We are excited to announce the speakers for our panel discussion on Democracy in February 2025! This year’s talk is co-sponsored by Revolutionary Spaces, who are generously providing the Old South Meeting House in downtown Boston as our location. WBUR reporter Simón Rios will moderate. 

Born in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, SIMÓN RIOS is an award-winning bilingual reporter in WBUR’s newsroom. He graduated from Emerson College in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in writing, literature and journalism. At WBUR he covers the ways Greater Boston is changing, with an eye on demographics, immigration and inequality. He traveled to Puerto Rico several times since Hurricane Maria, bringing back stories about the bridges between the island and the more than 300,000 Boricuas who call Massachusetts home.

DAYNA CUNNINGHAM is the Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Dean of Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. Dean Cunningham has devoted her career to promoting civic participation, building community partnerships, and advocating for underrepresented communities. At Tisch College, she has articulated a bold vision for building robust, inclusive democracy for an increasingly multiracial society. Before leading Tisch College, Dean Cunningham was the founder of Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At CoLab, she built large-scale, multi-sector development collaborations that combined sustainability, wellness, and democratic control of economies in marginalized communities. A civil rights lawyer by training, Dean Cunningham worked with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, litigating cases in Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and other states in the South. She has also served as associate director at the Rockefeller Foundation and program director of the ELIAS Project at MIT. Dean Cunningham earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, a JD from New York University School of Law, and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

CHAWKY FRENN was born in Zahlé, Lebanon. Before emigrating to the United States in 1981, he witnessed six years of civil war. Its devastating consequences have powerfully influenced his life and artwork. Frenn received a BFA from Mass College of Art and Design in Boston, MA in 1985, and an MFA from Tyler School of Art of Temple University in Philadelphia, PA in 1988. He is currently an Associate Professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. Frenn has exhibited his work throughout the United States, and around the globe, and has received critical acclaim from publications including the New York Times, NY ARTS, Art New England, Boston Globe, Connecticut Post, Atlanta Magazine, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in the United States, as well as An-Nahar, L’Orient – Le Jour, and The Daily Star in Lebanon. He was awarded two Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Awards, which enabled him to pursue his international academic and creative research in New Delhi in 2017 and Varanasi in 2024, India. Frenn is the author of two books 100 Boston Artists and 100 Boston Painters published in 2013 and 2012 by Schiffer Publishing. Art for Life’s Sake, a monograph on Frenn’s work, was published by Fine Arts Consulting and Publishing in Beirut, Lebanon, in 2006.

SOPHIA HALL is the Deputy Litigation Director at Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), a non-profit legal organization founded at the request of President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. An experienced litigator, Sophia handles a broad range of civil rights matters, with a particular focus on employment and police misconduct litigation. Sophia’s legal work is regularly featured in media such as the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and NPR. In addition to her litigation, Sophia also spearheads Election Protection, a non-partisan voter protection initiative that mobilizes thousands of volunteers statewide to ensure equal access to the ballot box. Sophia has been recognized as “Lawyer of the Year” by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, a “Top Lawyer” by the Boston Magazine, and as one of Boston’s Most Impactful Black Women.

NOORYA HAYAT joined the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement as a researcher in January 2016. She works on projects that help promote civic learning and engagement in the K-12 education system and beyond, and she is interested in the intersection of education, both in formal and informal settings, and civic learning and awareness in youth, particularly from marginalized and diverse ethnic backgrounds. Noorya has experience working in the U.S. and abroad in teaching and educational research. Before joining CIRCLE, Noorya worked as an international researcher and coordinator in public health and nutrition awareness in the developing world. She has experience teaching and mentoring students from diverse backgrounds and grade levels, and worked as an early childhood educator in Boston. She holds an Ed.M. in international education policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

ELIZABETH HANSEN SHAPIRO is the CEO and co-founder of the National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit newspaper company dedicated to protecting and sustaining local news, by publishing sustainable community newspapers that safeguard the public trust, elevate facts, empower communities with solutions, and foster a strong sense of place. Founded in 2021, the National Trust owns and operates newspapers in Maine, Colorado, and Georgia –critical sources of news that serve a population of some five million people. Prior to founding the National Trust, Dr. Hansen Shapiro was a Senior Research Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School and led news sustainability research at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

On September 28th, students from Academy of the Pacific Rim, Boston College High School, and Milton Academy partnered with MassVote and New England United 4 Justice to encourage Dorchester residents to vote in the November election and to consider the ballot questions for the year. It was the Humanities Workshop’s first official canvassing event. The sun was out and students were fired up!