Dr. Omékongo Dibinga at Harvard Book Store
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA
Admission: Free
Harvard Book Store welcomes Dr. Omékongo Dibinga —international speaker, trilingual poet, podcast host, rapper, and professor of Intercultural Communication at American University—for a discussion of his new book, Trigger Words: How Political Language Has Made America Less Inclusive (And How to Bring Us Back Together) . About Trigger Words Trigger Words examines how language in the United States has been manipulated and politicized to sow division and dehumanization, rather than to encourage inclusion and equity. From “woke” to “DEI” to “CRT,” words that once emerged from marginalized communities to speak truth to power have been weaponized by conservative movements—especially the MAGA wing of the Republican Party—to stoke fear, shut down dialogue, and preserve systems of oppression. At the same time, however, language has been coopted by many in liberal spaces in watered-down ways that remove the overall message that was intended to be communicated by said language, such as switching terminology from “homeless” to “unhoused,” “African American” to “BIPOC,” or “Latino” to “Latinx.” This incisive and thoughtful look at how our language has been dangerously politicized by both sides…