Jane Ferguson is a Polk, Emmy, Peabody, OPCA and DuPont award-winning foreign correspondent for PBS NewsHour, contributor to The New Yorker, and McGraw Professor of journalism at Princeton University. Now based in New York City, she has over thirteen years of experience living and reporting in the Middle East and reporting from the Arab world, Africa and South Asia. Her work focuses on US foreign policy and defense, conflict, diplomacy, and human rights. With an emphasis on in-depth, magazine length broadcasting, Jane’s reporting is characterized by exclusive, ground-breaking access, thoughtful story-telling and character-driven reporting. Her memoir, No Ordinary Assignment was published by HarperCollins in July 2023.
Tennyson Donyéa, a seasoned journalist, storyteller, and aspiring filmmaker continues to leave his mark on New Jersey’s media landscape. A Temple University alumnus, he holds a B.A. in Media Studies and Production (2016) and later deepened his journalistic expertise through the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators program at CUNY Newmark Graduate School of Journalism in 2022. Over the past seven years, Tennyson has extensively reported for various platforms including TV, radio, and both print and digital mediums. His journey has taken him to various states – from California to Maine – but his role at WHYY News in Philadelphia stands out, showcasing his dedication to delivering quality news about New Jersey politics. In 2023, Tennyson’s commitment to local journalism was recognized when he received the New Jersey News Commons’ Partner of the Year award. This accolade celebrated his significant contributions to bolstering New Jersey’s local news ecosystem. Keenly aware of the narratives surrounding New Jersey’s Black community, Tennyson took it upon himself to challenge and reshape these perspectives. In 2021, he founded “Black In Jersey” with the aim to provide a more accurate representation of Black communities and address pertinent issues in the fight for Black liberation. Originally hailing from Washington, D.C., Tennyson has called New Jersey home since 2019 and is currently based in Trenton, NJ, where he continues to be a beacon of change in the world of journalism.
Andrew Rodriguez Calderón is a computational journalist at The Marshall Project. He is also an Adjunct Professor at The New School in New York City, where he teaches data, design and community engagement, and additionally works as a Project & Product Designer for the Journalism + Design Lab, an non-profit initiative to develop civic infrastructure through free journalism and design training at community colleges. His work and practice sits at the intersection of collaborative design, product development and journalism engineering. Recently he has been exploring AI and hosting community listening sessions with people and groups affected by book bans in prisons to think about how generative machine learning can help decode complex bureaucracy and empower people often marginalized by systems of power.
Anastasia Mann is a lecturer at Princeton University and the founding director of SPIA in NJ. Her work focuses on struggles for economic rights and racial justice by, for, and with communities on the margins of American society. Trained as a historian, Stacy’s interests include reparations and transitional justice, immigrant organizing, access to quality public services, social welfare and social control, kinship, leisure, and mutual aid. Her work is attuned to the ways that gender, race, class, and ethnicity shape structures of opportunity. Mann’s career spans academia (Northwestern, Princeton, Rutgers), research-driven nonprofits (the Russell Sage Foundation, New Jersey Policy Perspective), and the civic sphere (Princeton’s Human Services and Civil Rights Commissions, and the New Jersey Commission on New Americans). Her publications include contributions to The Encyclopedia of Working Class America (Routledge), Flunking Out: New Jersey’s Support for Public Higher Education Falls Short, Garden State Dreams: In-State Tuition for Undocumented Kids (both New Jersey Policy Perspective), and Middlesex County, New Jersey: Crossroads of the World (Rutgers, Eagleton Institute).
Presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
This event was recorded on December 2, 2023.