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Bakari Kitwana is a journalist, activist and political analyst whose commentary on politics and youth culture have been seen on the CNN, FOX News (the O’Reilly Factor), C-Span, PBS (The Tavis Smiley Show) and heard on NPR. He’s currently Senior Media Fellow at the Harvard Law based think tank, The Jamestown Project, and the CEO of Rap Sessions: Community Dialogues on Hip-Hop, which conducts townhall meetings around the country on difficult dialogues facing the hip-hop generation.

His 2002 book The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture, which focuses on young Blacks born after the Civil Rights Movement, has been adopted as a course book in classrooms at over 100 colleges and universities.

Kitwana published his first book, The Rap on Gangsta Rap in 1994. Since then he’s been the Editorial Director of Third World Press, Executive Editor of the hip-hop magazine The Source, and co-founder the first ever National Hip-Hop Political Convention, which brought over 4000 young people to Newark in 2004 to create and endorse a political agenda for the hip-hop generation.

Kitwana has been a consultant on hip-hop for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Artist-in-Residence at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago, and senior editor of newsone.com (the internet news presence of Radio One).

An active writer, his essays have appeared in The New York Times, the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Savoy and the Progressive. For the last decade, he has lectured and given keynote presentations at the nation’s leading colleges and universities, including Princeton University, Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of California – Berkeley, Columbia University and countless others across the country.

A native of Long Island, NY, Kitwana holds a B.A. and two Masters degrees (in English and Teaching) from the University of Rochester. Most recently, he was named a Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media at Columbia College. The author of four books, his 2010 Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era (Third World Press) is his most recent work.

ABOUT RAP SESSIONS
For the last four years, Rap Sessions, the first national tour of its kind, brought townhall style meetings to scores of cities across the country. In 2009, Rap Sessions continues its commitment to engaging the most difficult dialogues facing the hip-hop generation. By touring the nation with leading hip-hop activists, scholars and artists, Rap Sessions helps jumpstart crucial local debate. Past participating institutions include Princeton University, Brown University, University of California - Berkeley, Stanford, Vanderbilt University, University of California - Los Angeles, the University of Chicago, among others.

The community centers that often facilitated local discussion in previous eras have been caught up in changing demographics and economies. Rap Sessions: Community Dialogues on Hip-Hop serves as a virtual community center where we will debate issues of vital concern to the hip-hop generation. The goal of these discussions is to assist existing social change efforts. By coming together as a community, we can best identify solutions to the crisis of our time.

Tour Schedule

September 29, 2010
Conway, AK
Hendrix College

"Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop"


November 2, 2010
St. Louis, MO
Washington University St. Louis

"Global Hip-Hop and Economic Recovery"