Dr. Marc Lamont Hill will present “The Classroom and the Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America” at William Jewell College. The free lecture will be held at 6 p.m. February 17 in John Gano Memorial Chapel and is sponsored by Jewell’s Black Student Association and the Center for Justice and Sustainability.

Hill, an associate professor of English at Teachers College - Columbia University, is host of “Our World with Black Enterprise” radio show and co-host of “HuffPost Live.” He has been a political contributor for the Fox News Channel, regularly appearing on “The O’Reilly Factor” and the Mike Huckabee and Sean Hannity radio shows. Prior to his tenure at Fox, Hill was a regular commentator on CNN and MSNBC as well as Star Jones’ talk show.

Hill holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the intersections between culture, politics and education. In 2009, he published the award-winning book, Beats, Rhymes and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity.

In addition to his political work, he continues to work directly with African American and Latino youth. He is a founding board member of My5th, a non-profit organization aiming to educate underprivileged youth about their legal rights and responsibilities, and in 2001, he started a literacy project that uses hip-hop culture to increase school engagement and reading skills among high school students.