Plenary Sessions

Born in Savannah, Georgia, David Hall holds a bachelor's degree from Kansas State University, where he was named an "All American" for his athletic and scholarly accomplishments. After graduating from Kansas State, he played professional basketball in Italy. He received his Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of Oklahoma, where he also earned a master’s degree in human relations. He holds both an LL.M. degree and a Doctor of Juridical Science from Harvard Law School. David Hall is also a published author. His publications include works on civil rights, the U.S. Constitution and race, legal education, and social justice. He has authored a book on the intersection of law and spirituality, entitled The Spiritual Revitalization of the Legal Profession: A Search for Sacred Rivers, and lectures nationally on topics of social justice, leadership, diversity, and spiritual values in professional life.

Ruha Benjamin is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and author of the award-winning book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, among many other publications. Her work investigates the social dimensions of science, medicine, and technology with a focus on the relationship between innovation and inequity, health and justice, knowledge, and power. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award and the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton. Her most recent book, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, winner of the 2023 Stowe Prize, was born out of the twin plagues of COVID-19 and police violence and offers a practical and principled approach to transforming our communities and helping us build a more just and joyful world.

James M. Lang is the founding Director of the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence and a former Professor of English at Assumption University in Worcester, MA. He is the author of six books, the most recent of which are Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It, Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, and Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty. A sought-after speaker, Jim has given talks and workshops on teaching and navigating Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT at more than two hundred colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad. He has also consulted for the United Nations on the development of teaching materials in ethics and integrity for college faculty. Lang also writes a monthly column on teaching and learning for The Chronicle of Higher Education; his work has appeared in the Chronicle since 1999. His book reviews and public scholarship on higher education have appeared in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, including Time, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, and The Conversation. In September of 2016, Lang received a Fulbright Specialist grant to work with three universities in Colombia on the creation of a MOOC focused on teaching and learning in undergraduate STEM education. He has a BA in English and Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, an MA in English from St. Louis University, and a Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University.