Peniel Joseph
Peniel E. Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values, founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs, and Distinguished Service Leadership Professor and Professor of History in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.
An internationally recognized scholar-activist and author and editor of seven award-winning books, most recently “The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century,” winner of the 2023 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Additionally, in 2022, he was named the grand prize winner of the 2022 Hamilton Book Award, the University of Texas at Austin’s highest research honor for his book, “The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.” He is a frequent national commentator on issues of race, civil rights, and democracy. A fellow of the Society of American Historians, he lives in Austin, Texas.
Professor Joseph is the 2025-2026 Frank M. Updike Memorial Scholar.
Professor Joseph is the 2025-2026 Frank M. Updike Memorial Scholar.