Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors is bringing her passion for social justice to the realm of academia. According to Black Enterprise, Khan-Cullors will lead college courses surrounding community mobilization and social equality at Prescott College in Arizona.
Khan-Cullors—one of the women who gave birth to the Black Lives Matter movement following the tragic death of Trayvon Martin—will serve as an adjunct professor under the institution’s Social Justice and Community Organizing program, the news outlet writes. The course she will teach will focus on how culture and the arts are intertwined with community efforts. Students will learn how to evoke effective change through establishing a social movement from a grassroots approach.
“Artists and cultural workers historically and presently play a significant role in shaping movements,” said Khan-Cullors in a statement, according to the news outlet. “Now is the time we unearth that history and utilize it to help us with some of the most important fights of this time.”
This isn’t the first time that she has brought her social justice experiences to a lecture hall. Khan-Cullors was on the faculty at Los Angeles’ Otis College of Art and Design where she worked as a lecturer in the institution’s public practice department. She currently is pursuing her MFA at the University of Southern California and leads an organization that she founded dubbed Dignity and Power Now which helps individuals impacted by incarceration.
The Black Lives Matter collective has inspired many college courses. Last year, San Diego State University offered a course entitled “Black Minds Matter: A Focus on Black Boys and Men in Education,” and in 2015 Dartmouth College created a 10-week #BlackLivesMatter course that explored race, violence and inequality throughout history as well as through the prism of Ferguson and similar events.
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