Speakers coming to campus

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2012

OUR RETHINKING RACE SPEAKERS:

(please visit www.uakron.edu/race for a full list of presenters.)

 

Mr. Charles Holt, Broadway actor, the "Lion King" -

Empowerment and Leadership - "Finding Your Voice"

Student Union Theatre

Tuesday, January 31, 2012 -1:00 to 2:30 p.m.

These vehicles are anchored in high vibrating themes and principles - Excellence, Integration, Community, Integrity, Equanimity, and Dedication, and Service - all with the intention to encourage, enlighten, and empower.

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Dr. Adis Maria Vila, Chief Diversity Officer, United States Air Force Academy

Student Union Theatre

Wednesday, February 1, 2012 – 1:00 to 2:30 p.m.

Dr. Adis M. Vila is the Chief Diversity Officer, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colo. She serves as the principal adviser to USAFA leadership ensuring diversity programs and projects are developed in accordance with federal, Department of Defense, Air Force, and USAFA guidance, policy, architecture and standards. She is the strategic leader, diversity advocate and principal adviser to academy leaders on diversity programs and issues and its primary voice on matters of equity, diversity and inclusion. She provides strategic guidance to the superintendent and other senior leaders on the implementation of diversity and inclusive learning best practices.

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Ms. Jasmine Armstrong, National Park Service Park Ranger

U.S. Department of the Interior - Frederick Douglass National Historic Site

"The Life and History of Frederick Douglass"

Student Union Theatre

Thursday, February 2, 2012 - 1:00 to 2:30 p.m.

Objectives

1. Explore Douglass as an abolitionist and race leader
2. Review humanism and race as a social construct
3. Examine the eventual goals Douglass strived toward
4. Contrast with the attitudes and larger American culture he is working against. Include an overview on late 19th century American history
5. Discussion on how these attitudes still play out in modern visits to his house.  Exploration of the resources at Cedar Hill today.

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Douglas Blackmon, Author

"Slavery by Another Name;  The Re-Enclavement of Black People in American from the Civil War to World War II" (co-sponsor - Summa Health System)

Student Union Theatre

Monday, February 6, 2012 - 9:00 to 10:30 a.m.

Douglas A. Blackmon’s first book, “Slavery By Another Name”, broadly examines how a form of neoslavery thrived in the U.S. long after legal abolition.

Other Info:

2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Wall Street Journal writer Douglas Blackmon. Slavery by Another Namechallenges one of our country’s most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery ended with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The author explores how in the years following the Civil War, insidious new forms of forced labor emerged in the American South, keeping hundreds of thousands of African Americans in bondage, trapping them in a brutal system that would persist until the onset of World War II.

Based on Blackmon’s research into original documents and personal narratives, Slavery by Another Name unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after Emancipation and then back into involuntary servitude. It also tells stories of courage and redemption, and the men and women who fought against the re-emergence of human labor trafficking.

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Jack T.F. Ling, Ph.D., Executive Director, Institutional Diversity & Inclusion, University of Dayton

"Holistic Diversity and Inclusion"

Student Union Theatre

Monday, February 6, 2012 - 1:00 to 2:30 p.m.

Dr. Jack T. F. Ling is Executive Director of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion at University of Dayton. Jack advices the President and the Provost on ways to institutionalize Diversity; and he also works directly with other academic and administrative leaders on diversifying faculty and staff hiring, intercultural and interdisciplinary curricular and co-curricular change/collaborations, and oversees the Institution’s Bias Related Incidents reporting and review process. Regularly, Jack teaches in academic areas that can benefit from his diverse professional training and experience. He continues to teach, write, and publish in topics related to Asian American Studies, Diversity and Inclusion, Organizational Change, Existential-Phenomenological Psychology, and Classical Chinese Philosophical Thought. 

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Robert Jensen, Ph.D., Professor, University of Texas at Austin

"Power and Privilege" - (co-sponsor - Summa Health System)

Student Union Theatre

Tuesday, February 7, 2012 - 9:00 - 10:30 a.m.

While some would like to think that we have reached “the end of racism” in the United States, and others would like to celebrate diversity but are oblivious to the political, economic, and social consequences of a nation—and their sense of self—founded on a system of white supremacy, Jensen proposes a different approach. He sets his sights not only on the racism that can’t be hidden, but also on the liberal platitudes that sometimes conceal the depths of that racism in “polite society.”

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Thomas F. Nelson Laird, Ph.D., Associate Professor/Faculty, Indiana University

"Diversity on College Campuses and the Learning Experience"

Student Union Room 335

Thursday, February 9, 2012 - 1:00 to 2:30 p.m.

Topic Description:

In this presentation, Dr. Nelson Laird will discuss a model describing how diversity is included into college courses and curricula. He will address how to use the model for design, improvement, and assessment. He will use several examples of the model's use, including findings from survey items used with the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement that highlight how much faculty include diversity into different aspects of their courses, faculty and course characteristics that predict diversity inclusivity, and differences between diversity requirements and other types of courses.