The Reverend Dr Emilie Townes is a glass-ceiling shatterer. She was the first African American woman president of the American Academy of Religion and made that a double first when she became the dean of Vanderbilt Divinity School, where she is also the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society. She’s also an ordained American Baptist clergywoman.

Here she talks with Jane Little about President Donald Trump, the difference between knowledge and truth, and why scholars – “even and especially theologians” – must also be activists.