Keith Boykin

On Wednesday, October 7, 2009, OUTSpoken welcomed commentator, producer, activist, and author Keith Boykin to UNC Charlotte. Boykin participated in a student roundtable discussion with leaders from PRIDE, the Black Student Union, and students from the Women's & Gender Studies program. Boykin then spoke to a crowd of 500 students, faculty/staff, and community members.

Learn more about Keith Boykin below...

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, Keith attended law school with President Barack Obama and served in the White House as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton.

Keith 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.

Keith has traveled extensively across four continents, and in 1997 President Clinton appointed him, along with Coretta Scott King and Rev. Jesse Jackson, to the U.S. 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, Keith 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.

Each of Keith's three books has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, including his most recent book, Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies and Denial in Black America. Keith 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.

Keith 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, Keith currently lives in New York City.

Keith Boykin was OUTspoken's third speaker

This program is made possible by generous assistance from the Chancellor's Diversity Challenge Fund, the Wesley Mancini Foundation, the Black Student Union, the Center for Professional & Applied Ethics, Women's & Gender Studies, Counseling Center, Multicultural Resource Center, and PRIDE.