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Speakers

Firpo Carr
Firpo Carr
Instructor
University of Phoenix

Firpo Carr is a best-selling author who resides in the Los Angeles area, and who hails originally from Watts via South-Central (South) Los Angeles. Being a prolific author of socially-conscious writings over the years, as far back as two decades ago Harvard University requested one of Firpo's best-selling books, Wicked Words: Poisoned Minds—Racism in the Dictionary (1997), for its library system. Soon after that some other domestic colleges and universities, including Ivy League universities, followed suit. Oxford was the first of several foreign prestigious universities that requested Wicked Words.

What prompted Firpo to pen Wicked Words was the pattern of racist and sexist words he noticed as he read Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary from cover to cover. The offensive etymology and definition of these words have a subtle, mostly subconscious psychological impact on the collective psyche of society, the pervasiveness of which transcends national borders. Being acutely aware of the profoundly disruptive nature of both racist and sexist words in the dictionary eventually impelled Firpo to study Psychology, specializing specifically in Health Psychology. He is now a doctoral candidate at Northcentral University and anticipates completing his dissertation in June 2017.

Firpo experienced the Watts Revolt of 1965, the Los Angeles Uprising of 1992, and the ever-present threat of gang violence in the Nickerson Gardens housing projects, L.A.'s largest. While with IBM for ten years Firpo made extraordinary technical contributions and spent countless hours visiting inner city elementary, junior high, and high schools in association with the company's community service programs. His technical accomplishments moved IBM, uncharacteristically, to release a news story—in connection with his works—to the major newswire services. His works have been produced in 54 languages (as translated by dedicated native-speaking translation teams around the world) and have reached well over three times as many lands (195 and counting).

He is an internationally known author, historian, scholar, Bible translator, lecturer, former radio show producer, former radio show host, university instructor (University of Phoenix, UCLA Extension, Mt. Saint Mary’s College), documentary producer/screenwriter/director, and newspaper columnist. He has appeared as an eminent scholar on such nationally televised documentaries as Encounters with the Unexplained: Secrets of the Bible—What Do the Dead Sea Scrolls Tell Us?, and the prime time specials Ancient Secrets of the Bible I, and Ancient Secrets of the Bible II.

In 1989, before the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, he was the honored guest of the Soviet Union as he made history by taking the first color photographs of the oldest most complete manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible. These medieval documents date as far back as the tenth century C.E. According to the August 4, 1990, issue of the Los Angeles Times, while in the Soviet Union Carr went about "filling various scholarly requests, such as recording documents on church councils for medieval specialists at Stanford University."

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