POTSDAM -- Cultural diplomat, spoken word poet and educator Kane Smego will present "Imaginary Borders: An honest discussion about immigration!," Thursday, Aug. 27, at 7 p.m. on the second floor of Clarkson's Student Center.

The event is free and open to the public.

As a non-Latino Spanish speaker, Kane Smego also explores his role as an ally in the fight for immigrant rights, and challenges students to think critically about the issues of citizenship and migration, as well as what it means to be a member of a global community.

Smego is an internationally touring spoken word poet and hip hop artist, cultural diplomat, National Poetry Slam finalist, and the co-founder and former artistic director of the award-winning, youth arts nonprofit Sacrificial Poets, based in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina.

He has performed and conducted programs all across the U.S. and abroad in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Central America, and has taught a college course on spoken word and oral history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In the summer of 2011, Smego helped create and lead the Poetic Portraits of a Revolution project that traveled to Egypt and Tunisia to collect stories of the popular revolutions, and adapted them to spoken word poems that were broadcast in an eight-week radio series on National Public Radio affiliate WUNC.

Smego is part of Next Level, a hip hop cultural diplomacy and education project headed by the U.S. State Department and UNC Chapel Hill, which this year sent him and a team of artists to run a program in Zimbabwe.

Smego has toured with the legendary Black Ice from Def Poetry Jam and award-winning poet Patricia Smith, and was featured on the King Mez debut album, My Everlasting Zeal, alongside such accomplished artists as Lupe Fiasco’s producer, Soundtrakk, and Grammy Award-nominee J. Cole.

Smego is the primary author of the "You Think." curriculum that uses poetry and hip hop to help youths and adults tell their own stories, and challenges them to transform themselves and their communities through the use of the spoken and written word.