In 2017, Nikole Hannah-Jones was named a MacArthur Fellow, a rare honor that is both a recognition of her past work as an investigative journalist chronicling the history of racial bias in schooling and housing, and a down payment on her work yet to come. Currently at The New York Times, Hannah-Jones has won Peabody and Polk Awards for her reporting. In 2016, she helped found the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a training and mentorship organization geared towards increasing the number of investigative reporters of color.

In Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law, Hannah-Jones details how the Fair Housing Act of 1968 has been simply disregarded by administration after administration—Democratic and Republican —with billions of grant dollars set aside by HUD to fight segregation left unused. Her latest work focuses on school segregation: The Problem We All Live With will be published by the One World imprint of Penguin/Random House.

Hannah-Jones will appear as part of November’s First Thursdays festival and the Branigan Lecture for the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS). A CAHI Distinguished Speaker, her visit is co-sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Council, the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society, the School of Education, the Maurer School of Law, IU's Institute for Advanced Study, the Media School, and the Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs.