Rainbow Luncheon
October 26, 2011
12:45 to 2:00 pm
Executive Dining Room, LaCava Center
RSVP by October 19, 2011
Join the Bentley community in celebrating its LGBTQ faculty, staff and students.
Keynote Speaker: Keith Boykin
New York Times Best-Selling Author and TV’s Leading Commentator on Politics, Race, and Sexual Orientation
Keith Boykin is the editor of The Daily Voice online news site, a CNBC contributor, a BET TV host, and a New York Times best-selling author of three books.
Educated at Dartmouth and Harvard, Boykin attended law school with President Barack Obama and served in the White House as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton.
Boykin has been actively involved in progressive causes since he worked on his first congressional campaign while still a student in high school. He is a veteran of six political campaigns, including two presidential campaigns, and he was named one of the top instructors when he taught political science at American University in Washington.
Boykin has traveled extensively across four continents, and in 1997 President Clinton appointed him, along with Coretta Scott King and Rev. Jesse Jackson, to the US presidential trade delegation to Zimbabwe.
He was a star on the 2004 Showtime television series American Candidate and has since appeared on numerous national media programs, including Anderson Cooper 360°, The O'Reilly Factor, The Tyra Banks Show, The Montel Williams Show, Judge Hatchett, and The Tom Joyner Morning Show.
A founder and first board president of the National Black Justice Coalition, Boykin has spoken to audiences, large and small, all across the world. He delivered a landmark speech to 200,000 people at the Millennium March on Washington and he gave a stirring speech about the AIDS epidemic in front of 40,000 people in Chicago's Soldier Field in July 2006.
Boykin's books have been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, including his most recent book, Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies and Denial in Black America. Boykin won the Lambda Literary Award for his second book, Respecting The Soul, while his first book, One More River to Cross, is taught in colleges and universities throughout the country.
His book, For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Still Not Enough: Personal Writings about Confronting Life's Obstacles and Believing in Yourself, will be published March 13, 2012. It responds to the crisis of youth development and suicide in the black community, specifically among young gay men of color.
Boykin is an associate producer of the 2007 feature film Dirty Laundry and is working on his fourth book. Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Boykin currently lives in New York City.