Jerry Dávila is Executive Director of the Illinois Global Institute. He is also the Jorge Paulo Lemann Chair in Brazilian History. Dávila’s research focuses on the influence of racial thought on public policy in Brazil, as well as the state and social movements in the twentieth century. He is the author of Hotel Trópico: Brazil and the Challenge of African Decolonization (Duke, 2010), Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Public Policy in Brazil (Duke, 2003), and Dictatorship in South America (Wiley, 2013). He is also co-author of A History of World Societies, 11th ed. (Bedford-St. Martin’s, 2018).