To have your diversity, equity and inclusion-related event featured on this page, contact diversitymatters@umich.edu.
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Jul 16
Theorizing the Web Presents: Surveillance of Black Lives
7:00pm, Off Campus Location
Dr. Allissa Richardson and Mutale Nkonde will discuss the layered and multifaceted impact of surveillance on Black people in the context of the Movement for Black Lives and the Covid-19 pandemic. Moderated by TtW Committee member and professor of Digital Studies, Dr. Apryl Williams, this talk will demonstrate how facial recognition systems used in policing; tracing software associated with the pandemic; and Black death imagery have created a treacherous techno-mediascape that extends both state matrices of power and systems of racialized, anti-Black oppression in the United States. This discussion will be streamed live on the TtW YouTube page and on Zoom. A recording will be available on our website. You can sign up here to receive the Zoom link and reminders about future episodes of TtW Presents: https://theorizingtheweb.org/p/p2020/schedule/
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Jul 24
LEAD: Bridging the Divide—Uniting Against Racism
12:00pm, Off Campus Location
LEAD, Leading Equity And Diversity, is a series of conversations where attendees have the opportunity to hear from a diverse group of guests who lead DEI initiatives. This LEAD conversation will address the need to have people of all social identities (across race, gender, class, sexual orientation, etc.) involved in the fight against systemic racism. It’s human nature to be drawn to people who are similar to us and our desire to bond with our community intensifies under threat. How can we avoid an “us vs. them” mentality and mobilize as a unified force against racism? Speakers will discuss pathways to bonding and bridging across difference. Howard Ross is a lifelong social justice advocate and is considered one of the world’s seminal thought leaders on identifying and addressing unconscious bias. He is the author of ReInventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose and Performance, and The Washington Post best seller, Everyday Bias: Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives. His latest book, Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect Is Tearing Us Apart won the 2019 Nautilus Book Award Gold Medal for Social Change and Social Justice. Ross founded Cook Ross Inc., one of the nation’s leading diversity and inclusion consultancies. He sold the company in July 2018 and founded Udarta Consulting, LLC. Ross is also a former rock ‘n roll musician and has taught meditation and mindfulness for more than 20 years, including his role as co-founder and lead facilitator for the Inner Journey Seminars. Sonya Jacobs is the chief organizational learning officer and senior director of faculty and leadership development for Michigan Medicine. As U-M’s first chief organizational learning officer, she creates curricula and strategies to build the capabilities of staff, faculty, and leaders across the university. This includes the development of education, training, interventions, and programs to further the university’s initiatives around creating an inclusive and equitable environment. As the senior director of faculty and leadership development, she is responsible for supporting faculty in achieving their professional goals, as well as recruitment, on-boarding, and retention of a diverse faculty, and leadership development for both faculty and staff. She co-created programs focused on the advancement of women and founded an Executive Coaching Certification program. She holds a bachelor’s from Michigan State University and a master’s from Eastern Michigan University. Deborah Willis is the senior program lead for the DEI Certificate and program manager for professional and academic development at the Rackham Graduate School. Dr. Willis develops and implements innovative programs to engage a highly diverse academic community and consistently strives to foster collaborations that support the professional development of scholars and encourage an inclusive environment. Throughout her professional career, she has provided leadership, vision, and advocacy for graduate students, staff, and faculty particularly around equity, inclusion, and social justice issues. She established and moderates the LEAD Webinar Series to elevate the voices of those who lead DEI initiatives and to provide diverse perspectives for webinar attendees. Dr. Willis holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan. Registration is required at https://myumi.ch/kxqYQ. We want to ensure full and equitable participation in our events. If an accommodation would promote your full participation in this event, please follow the registration link to indicate your accommodation requirements. Please let us know as soon as possible in order to have adequate time (one week preferred) to arrange for your requested accommodation(s) or an effective alternative.
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Jul 28
Policing and Protest 2020
4:00pm, Off Campus Location
Note: The webinar has a Q&A format. We welcome your questions before via email (eihswebinar@umich.edu) and during the webinar via Zoom Q&A. This event will be recorded and available for future viewing online. The killing of George Floyd, in the wake of the horrific and obscene history of the killings of unarmed black people by the police, has focused attention like never before on the systemic anti-black racism of the criminal-legal system in the United States. To be sure, the massive expansion and militarization of policing and incarceration are in some ways of comparatively recent origin. Yet they also have a much deeper origin in, and are inextricably connected to, a longer history of the judicial and extra-judicial violence against black people in the continent. The racist inequities of the criminal-legal system, indeed, are not a bug, but a feature. Our panel of experts, scholars of the United States at the University of Michigan, will help us explore, beyond the headlines, the reach of the long arm of the carceral state in society as well as the challenges and opportunities that have been thrown up by the contemporary protests against the systemic violence of the state. The stakes for understanding the working of the carceral state are documented by the Documenting Criminalization and Confinement project of the University of Michigan’s Carceral State Project. However, the momentous protests against anti-Black racism as well as the broad public support they have received both within the United States and across the world—the clamor heard round the world—have also created a novel opportunity for implementing and imagining futures beyond a blatantly rigged carceral framework. Panelists: • Melissa Burch, Anthropology, University of Michigan • Matthew Countryman, Afroamerican and African History, American Culture, History, University of Michigan • Matthew Lassiter, History, Urban and Regional Planning, University of Michigan • William D. Lopez, Health Behavior and Health Education, University of Michigan Moderator: • Mrinalini Sinha, History, University of Michigan This event is part of the Thursday Series of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.
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Jan 29
Imani Winds and Catalyst Quartet
8:00pm, Off Campus Location
Imani Winds and the Catalyst Quartet present a program called (im)migration: music of change. The program features each ensemble in a solo work, followed by a second half where the wind quintet and string quartet join forces. Catalyst violinist Jessie Montgomery’s work, Sergeant McCauley, is inspired by the Great Migration of African Americans during the early to middle 20th century, from the perspective of her great-grandfather, William McCauley. The work brings together spirituals and work songs that reflect her ancestor’s route from Mississippi through the West, north to the Dakotas, and eventually south to Georgia. The Imani Winds ensemble has evolved the wind quintet through adventurous programming and imaginative collaborations, commissioning music from new voices that reflect historical events and the times in which we currently live. The Catalyst Quartet features alumni and laureates of the Sphinx Competition.
