Angela Dillard strives to maintain a presence as an engaged public scholar. You can follow her on Twitter: @adillard4.
In January 2022 Angela sat down with Jeff Sorenson, director of the U-M Optimize Program for Social Innovation, for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on the 20th century history of innovation in undergraduate education, theories of institutional change and students as important contributors, the free speech debate on campuses as well as her defense of “ideological diversity” and how this has shaped some of her current research on “civil rights conservatism.”
Why Not Me? is a podcast out of the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts’ Department of Social Innovation that features long-form conversations with entrepreneurs, researchers, activists, and leaders from all walks of life about how they use their life to make a positive impact. You can listen to episodes below:
Full Episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOKeP1Yi5mg
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3k8fbcA...
Anchor: https://anchor.fm/whynotmepodcast
Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3326xVj
In 2020 Dillard served as the chair of the academic advisory committee, appointed by the Provost, to work collaboratively with cross-campus groups and individuals to organize the University of Michigan’s 2020 Democracy & Debate Theme Semester. U-M was suppose to host one of the presidential debates and while that did not happen due to disagreements between then President Donald Trump and the Presidential Debate Commission, the theme semester did become a major initiative on campus that continues to sponsor programming. You can view the events, learning opportunities, and signature initiatives on the Democracy & Debate Website
Dillard’s Michigan Mind’s Podcast on “Building Curriculum Around Democracy & Debate” can be viewed via the U-M Public Engagement & Impact website.
Her “Democracy & Debate Across LSA” video playlist, created in collaboration with the Center for Academic Innovation can be accessed on the Michigan Online website. A sample of themes addressed in this playlist include:
- The relationship between young voters and climate change
- The politics of climate change in the 2020 elections
- The impact of “science literacy” in shaping American political culture
- Measuring the status and quality of democracies
- Prediction markets and their relationships to election polls
- The public sphere and cafe culture in European cities
- The relationship between ancient and modern democracies
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Michigan Online Teach Out on Police Brutality
Millions of Americans and people around the world are watching incidents of police violence and excessive force captured on video, but are looking to learn about the inequalities at the root of these incidents. While the calls of Black Lives Matter protesters to #DefundThePolice are being heard for the first time by many Americans, they are part of a longstanding effort by communities and activists to reinvest in communities rather than policing and prisons. In this Teach-Out, you will learn about the history of police violence in America, become aware of laws and policies that prevent accountability, understand the demands of protesters, and gain the knowledge and tools to fight for change locally.
You can watch Dillard’s contributions to Lesson #2 (History and Evolution of Teaching in America) here: “Law & Order in America”
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Some of her public work can be found on the LSA Blog – LearnSpeackAct — which she helped to found as an ultimately short-lived experiment faculty public engagement:
“Introducing LearnSpeakAct: A LSA Blog” (April 2017)
“Debating the Legacy of C.C. Little” (September 2017)
“ ‘It’s Not OK to be a Nazi:’ In Search of Counter-Narratives as an anti-Alt-Right Strategy” (February 2018)
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In Winter 2018 Dillard appeared as a guest on NPR’s 1A radio show with Joshua Johnson. The show was taped live in Ann Arbor in February 2018, which can be viewed via YouTube. The showed aired nationally in March 2018 as “Censoring Speech on Campus,” 1A with Joshua Johnson.
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From the C-Span library offers a variety of public speaking engagements on historical topics.
On-Air Commentary, 12th and Clairmount, documentary on the 1967 Detroit rebellion produced by Detroit Free Press, 2017
At Harvard University Divinity School delivering a lecture in honor of the Reverend Charles G. Adams at the conclusion of his academic appointment at the school, April 2012. The introduction of Professor Dillard, by Edith Clifton, begins at 55:52
A SELECTION OF BOOK REVIEWS
“Still Lonely?: The Histories of Black Republicans,” review of Rigueur, The Loneliness of the Black Republican, Fields, Black Elephants in the Room, and Farrington, Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP, Against the Current (Jan/Feb 2019).
Review of Brett Gadsden’s Between North and South: Delaware, Desegregation and the Myth of American Sectionalism in Southern Spaces, April 23, 2013.
Review of Steve Babson, et. al, The Color of Law: Ernie Goodman, Detroit and the Struggle for Labor and Civil Rights, in Against The Current, March/April, 2012.
Review of Shirley Chisholm’s Always Ready and Willing to Fight the Good Fight, for The Crisis Magazine, April 1, 2010.
Review of Nick Salvatore, Singing In A Strange Land: C.L. Franklin, The Black Church and the Transformation of America, New York Times Book Review, February 6, 2005.
Review of Stephanie Oliver Stokes, Song For My Father: Memoir of an All-American Family, Washington Post, August 31, 2004.
Review of J.C. Watts, The Color of a Conservative: My Life, My Politics, Washington Post Book World, November 17, 2002.
Review of Linda Chavez, An Unlikely Conservative: How I Became the Most Hated Hispanic in America, Washington Post Book World, October 6, 2002.
