Michael Eric Dyson is an American academic, author, Baptist minister, and radio host. He holds a position as a professor in the College of Arts and Science and in the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University. Dyson has authored or edited more than twenty books, with a focus on subjects including race, religion, and politics. His work also includes biographical studies of significant cultural and political figures such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Marvin Gaye, Barack Obama, Bill Cosby, Tupac Shakur, and Jay-Z. He is characterized as someone who combines intellectual rigor with lived experience, described as "a Princeton Ph.D. and a child of the streets who takes pains never to separate the two."