Program
We invite you to participate in a teach-in on racism and activism on Friday, February 12, 2016. This teach-in will address the racial climate and incidents of violence at the University of Chicago, within the city, and throughout the country. The organizers of this event represent faculty, staff, undergraduates, and graduate students who seek to engage in rigorous conversation that includes the concerns of underrepresented minorities on campus as well as those of our neighbors. Moreover, we hope to provide a space in which students, faculty, staff, and community members can come together to discuss how to jointly strive for racial and social justice.
Feb 12, 2016
10:00AM - 5:00PM
Saieh Hall, 1160 E 58th St
10 am | Opening Remarks and Framing with Michael Dawson, John D. MacArthur Professor of Political Science and the College; Director, CSRPC and Ariel Stevenson, AB '15
10.30 am | Institutional Racism and the University of Chicago
Participants:
Matt Briones, Assistant Professor of American History and the College
Adam Green, Associate Professor of American History and the College
Stephanie Greene, AB ’17; Organization of Black Students
Sara Zubi, AB ’18; Students for Justice in Palestine
Allen Linton II, Doctoral Student in Political Science; Black Youth Project
Oluwaseyi (Shae) Omonijo, AB '18; Co-President, African & Caribbean Students Association; Undergraduate Liaison to the Board of Trustees
Johnaé Strong, AB '12; Black Youth Project 100
Waldo Johnson (moderator), Associate Professor at the School of Social Service Administration
[Break Out Sessions Not Recorded]
12.15 pm | Lunch and Break Out Sessions
Discussion Topics:
I. Intersectionality: The Role of Multiple Identities in Shaping Inequality
Jennifer Kubota, Assistant Professor of Psychology, and Fresco Steez, Black Youth Project 100, will lead a discussion on the role of intersectionality within social justice/activist movements. This session will explore intersectionality (the understanding of human beings as being shaped by multiple identities—race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, geography, etc.), as a term, a way of operating, and a tool for organizing.
II. Race and Police
This session will seek to build a conversation about how race affects how we experience police and how police see us, drawing in part on our research working with Black high school students on Chicago’s South Side. Matthew Epperson, Assistant Professor at the School of Social Service Administration, Damon Jones, Assistant Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, and Craig Futterman, Clinical Professor of Law, will facilitate the conversation.
III. Teaching and Encountering Race in the Classroom
Amanda Michelle Jones, Madeleine Elfenbein, and Emily Marker, coordinators of the Race and Pedagogy Working Group at the University of Chicago, will lead a discussion about how to promote productive conversations about race in the classroom. We will consider concrete strategies for teachers to employ and we will also discuss how to think more expansively about how race plays out in college classrooms in general and at the University of Chicago in particular. For more information on the Race and Pedagogy Working Group, please visit uchicagoraceandpedagogy.wordpress.com.
IV. Visualizing Institutional Racism: Mapping UChicago’s Impact on its Neighbors
This session will include a presentation on, and opportunity for open discussion of the University’s involvement in redlining, gentrification, urban renewal and other topics related to its land use and expansion, including the creation and expansion of the second-largest private police force in the world. Kathleen Belew, Assistant Professor of History and the College, and Juliet Eldred, Third Year in the College, will lead this session. Eldred’s project "Let Our Impact Grow From More to More” (unspeakable.info), an interactive story map that makes use of data culled from historic maps, archival sources, and various University websites, will serve as the foundation for this conversation.
2 pm | Activism On and Off Campus
Participants:
Cosette Hampton, AB ’17, Organization of Black Students; Black Youth Project 100
Jenn Jackson, Doctoral Student in Political Science; Black Youth Project
Toussaint Losier, PhD '13; Assistant Professor, Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Diana Lozana, AB '16; Co-Chair, M.E.Ch.A. de UChicago
Veronica Morris-Moore, Co-Founder, Fearless Leading by Youth (FLY)
Charles Payne, Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor in the School of Social Service Administration
Barbara Ransby, Professor of African American Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and History at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC); Director, UIC Social Justice Initiative
Shiro Wachira, AB '16; former member of UChicago Students for Health Equity
Marci Ybarra (moderator), Assistant Professor at the School of Social Service Administration
4.15 pm | "Speak Out"
Facilitators:
Cécile Fromont, Assistant Professor of Art History
Carlos Cardenas-Iniguez, Graduate Student in Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Psychology