Dr. Robinson-Morris is a scholar-activist, author, philosopher, social justice and human rights advocate, educator, philanthropist, community organizer, DEI practitioner, and administrator. In the vein of Fred Moten and other Black scholars, he understands that to be Black is to be limitless—it is the perpetual practice of an onto-epistemological refusal of limits imposed from elsewhere. For him, Black being, and the intellectual and cultural life are brilliant (r)evolutions always already in the making—propelling us toward justice and the infinite.
Dr. Robinson-Morris is the Founder & Chief Reimaginelutionary at The REImaginelution, LLC, a strategic consulting firm working at the intersections of imagination, policy, practice, and prophetic hope to radically reimagine diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) toward racial justice and systemic transformation by engendering freedom of the human spirit; and catalyzing the power of the imagination to reweave organizations, systems, and the world toward collective healing and liberation. David has come to understand that more important than knowledge, power, or money is the imagination. He is also the founder of the Center for the Human Spirit and Radical Reimagining.
Previously, Dr. Robinson-Morris was the Executive Director in service to The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society (CMind), a global community of contemplative practitioners and scholars whose goal is the ongoing development of racial, social, economic, and environmental justice and the advancement of human flourishing within society and higher education, more specifically. After nearly 30 years of service to society and the contemplative studies movement, David made the difficult recommendation to the Board of Directors to sunset the organization due to longstanding financial instability yet successful fulfillment of its founding mission.
Earlier, David served as the first Regional Director of Diversity and Inclusion of the Bayou Region for Ochsner Health, where he developed and led comprehensive strategic diversity and inclusion framework that mapped onto the System's overarching efforts to improve health equity and health outcomes.
In 2018, Dr. Robinson-Morris created and founded The Center for Equity, Justice, and the Human Spirit at Xavier University of Louisiana. The Center was envisioned to serve as an anchor, a magnet, a beacon of hope, and a catalyst for change through research, community engagement, public scholarship, and public theology. Under Dr. Robinson-Morris' leadership, the Center leveraged a $5,000 yearly institutional investment to raise nearly $2 million; created dynamic programs like the Gilead Scholars for Equity and Justice, the XULA Investigative Stories Project; and through the generosity of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a pipeline program to increase the number of Black male teachers in public education. Contemporaneously, Dr. Robinson-Morris served Xavier University of Louisiana as an Assistant Professor in the Division of Education and Counseling and as Assistant Vice President of Development.
Dr. Robinson-Morris' career as an upper-level administrator is grounded in his work as a social justice and human rights advocate and academic, whose engagements across several platforms including higher education institutions, government, human rights organizations, corporations, non-profit, religious, and philanthropic organizations seek to impact policy, change practice, and uplift the human spirit wherever it is diminished.
Influenced by his understanding of Ubuntu—a South African philosophical notion of communalism and shared humanity—Dr. Robinson-Morris' work promotes deep dialogical engagement as an approach to achieving racial, gender, and health equity and justice when communities come to understand that our humanity is shared and is a quality we owe to one another. True equity and systemic transformation, in our communities and in our institutions, can only be realized when we come to understand difference as generative and when the collective mandates the transformation of structures, spaces, and places where we can all thrive according to our respective definitions of thriving. His understanding of Ubuntu coupled with that of Eastern (Buddhist) philosophy informs his ongoing understanding of our shared, collective humanity.
As a scholar, David's primary research centers on a single question: What does it mean to be a human being? This question continuously informs his approaches to management, organizational leadership, teaching, and community engagement.
Dr. Robinson-Morris has authored book chapters, published in academic peer-reviewed journals, and has been a featured co-author in Lion's Roar magazine. He is author of Ubuntu and Buddhism in Higher Education: An Ontological (Re)Thinking (Routledge, 2018) and co-editor of a forthcoming manuscript, Contemplative Practices and Acts of Resistance: Narratives Toward Wholeness (Routledge, 2024). In 2016, Dr. Robinson-Morris' dissertation won first place in the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education (AABHE) Dissertation Award competition.
David is actively engaged in several civic, educational, philanthropic, and human rights organizations throughout the city, state, and region. Dr. Robinson-Morris is a graduate of Loyola University New Orleans, the University of New Orleans, and Louisiana State University. He is a native of Galveston, Texas.