Rima Vesely-Flad, Ph.D. is a research affiliate at Princeton University and a Visiting Professor of Buddhism and Black Studies at Union Theological Seminary, NYC. She leads Buddhist teaching and meditation courses at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and former Director of the Inside Out Prison Education Program which is a partnership between the Swannanoa Correctional Institution for Women and Warren Wilson College. She is a Fulbright Scholar and Awardee in South Africa and Ghana. She is a contributing writer for Lion's Roar and other publications and the author of two academic books Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation and Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives and the Struggle for Justice.