2025 Commencement
Commencement Speaker
Dr. Lawrence T. Brown
Black Butterfly Academy LLC
Founder and Director
Lawrence T. Brown is a game designer, curator, scholar, and urban Afrofuturist. Dr. Brown is the author of The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America. He works as a research scientist in the Center for Urban Health Equity at Morgan State University.
Additionally, he is the founder and director of the Black Butterfly Academy LLC, an educational consulting firm which creates hands-on learning tools and hosts Dream Lab workshops. The Academy partners with K-12 schools in Baltimore to install and display history exhibits.
Dr. Brown created the board game Urban Cipher and the Black Butterfly Dream Lab Kit. Both help unpack how governments created urban apartheid by design. Overall, this body of work reveals how we can build an equitable cities and make Black neighborhoods matter.