More than 50 people gathered in Lecture Hall 1 Sunday night to hear a provocative speech by economist and commentator Julianne Malveaux. Her visit, part of a series of events sponsored by the Black Student Union to celebrate Black History Month, explored issues of multiculturalism, politics and economics.

“To say you’re tired of diversity is like saying you’re tired of the sunrise,” Malveaux said. “The sun will rise and the sun will fall. Similarly, with diversity, we have a series of trends that have already been put in place, so whether you like it or not, the fact is that we’re a multicultural society.”

For about an hour, interrupted occasionally by audience laughter or murmurs, Malveaux illustrated a collection of economic and social theories with a tableau of figures from African American history and contemporary politics.

”You find a very rich and poignant history that is all too often ignored,” she said of African American history.

Charles Chesnutt is an exemplary model of this, she said. He was a prolific African American author who worked with W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Chesnutt is being honored this year with a postage stamp as the latest in a series of yearly stamps to honor Black History Month.

“One of the most exciting years for me on the stamp was the year they put [on] Bessie Coleman,” Malveaux said. “This is a sister who was an aviator — an African American woman who, much like Amelia Earhart, decided that she wants to fly.”

Malveaux did not hesitate to comment on the upcoming presidential election. Again, she expressed concern that history is being forgotten.

“Black folks have been running for president for a long time,” she reminded the audience, proceeding to name Charlene Mitchell, Shirley Chisholm and Jesse Jackson as trailblazers. She also criticized Hillary Clinton, saying that she “has hubris behaving as if she’s the first woman” to run for president.

Perhaps Malveaux’s most stringent remarks were the ones she saved for the topic of the Iraq War and the United State’s foreign policy. She criticized the government for “a war that has cost more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of lives in Iraq — so many that we don’t even have the dignity or courtesy to count them.”

She also cited the war as one of many reasons that the U.S. has lost its moral authority in the world, also naming neglect in domestic issues.

“We have divested in education,” Malveaux said. “We’re spending relatively less on education than we were two decades ago.”

She also discussed the problem of student debt. Average debt upon graduation, she added, has reached $20,000 — with African Americans facing an average debt of $26,000.

“It’s like shackling somebody in life before they’ve even started,” she said.

Tarnasia Lundy, vice president of the Black Student Union, said the reasoning behind inviting Malveaux was in part because of her experience in the field of economics.

“She has a background in economics, so we thought it would be interesting for us to give a discussion on black history and also to incorporate economics in the lecture,” Lundy said.

Afrika Okyere, a member of the Black Student Union in the audience, decided that he wanted to come and see what he could learn from the event.

“Oftentimes we have speakers who come out — famous speakers. She’s not necessarily famous, but she’s very good,” Okyere said.

Malveaux, who holds a doctorate in economics from MIT, is president of Bennett College for Women, and is an author and syndicated columnist. She is a committed activist and civic leader, serving on the boards of the Economic Policy Institute, The Recreation Wish List Committee of Washington, D.C. and the Liberian Education Trust.