The Boxser Diversity Initiative
In partnership with Lockdown LitFest
The Boxser Diversity Initiative promotes diversity and inclusion to encourage a better understanding of the diverse groups, racial, religious and gender in Southwest Florida that embrace the mission of diversity, inclusion and community. The initiative has brought global speakers, commentators and scholars to the Sarasota / Manatee area. They fund programs that provide speakers, exhibits and other methods of communication to foster tolerance and understanding of all groups, no matter their race, religion or gender identity.
Ladee Hubbard, the author of The Talented Ribkins which received the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, The Times Literary Supplement, Arkansas International, Copper Nickel and Callaloo among other venues.
She is a recipient of a 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and has also received fellowships from Art Omi, the Sacatar Foundation, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts among other places. Born in Massachusetts and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Florida, she currently lives in New Orleans with her husband and three children.
Michael Jeffries is the Class of 1949 Professor in Ethics and American Studies at Wellesley College. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and is the author of three books, most recently, Behind the Laughs: Community and Inequality in Comedy (Stanford University Press, 2017).
His two previous books are Paint The White House Black: Barack Obama and the Meaning of Race in America (Stanford University Press, 2013) and Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop (University of Chicago Press, 2011). His writing appears in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and The Boston Globe, and he is a regular contributor on both television and radio at Boston's public broadcasting station, WGBH.
Timothy Patrick McCarthy is an award-winning scholar and educator, public servant, and social justice activist who has taught on Harvard’s faculty since 2005.
He holds a joint appointment in the undergraduate honors program in History and Literature, Graduate School of Education, and John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he is Core Faculty at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
He is also the Stanley Paterson Professor of American History in the Boston Clemente Course, a college humanities course for low-income adults and co-recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal. Twice named one of Harvard Crimson’s “Professors of the Year,” he is the recipient of many awards for his commitment to students, including the 2019 Manuel C. Carballo Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Kennedy School’s highest teaching honor.
Shaped by the anti-apartheid and AIDS activism of his college years, Dr. McCarthy has devoted his life to public service and social justice. Since 1990, he has been a Big Brother to Malcolm Green, now 34, whom he met while volunteering in the Cambridge public schools.