David H. Ikard is professor of African-American and Diaspora studies at Vanderbilt University since 2017. Ikard was previously a professor of English and director of Africana studies at the University of Miami. He also taught at Florida State University and at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville. Ikard earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts from North Carolina State University in 1994 and in 1997 respectively. He also earned a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2002. In March 2018, Ikard gave a talk at a TEDx in Nashville, Tennessee. During the talk, he debunked myths about civil rights activist Rosa Parks and explained why white people should care about the whitewashing of black history.