, she was awarded the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1997 and named Doris and Carl Kempner Distinguished Professor for 2006–08. From 2008 to 2010, Yelin served as the interim dean of the School of Humanities and then as chair of the school from 2010 to 2013. She was an adjunct curator at the Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase, where she curated or co-curated exhibitions of contemporary art.

Please email [email protected] to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.