Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad is the Founding Director of the Initiative for Black Buddhist Studies and an Affiliate Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Culture, Society, and Religion. She is the author of Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation (NYU Press, 2022) and Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives, and the Struggle for Justice (Fortress Press, 2017). Dr. Vesely-Flad is the recipient of grants from the Fetzer Institute and the Lenz Foundation, and is a 2024-2025 Fellow of the Crossroads Program. She is currently at work on The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde (North Atlantic Books, 2026).