Ta-Nehisi Coates, winner of the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction, will speak at Swarthmore on Monday, Feb. 10 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. in LPAC’s Pearson-Hall Theatre. The author will be reading from and discussing his newest book, The Message, which documents his travels in Columbia, S.C.; Dakar, Senegal; and Palestine’s West Bank.

“[Coates] is widely recognized as one of the most influential writers of his generation,” says Associate Professor of History Ahmad Shokr, one of the event’s organizers. “He has long been, and continues to be, a powerful voice of moral clarity.”

Coates’ visit is part of a series of events called Global Justice: Historical Present, Imagined Futures, one of many highlights of the 2024-25 Cooper Series slate of events.

“One of the tremendous things about being on this campus is that we have the resources to bring in people from around the world to have the kinds of conversations that need to play out right now,” says Associate Professor of English Literature Sangina Patnaik, who co-organized the event. “We feel really lucky that we were able to bring Angela Davis and then a few months later, we're able to bring Ta-Nehisi Coates.”

“The series really takes us through interconnected questions of justice that define our present moment,” says Shokr. “From the struggle for survival in the face of settler colonialism, to the battle for inclusive and sustainable education to the legacies of apartheid in South Africa. And of course, the genocide in Gaza."

“The series brings together poets, scholars, and writers that are motivated to confront all these injustices by understanding present day issues within their appropriate historical and legal and cultural contexts,” adds Shokr.

“That is so important in these troubling times, so that we can confront structures of power and injustice that might seem overwhelming, might seem intractable,” says Shokr. “Through the work of someone like Ta-Nehisi Coates, we can think about how to confront them, and we can think about possible worlds beyond them.”

Shokr and Patnaik have worked to bring Coates to campus since it was first announced that he was working on The Message.

“He's faculty at Howard University. The book is addressed to his students, and it is a book that is about storytelling,” says Patnaik. “I think it’s moments like these where we realize how deeply we need writers to help us see, help us make sense of the connections that we might feel exist, forms of solidarity that we might think should exist, but don't quite know how to think across. And Coates is one of the people who's doing that work for us right now.

“It's really exciting for us to be able to bring our classes to events where people who are really shaping public discourse right now are in front of us, and our students are able to engage with them,” says Patnaik.