» The Delp-Wilkinson Peace Lecture Series

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Chapman Presidential Fellow Nadia Murad spoke about her pathway to and experiences as a global advocate for the prevention of conflict-related sexual violence, survivor-centric recovery efforts, and the pursuit of gender equality. After surviving the Islamic State's (ISIS) attempt to eradicate the Yazidi people of Iraq, Murad has dedicated her life to assisting fellow survivors of violence worldwide, bringing the perpetrators to justice, and restoring both her homeland of Sinjar and other communities destroyed by conflict. Murad is the first United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking and was named "Woman of the Year" by Glamour Magazine. Her best-selling memoir, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State, is a harrowing account of her imprisonment, escape, and the beginning of her advocacy. As founder and president of Nadia's Initiative, she globally advocates for survivors of sexual violence and engages in sustainable development with communities in crisis.

Known around the world for his role as Hikaru Sulu in the TV and film series Star Trek, actor, activist, and social media sensation George Takei has since become a prominent voice for immigrant and LGBTQIA+ rights, particularly in his poignant recollections of his childhood spent behind the barbed-wire enclosures of Japanese-American internment camps during WWII. George Takei recounted his powerful story of the morning his family was forced from their home and taken to a prison camp during World War II and of his father's enduring faith in democracy.

Barbara Ransby is the John D. MacArthur Chair and Distinguished Professor, in the Departments of African American Studies, Gender, and Women's Studies, and History at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She also directs the campus-wide Social Justice Initiative, connecting academics and community organizers doing work on social justice. In addition to regularly publishing in the New York Times and other popular presses, she is the Editor of SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society and was President of the National Women's Studies Association. Ransby published an award-winning biography of civil rights activist Ella Baker, and her most recent book is Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century (UC Press 2018). Dr. Ransby is not only a historian and writer but also a longtime activist. She was deeply involved in the anti-Apartheid/Free South Africa movement in the 1980s and later co-founded several organizations, including The Ella Baker-Nelson Mandela Center, Ella's Daughters, and African American Women in Defense of Ourselves. She is a founding member of the national organization Scholars for Social Justice, is the historian for The Movement for Black Lives, and a leader in the multi-racial coalition, The Rising Majority.

William J. Barber II is a pastor and social justice advocate building a broad-based grassroots movement grounded in the moral tenets of faith-based communities and the constitution to confront systemic racism, poverty, environmental devastation, the war economy, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism in America today. As pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina (since 1993) and president of the North Carolina conference of the NAACP (2005–2017), Barber approaches social justice through the lens of the ethical and moral treatment of people as laid out in the Christian Bible, the Reconstruction and civil rights movements of the South, and the United States Constitution.