We look forward to welcoming you at Centre Mont Royal for what promises to be a captivating and thought-provoking discussion. 

Dr. Debra Thompson is Associate Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies at McGill University. She is a leading scholar of the comparative politics of race and has recently been honoured by the Royal Society of Canada. Her academic research and teaching, along with her commitment to public scholarship, seek to understand, analyze, and explain the complex historic and contemporary relationships among race, public policy, and inequality in Canada and other democratic societies. Dr. Thompson's award-winning first book, The Schematic State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census (Cambridge University Press, 2016), is a study of the political development of racial classifications on the national censuses of the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. Her heavily anticipated second book, The Long Road Home: On Blackness and Belonging, was published by Scribner Canada (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) in September 2022, and has been listed as a finalist for the 2022 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for nonfiction.

Adrian Harewood, BA'06, is a Canadian television and radio journalist, and the former anchor of CBC Ottawa News and CBC News: Ottawa Late Night. He is currently Associate Professor of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. Harewood studied Political Theory and History at McGill University, where he was also station manager of the campus radio station CKUT. Before moving into television, Adrian was the host of the number one rated All in a Day on CBC Radio One in Ottawa. He has been a guest host on national CBC programming including As it Happens, Sounds Like Canada and The Current. Adrian has a keen interest in community involvement. He spends hundreds of hours every year at events in Ottawa and the surrounding area. 

The Long Road Home: On Blackness and Belonging (2022) is a personal story that blends family history and memoir to examine the nuances of racism in both Canada and the United States. Thompson follows the roots of Black identities in North America and the routes taken by those who have crisscrossed the world's longest undefended border in search of freedom and belonging. Above all, The Long Road Home is about the power of freedom and the dreams that link and inspire Black people across borders, told from the perspective of one who has deep ties to, critiques of, and hope for both countries.