Description:

Join us for a moderated discussion with the creator and host of Empire City, an eight-part podcast that tells the untold origin story of the NYPD and was named one of the top ten best podcasts of 2024 by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Time Magazine.

Chenjerai Kumanyika is an assistant professor in NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Alongside his scholarship and teaching, disciplinary service on the intersections of social justice and media, Kumanyika specializes in using narrative non-fiction audio journalism to critique the ideology of American historical myths about policing, race, the Civil War, and the struggle for democracy. His work spans both print and audio, engaging with issues of race, power, labor, and media representation through critical analysis and storytelling.

He is the co-creator, co-executive producer, and co-host of Uncivil, Gimlet Media’s Peabody Award-winning podcast on the Civil War, and was a key collaborator for Scene on Radio’s Seeing White and The Land That Never Has Been Yet, which critically examine race and the history of American democracy. He also hosted a two-part episode of Intercepted titled "Ruth Wilson Gilmore Makes the Case for Abolition," which explores abolitionist politics and the possibilities for structural transformation.

His writing has appeared in scholarly venues such as Popular Communication and Popular Music & Society, as well as public platforms including The Intercept, NPR, VICE, This American Life, and Hammer & Hope, a magazine of Black politics and culture. He is also a co-author of The Gig Economy: Workers and Media in the Age of Convergence, which examines the intersections of labor, technology, and media in contemporary work structures.

Kumanyika’s work has been recognized with several prestigious honors, including the George Foster Peabody Award (2018) for Uncivil, and The Media Literate Media Award (NAMLE) (2021) for Scene on Radio. In 2021, he received the Union of Democratic Communications’ Dallas Smythe Award for his career accomplishments and advocacy. His journalism and scholarship frequently interrogate dominant narratives through historical and structural analysis.

Since 2024, Kumanyika has served as an at-large council member for the National Council of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). In this role, he fights for the future of higher education by advancing the AAUP's core values of academic freedom and shared governance.

Kumanyika studied mass communication and critical media studies at The Pennsylvania State University’s Donald Bellisario College of Communication, where he earned his Ph.D. His academic and professional work remain deeply engaged with the legacies of Black radical traditions, media activism, and public scholarship.