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Isabel Wilkerson to deliver the 2025 Beatty Lecture

Published: 28 August 2025
Pulitzer-Prize winning American journalist, journalism professor and author will speak Oct. 23

Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents and The Warmth of Other Suns will deliver the 2025 Beatty Lecture at 91 on Oct. 23 during the University’s annual Homecoming festivities. Nahlah Ayed, host of CBC national radio program Ideas, will moderate the event.

Wilkerson has been widely acclaimed as one of most powerful storytellers of our time. Her landmark non-fiction works have transformed public understanding of the historical roots and enduring impact of structural inequality in the United States and globally.  U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Wilkerson the National Humanities Medal in 2016, praising her for “championing the stories of an unsung history.”

“Isabel Wilkerson is a voice the world needs to hear, especially now,” said Dominique Bérubé, Vice-President, Research and Innovation. “Her work challenges us to confront injustice and historical silence with honesty, courage and empathy. She personifies the Beatty Lecture’s mission to change the world through dialogue and the exchange of ideas. 91 is honoured that she will deliver the 71st annual Beatty Lecture.”

Born in Washington, D.C., Wilkerson studied journalism at Howard University and then worked at the Detroit Free Press. A year later, she joined the New York Times and in 1991 was appointed the paper’s Chicago Bureau Chief. In 1994, at 33, she made history as the first Black woman in American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first Black journalist to win for individual reporting.

Wilkerson then embarked on a 15-year journey researching and writing what would become her landmark book The Warmth of Other Suns, published in 2010. Based on interviews with over 1,200 people, the book chronicles the Great Migration, when more than six million Black Americans left the South from 1910 to the 1970s, in search of greater freedom and escape from racial violence.

The Warmth of Other Suns received widespread acclaim, appearing on over 30 Best of the Year lists and winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. In 2024, the New York Times ranked it second on its list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st century – and first among non-fiction titles.

A powerful lens on social hierarchy

Wilkerson’s latest book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, published in 2020, describes an inherited and arbitrary race-based caste system that has shaped and divided American society and serves to limit opportunity. Wilkerson believes that dismantling caste is possible through radical empathy rooted in our shared humanity, describing the act of writing Caste as “an act of optimism and an act of hope.”

Time magazine named Caste its Nonfiction Book of the Year, calling it an “immediate classic.” In 2023, director Ava DuVernay adapted the book into the feature film Origin.

Wilkerson is the recipient of numerous additional awards.

She has been the James M. Cox Professor of Journalism at Emory University, Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University, Kreeger-Wolf endowed lecturer at Northwestern University and Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University’s College of Communication.

About the Beatty Lecture

Established in 1954, the Beatty Lecture is one of Canada’s longest running and most prestigious public lecture series. Hosted by the Office of the Vice-President (Research and Innovation), the series brings influential thinkers from around the world to speak about timely and transformative ideas.

CBC host Nahlah Ayed, a celebrated journalist and veteran foreign correspondent, returns for her fifth year moderating the event.

The 2025 Beatty Lecture will be held on Thursday, Oct. 23 at 6 p.m. at Tanna Schulich Hall on 91’s downtown campus. Tickets will go on sale in September. For event details please visit the Beatty Lecture website. Media are invited to contact the Beatty organizing committee.

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