UPDATED: Aug. 23, 2018, at 8:37 p.m.

Trevor Noah, the host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” whose memoir is part of a new first-year reading experience at Syracuse University, will speak at SU in January 2019, the university announced Thursday.

Noah will talk about his memoir, “Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood,” as part of the university’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration, according to an SU News release. He’ll also discuss Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and the civil rights movement’s global impact, per the release.

---

---

The award-winning comedian, who was born in 1984, grew up in the final years of South African apartheid. In “Born a Crime,” Noah recounts his experiences as a child of a black mother and white father in a country where government-mandated racial segregation persisted until the mid-1990s.

Noah joined “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” in 2014 and began hosting the show in 2015, after Stewart’s retirement.

SU is requiring all freshmen and first-year transfer students to read Noah’s memoir as part of a new first-year seminar announced last April. The seminars — which will be led by students and faculty, staff or graduate student facilitators — are designed to help students understand topics in Noah’s book and “engage them in broader contexts about identity, resiliency, inclusion and community,” according to the release.

More than 3,900 software and e-copies of “Born a Crime” have been distributed to incoming students since June, per the release.

Noah’s January 2019 speaking event is being organized in collaboration with the University Lecture series, per the release.

This post has been updated with additional reporting. 

Published on August 23, 2018 at 8:27 pm

Contact Jordan: jmulle01@syr.edu | @jordanmuller18