Carleton Convos

Gregg Colburn P ’26, associate professor for the Runstad Department of Real Estate at the University of Washington College of Built Environments, delivered the Family Weekend convocation address at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, October 13. He spoke about the book he recently co-authored, Homelessness is a Housing Problem, which looks to statistically examine the conventional beliefs about what drives homelessness.

Colburn’s work is primarily focused on topics related to housing and homelessness. He is a member of the National Alliance to End Homelessness Research Council—an organization dedicated to the eradication of homelessness and a key provider of data and research on the topic to inform policy. He also co-chairs the University of Washington’s Homelessness Research Initiative. Colburn plays an active role in community efforts to address the critical housing shortages in the Puget Sound region. 

Colburn earned his BA from Albion College, his MBA from Northwestern University, and his PhD from the University of Minnesota. Before his work in academia, he was an investment banker and private equity professional.

Learn more about Carleton Convos at go.carleton.edu/convocations

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, environmental activist and hip hop artist, delivered convocation at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, October 6. He spoke on how climate change is influencing the migration of people in South and Latin America. Martinez is known for his talent for connecting people through popular culture and sharing the message of his Indigenous roots in order to protect the planet and re-imagine the future of the next generation. He is also a founder of Earth Guardians, an organization for empowering and organizing youth to protect the future of the planet.

Since the age of six, Martinez has stood on the front lines of the climate and environmental movement. He has addressed the general assembly at the UN multiple times and spoken on panels with Bernie Sanders, Van Jones, Shailene Woodley, Bill McKibbens, Pharrell Williams, and many others. He has stood to protect sacred land from pipelines and performed all over the world. His music is known to push the envelope of hip hop for what the genre can look and sound like; his lyrics are informed by his Mexican roots and his experiences growing up in the environmental justice movement. 

Recently named one of the TIME100 Next, Martinez has been a guest on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and Real Time with Bill Maher. He has also appeared multiple times on PBS, Showtime, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Upworthy, The Guardian, Vogue, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, CNN, MSNBC, HBO, Netflix, and VICE, and has been photographed by Annie Leibovitz.

Learn more about Carleton Convos at go.carleton.edu/convocations

Jazz Hampton is CEO and general counsel at TurnSignl, a Minnesota-based company that provides real-time legal guidance and de-escalation from attorneys to drivers who have been stopped by law enforcement or were involved in a car crash. Hampton delivered the convocation address at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, September 29. 

TurnSignl is a proudly Black-owned tech company with an app that allows users to initiate a video call with an attorney at the moment of a traffic stop or car crash. The app also features automatic front-camera recording of the interaction, which is stored and encrypted in the user’s cloud. TurnSignl’s mission is for everybody to get home safe, including drivers and law enforcement. Launched in 2021, TurnSignl was created in the wake of the murders of Philando Castile, George Floyd, and Daunte Wright as a solution to bridge the gap between law enforcement and drivers. In his TurnSignl introduction, Hampton said, “We want everyone to be safe and to be empowered.” TurnSignl has been featured by NBC segments Top Story and Nightly News with Lester Holt and on MSNBC. 

Hampton was named one of Minneapolis–St. Paul’s 40 Under 40 for his work at TurnSignl and in the Twin Cities community. He also sits on the Board of Directors at the Minneapolis Foundation and Catholic Charities Twin Cities and is a Philanthropic Advisory Council member for the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain. Before joining TurnSignl, Hampton was a practicing attorney and the director of DEI at the national law firm Foley & Mansfield, as well as an adjunct professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law.

Learn more about Carleton Convos at go.carleton.edu/convocations

Dr. Susan Jaret McKinstry, Helen F. Lewis Professor of English, delivered the Argument & Inquiry Convocation on Friday, September 22. The A&I convocation is a key aspect of the first-year A&I seminars—a class crafted for first-year students to get a grasp of college-level classes through the lens of a liberal arts school. In her address, “The Whole Story,” Jaret McKinstry highlighted the nature of liberal arts and the liberal arts approach to learning.

Over the course of her time at Carleton, Jaret McKinstry has taught courses on a variety of subjects, from prose to poetry, memoir, and journalism. She has also directed Carleton off-campus study programs in London and Ireland, Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) programs in London and Florence, and taught visual studies as a Fulbright scholar in Moscow. Her adventures also include a poetry retreat in Galway, Ireland and leading Carleton Alumni Adventures trips in Ireland, Scotland, England, and Norway.

