Janus Adams to Serve as ’22 CIC Visiting Fellow

Emmy Award-winning journalist, talk show host, and author Dr. Janus Adams will serve as this year’s University of Findlay Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) Visiting Fellow. Her free public presentation, titled “Why is it so Hard to Speak of Race?” will be held Wednesday, Feb. 23 at 7:30 p.m. in the Alumni Memorial Union’s Multipurpose Room.

Adams is founder and publisher of BackPax, a history-based adventure series of books, audios, and board games for children. A northern school desegregation pioneer at eight, she was one of the four children selected to break New York’s de facto school segregation in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. A lifelong human rights activist, Adams launched BackPax when negative images of race and gender began to taint her twin daughters’ lives. In 1990, she founded Harambee—the first national book club for African American literature. Her work has been licensed by McDonald’s; and underwritten by the Ford Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, among others.

Adams is the co-executive producer and host of “The Janus Adams Show,” a weekly public radio program about race and courage, she has also served as NPR’s first National Arts Correspondent and is a pioneer of issue-oriented African American and women’s programming. A founding board member of Amistad America, Inc. and the Women’s Media Center, she is a volunteer Mentor-Editor for The OpEd Project which serves to increase the range of voices and the quality of ideas in the public debate.

A classical pianist, she graduated from New York’s High School of Performing Arts. She earned a bachelor’s in theatre from the State University of New York, New Paltz, a master’s in black studies from Mills College, and is all but dissertation in History and Black Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She holds honorary degrees from Shaw University and State University of New York New Paltz, her alma mater.

CIC Visiting Fellow student ambassadors include:

• College of Business: Andrea Iliff, business administration major; Kyle Siesel, finance and marketing major
• College of Education: Avery Melroy, early childhood education major
• College of Health Professions: Sarah Lipscomb, nursing major; Caitlin Craig, strength and conditioning major; Jared Lepard, exercise science major
• College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences: Corinthia Webster, journalism and digital media major
• College of Pharmacy: Anjali Patel, pharmacy major; Gabriel Reyes, pharmacy major; Lauren Bull, pharmacy major
• College of Sciences: Skyler Weir, chemistry major; Ashton Moore, computer science major; Steven Albert, computer science major

For more information about the University of Findlay’s CIC Visiting Fellows program, contact Patti Abels, D.B.A., professor of business, at abels@findlay.edu.