A conversation with journalist, MacArthur Fellow, and National Book Award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates. During his tenure as senior editor at The Atlantic, Coates wrote the influential 2014 essay “The Case for Reparations” and in 2019 testified in front of a Congressional House hearing on H.R. 40, a bill to establish a commission to study reparations. The conversation will be moderated by Duncan Ryuken Williams (USC Ito Center). 

Brought to you by the Ito Center in partnership with Densho, the Japanese American National Museum, and Tsuru for Solidarity. 

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Ta-Nehisi Coates is an author, journalist, screenwriter, executive producer and professor. He is the author of the bestselling books The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, The Water Dancer, and Between the World and Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. In April 2018, Between The World And Me was adapted for the stage and premiered at the iconic Apollo Theater. In November 2020 it was adapted for film and aired on HBO, and for which Ta-Nehisi was an Executive Producer. His novel The Water Dancer will be turned into a film adaptation – with Ta-Nehisi writing the screenplay - and will be produced by Plan B Entertainment, Harpo Productions and MGM Studios. He is also the current author of the Marvel comic Captain America. Ta-Nehisi is the recipient of a 2015 MacArthur Fellowship. He is currently in his fourth year as a distinguished writer in residence at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. 

Duncan Ryūken Williams is Professor of Religion/American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and Director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. Williams is the author of the LA Times bestseller American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2019) about Buddhism and the WWII Japanese American internment; The Other Side of Zen: A Social History of Sōtō Zen Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan (Princeton University Press, 2005), and editor of seven books including Issei Buddhism in the Americas, American Buddhism, Hapa Japan, and Buddhism and Ecology. 

This event is part of the Ito Center Black + Japanese American Reparations. Other events in the series include "From Japanese American Redress to Black Reparations: A Conversation with John Tateishi and William Darity/A. Kirsten Mullen" and a full book club.  All are welcome. Event partners include Densho, the Japanese American National Museum, and Tsuru for Solidarity.  See the full series flyer.