Jaret McKinstry’s scholarly work has mainly focused on a group of radical nineteenth century British artists and writers who saw art as a way to spark social change. She co-edited the book Feminism, Bakhtin, and the Dialogic, and has published articles on Dante Rossetti, William Morris, Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, Ann Beattie, and others. Her own poetry pinpoints the intersections of place, history, and story, and has been published in Plain Songs I & II, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Willows Wept Review, Red Wing Poet Artist Collaboration, and the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Her first chapbook, Tumblehome, will be published in 2024.

Jaret McKinstry received her BA and MBA from Miami University in Ohio, and her PhD from the University of Michigan. Carleton was her first full-time academic position and her introduction to a liberal arts college, and she has been fervent advocate for the beauty and use of the liberal arts ever since.

Learn more about Carleton Convos at go.carleton.edu/convocations

Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson is the Michael and Denise Kellen ’68 Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. Her research focuses on slavery and abolitionists, violence as a political discourse, historical film, and Black women’s history. Most recently, she has written and spoken on political threats to academic freedom. She is the author of the award-winning book Force & Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence, which won the James Broussard Best First Book Prize, was a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize and the Museum of African American History Stone Book Prize, and was listed among 13 books to read on African American History by the Washington Post. Her essays have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe, among many others. She has also been featured in Apple TV’s highly acclaimed docuseries Lincoln’s Dilemma as well as other documentaries for Netflix, MSNBC, and PBS. She is the host and executive producer of You Get a Podcast! The Unauthorized Study of the Queen of Talk and co-host of the Radiotopia podcast This Day in Esoteric Political History. Carter Jackson serves as a Historian-in-Residence for the Museum of African American History in Boston and is commissioner for the Massachusetts Historical Commission. Her next book, The Remedy: A Forceful History of Black Resistance to White Supremacy, will be out in spring 2024 with Basic Books.

Learn more about Carleton Convos at go.carleton.edu/convocations

Community activist, civil rights lawyer, and writer Arjun Singh Sethi delivered the convocation address at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, May 12. Sethi works closely with Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Sikh communities and is an expert in policing and counter terrorism reform, racial and religious profiling, and the best practices to combat hate violence. He is also actively involved in domestic and international surveillance issues and pre-arrest police civilian encounters, which include consensual stops, location tracking, predictive policing, biometric data collection, and countering violent extremist programs. 

Sethi is co-chair of the American Bar Association’s National Committee on Homeland Security, Terrorism and the Treatment of Enemy Combatants and has served as a legal observer around the world. He previously served on the National Legislative Council for human rights and national security related affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union. Sethi is also an adjunct professor of law at both Georgetown University and Vanderbilt University. He also serves as an adviser for nonprofits and foundations on public policy, advocacy campaigns, and rapid-response organizing. 

In 2018, Sethi published American Hate: Survivors Speak Out, which documents through testimonials the hate that impacted many people before and after the 2016 presidential election. It was named among the Best Books of 2018 by NPR. 

Sethi’s other works have appeared in many national outlets including CNN, The Guardian, Politico Magazine, USA Today, and The Washington Post. He has also been widely quoted on television, radio, and in print, including BBC World Radio, NPR, The Independent, and The New York Times.

Based in Washington D.C., Sethi is a graduate of New York University and the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. 

Learn more about Carleton Convos at go.carleton.edu/convocations

Steven Levitsky delivered the convocation address at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, May 5. Levitsky is the David Rockefeller professor of Latin American studies and professor of government at Harvard University. Levitsky also serves as director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard, which works to increase awareness of the histories, cultures, economics, and environment of contemporary Latin America. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions. 

Levitsky is an award-winning author and has written or edited 12 books, published guest essays, and featured in media publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. In 2018, he published How Democracies Die with David Ziblatt, which focuses on the potential death of democracy in the United States, in particular after the election of Donald Trump. How Democracies Die was a New York Times Bestseller and has been translated into 25 languages. It was recognized as one of the best non-fiction books of 2018 by The Washington Post, Time, and Foreign Affairs. Other books by Levitsky include Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War with Lucan Way (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism with Lucan Way (Princeton University Press, 2022).

Levitsky received his BA in political science from Stanford University and his PhD from the University of California–Berkeley. He currently lives in Massachusetts with his family.

