It's not unusual for a Penn professor to be featured on networks like MSNBC or Fox News, but Comedy Central does not usually attract Ivy League scholars.
Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of Religious Studies and African-American Studies, will be breaking the trend tonight when he appears on the comedy talk show The Colbert Report.
Dyson is slated to discuss what he calls the federal government's racist response to Hurricane Katrina while promoting his new book, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster.
The controversial book comes out next week and has already received considerable attention.
According to Colbert Report talent producer Emily Lazar, Dyson was selected to discuss how government-led relief programs in the Gulf Coast region after Katrina were driven by race and class.
"He was selected to be on the show because he was an original thinker and always has provocative ideas on all kinds of cultural issues," Lazar said.
The show, a spinoff of Comedy Central's comedy news series The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, mocks pundit commentary on cable news channels.
Dyson, who has already appeared on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor and NBC's The Today Show, said he is ready to handle Colbert's notorious sarcasm. Dyson added that his book touched off most of the media attention.
In the book, "I wanted to answer the question, 'Does George Bush really care about poor black people?'" Dyson said.
To answer that question, he said he analyzed governmental, media and religious responses to the disaster.
This fall, Dyson plans to teach a class allowing undergraduates to tackle these issues.
"I will be looking at the inner relationships between race, class and poverty, theories and academic understandings of poverty ... and class warfare in black America," Dyson said.
He has previously taught classes about Tupac Shakur, Marvin Gaye and other figures of black popular culture.
The classes involve a "rigorous analysis of a popular-cultural figure," using it as a mechanism to study "black identity and more broadly ... American cultural production," Dyson said.
College sophomore Eszter Boda, who took Dyson's "Hip-Hop Culture" class, said Dyson was "one of [his] most entertaining professors."
"He was always engaged in what he had to say and always insightful," Boda added.
Dyson has come out with several other books that have generated controversy, among them Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost its Mind? last April.
"Mr. Cosby ... extended the war against the poor and only reinforced stereotypes about poor black people," Dyson said, referring to remarks the prominent black actor made regarding the causes of poverty among blacks in America.
Dyson is currently working on another book -- tentatively entitled Bill Cosby Is Still Wrong -- as well as books on black churches and the rapper Nas' first album. "I write for people who are smart and intelligent and who are interested in reading about serious issues," he said.
Dyson himself is not a typical academic.
He started college at 21, having been a teenage father on welfare, got his Ph.D. in religious studies from Princeton University -- Penn President Amy Gutmann was one of his professors -- and has written 13 books in as many years.
The Colbert Report episode featuring Dyson airs tonight at 11:30 p.m.
The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.
DonatePlease note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.