The leader of the Poor People’s Campaign will train the next generation of ‘moral fusion leaders’ at the Yale divinity school

On Tuesday 17 January, the Rev Dr William Barber will trade in his purple pastor’s smock and clerical collar, step away from the Greenleaf Christian church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, where he has preached for 30 years, and enter a Yale classroom where he will embark on his new mission: training the next generation of what he calls “moral fusion leaders”.

For Barber, the exchange of pulpit for white board will not be unduly fazing. As one of the US’s most prominent civil rights leaders he has been effectively teaching the nation about social justice for years, albeit on the raucous frontlines of public activism rather than in the hushed calm of an Ivy League institution.