Learn more about Carleton Convos at go.carleton.edu/convocations

Award-winning creator Diana Fraser ’14 delivered the convocation address at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, April 28. Fraser values critical thinking, social dialogue, and uplifting systemically marginalized and excluded communities. She leads savvy, relevant content creation for audiences with effective, streamlined, data-informed systems. 

Fraser manages and designs multimedia projects, documentaries, digital series, broadcast programs, and advertising spots for PBS Digital Studios, where she drives a $5.5 million grant portfolio that creates original digital-first series, workshops, and events. She previously served as a line producer for Twin Cities PBS, where her programs received 20 Midwest Regional Emmy Award nominations and nine wins. 

Her directorial debut, Patient No More, is an Emmy-nominated documentary that narrates the barriers that LGBTQ+ women face across healthcare systems and how the never-ending hunt for affirming care affects their lives. Focused on centering the experiences of queer and female-identifying people, the film features the voices of 17 LGBTQ+ women as both experts and patients.

Fraser’s portfolio includes more than ten award-winning short and feature films and screenings with Harvard University/Brigham and Women’s Hospital, World Professional Association for Transgender Health, UCLA–Iris Cantor Women’s Health Center, the City of West Hollywood government, and Boston School of Public Health. Her films have featured at the 2022 Big Sky Film Festival, the 2018 and 2021 Twin Cities Film Festival, and 2018 INPUT. Fraser also won the 2013 Princess Grace Honorarium Award.

Fraser is a 2021 Online News Association Women’s Leadership Accelerator cohort member and a 2018 Minnesota State Arts Board grant recipient. She earned her BA in cinema and media studies from Carleton College in 2014.

Learn more about Carleton Convos at go.carleton.edu/convocations

Violinist, songwriter, and disability rights advocate Gaelynn Lea delivered the convocation address at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, April 14. Lea is a renowned public speaker and advocate for disability rights and accessibility in the arts. She has shared her perspective on many platforms, including PBS NewsHour, On Being with Krista Tippett, The Moth Radio Hour, NowThis, The Science of Happiness Podcast, and through two TEDx talks.

Most recently, Lea composed and performed the music for Macbeth on Broadway starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga, which was nominated for three Tony Awards, including Best Sound Design.

Lea is also the co-founder of RAMPD (Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities), which connects music, entertainment, and event industries to a global network of established music professionals with disabilities. This fast-growing, disability-led coalition played a crucial role in making the 64th GRAMMY Awards accessible and in 2022 was named a Zero Project Honoree for its dynamic solutions. 

An internationally touring recording artist, Lea has captivated audiences around the world with her haunting original songs and traditional fiddle tunes. In 2016, her music gained popularity after she won NPR Music’s second-annual Tiny Desk Contest. Lea has opened for artists like Wilco, The Decemberists, LOW, and the industrial rock supergroup Pigface. Lea is also currently working on a memoir detailing her adventures on tour and with disability advocacy.

Learn more about Carleton Convos at go.carleton.edu/convocations

Matthew MacWilliams—scholar, award-winning practitioner of American politics and recognized expert on authoritarianism—delivered the convocation address at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, April 7. Among MacWilliams’ more prominent works are his articles published in Politico, the London School of Economics Blog, and Vox, which sparked an international political debate that defined Donald Trump and his political tactics as authoritarian. Before a vote had been cast in the 2016 presidential primaries, MacWilliams warned liberals, moderates, and conservatives alike that his polls revealed the near-unstoppable nature of Trump’s political campaign, attributing its power to Trump’s appeal to authoritarianism. 

MacWilliams has conducted qualitative research on issues surrounding the global rise of authoritarianism. He has also discussed the future of democracy implicated by his research with political officials and civil society members across the United States, Eurasia, and Europe. A long-time political professional, MacWilliams established a campaign and media strategies firm, MacWilliams Sanders Communications, over two decades ago.

MacWilliams’ work has been cited and reprinted in leading media around the world, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, Der Spiegel, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and MSNBC. He is the author of the 2020 book, On Fascism: 12 Lessons From American History, which centers his work on authoritarianism and Donald Trump, highlighting the authoritarian strain found throughout United States history. 

MacWilliams earned his BA at the University of Pennsylvania as a Benjamin Franklin Scholar and his PhD in political science from the University of Massachusetts. He lives in Baltimore with his wife and dog.

Learn more about Carleton Convos at go.carleton.edu/convocations