The Phil Lind Initiative: Suleika Jaouad and Jon Batiste

Celebrated artists and life partners, Academy Award-winning musician Jon Batiste and Emmy Award-winning writer Suleika Jaouad gave the world an intimate look into their life in the 2023 Netflix documentary American Symphony which chronicled the year that Batiste was nominated for 11 Grammy awards and Jaouad’s leukemia returned after almost a decade of remission. Their Phil Lind Initiative talk will offer a wide-ranging exploration of art and creative expression as an act of survival and connection.

The 2024 Phil Lind Initiative series Pop Politics is a novel and nuanced exploration of how pop culture has influenced and shaped how we understand, experience, and practice politics in the United States. This dynamic series will feature talks with artists who have used their craft to take a political stance. Voicing the experience of refugees and the LGBTQ2+ community, demanding climate justice, questioning income inequality and uplifting marginalized communities, these speakers have tackled many of the defining debates of American political life and used their creative outputs as acts of connection, of resistance, and of survival. Presented by the UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs in partnership with the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. Read more at https://lindinitiative.ubc.ca/