Michael Benitez Jr. is an activist-scholar, speaker/spoken word artist integrating hip hop pedagogy, academic inquiry and personal experience. His presentations provide a critical and multicontextual framework for empowerment and education, addressing issues of diversity and social justice , cross- and intercultural unity, knowledge representation and equity, leadership and youth development, and multiculturalism.
Through experiential initiatives and critical practice, Benitez exposes the unpleasant truths of national and global diversity issues dealing with race, gender, class, immigration, disunity, and other topics tied to the injustices of the human condition. At the same time, he examines the state of activism across campuses in a non-threatening, yet passionate fashion. Benitez considers college campuses to be the safety nets for transformation and change, and challenges the complacency students grow used to and how institutions cultivate apathy among our youth.
Benitez is co-editor of the anthology,
Crash Course: Reflections on the Film “Crash” for Critical Dialogues About Race, Power and Privilege, a collection of essays by some of the country’s most prominent anti-racism writers, scholars and activists.
Currently, Benitez is a Doctoral student (Ph.D.) at Iowa State University focusing on Educational Leadership and Policy Studies with a concentration on social justice and higher education. He previously served as Director of Intercultural Development and the David A. Portlock Black Cultural Center at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and adjunct faculty in the Graduate School of Leadership and Professional Advancement at Duquesne University.
He completed both his Bachelor of Science with a minor in African and African- American Studies and Masters of Education at the Pennsylvania State University (PSU). There Benitez served under the College Assistance Migrant Program, where he helped revive the program’s migrant education efforts. Later at Dickinson College, as Director of Diversity Initiatives and Social Justice, Benitez established the “Diversity Monologues,” an annual program aimed at highlighting the creative talents of students while addressing diversity and social justice issues.
