We are more than the circumstances of our lives, and what we do matters. In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Ph.D., one of the nation’s preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Dr. Glaude shows how ordinary people have the capacity to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires, rather than outsourcing their needs to leaders who purportedly represent them.

The book begins with Dr. Glaude’s unease with the Obama years. He felt then, and does even more urgently now, that the excitement around the Obama presidency had become a disciplining tool to narrow legitimate forms of Black political dissent. This narrowing continues to undermine the well-being of Black communities. In response, Dr. Glaude guides us away from enthusiastic reliance on elected leaders and full surrender to a belief in unchanging political structures. He weaves anecdotes about his own evolving views on Black politics together with the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, Sheldon Wolin, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison.

Dr. Glaude (FAN ’20) is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University and the author of several books, including Democracy in Black and the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, winner of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Book Prize.

Dr. Glaude will be in conversation with Lisa L. Moore, Ph.D., LICSW, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Master’s Program in Social Work, Social Policy, and Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. She has worked in higher education for over 25 years as an administrator and faculty member.