Dr. Callie Watkins Liu: Okay, now we will get started. Thank you for coming to this session today. Ummm.. My name is Dr. Callie Watkins Liu, this Kendra Davis who is the conference coordinator.
I am a visiting Research Scholar at the Heller School with the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion as well as relational research collaborative and so I am the one putting together this conference.
I am very excited that you are all here. As you all know this is about the Sankofa Community Conference, Co-Constructing Racial Justice through Life and Work. For this info session will be both in the room and will be recorded, so you will be able to access it as well as people on zoom.
I am just going to go through this and make sure to highlight particular things, then we had a list of some general questions we thought people would have and if we don’t cover or if there are additional questions we will just jump in to the additional questions.
And for people who are on zoom… if they could just use the chat to type questions in there.
Okay, so I am going to start going through this.
The Sankofa Community Conference is an opportunity for graduate and undergraduate students to sharpen critical thinking regarding social justice, race and ethnicity and identify concrete interventions. Building off of Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality, applications should explore issues between and within racial and ethnic groups as well as the intersections of race and ethnicity with other categories of difference – such as gender, social class or citizenship. Students are encouraged to: engage with cutting edge racial justice questions in an area of interest - such as mental health, disability or education - and interrogate the root causes, while connecting to current manifestations. Presentations should not simply conclude that racial injustice and inequality exist, but how they operate, how they matter in people’s lives, and what steps can be taken to address them.
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So a quick thing about this conference is called Sankofa Community Conference which is part of the Sankofa Community Conversations series at the Heller School of Social Policy and Management…umm that’s having different conversations about race. So the idea is that this conference is able to pick-up on previous conversations you had about race and really advance the conversations and think about what are we going to do. Not Just that racism exist, what is racism, but what can we do and what would that look like.
Um.., the submission information We are looking for student papers and posters that rigorously examine racial justice issues, at three levels of analysis, and that is what is up here, that is the central part of how we are understanding social justice. There is Individual and Interpersonal, Level 2 Institutional, and Level 3 Ideological.
For the purpose of this conference there are usually four levels, for the purpose of this conference we combined interpersonal and individual, so that’s why it says three, but you can be talking about interpersonal or individual at that level, it’s your choice, it is up to you.
Participants are expected to have a clear and grounded understanding of a racial justice problem and how it could be addressed. Participants will only be expected to hone in on one level for their presentations, but submissions must explain how the multiple levels of society interact to perpetuate or challenge the racial injustice.
So I was speaking with Raymond before basically the paper that you are submitting is showing that you have a strong foundation for how you are understanding your problem. But your presentations will only focus on one part. So in your presentation, in the actually conference you will be talking about education at the institutional level for example. But we need to make sure what ever you are proposing is coming from a strong foundation, and I am going to go through these four Is really quickly here.
So we have… Thank you…so here on this diagram we have interpersonal and individual level which are acts, perceptions, beliefs, experiences and interactions with others and yourself. At the institutional level we have policies, structures, and organizations that society works through and at ideology culture, values, norms, and beliefs that shape society. So here (On the left side) we have what a racist system looks like and on the other side we have what an anti-racist interaction would look like (on the right side).
So here you could have for a racist situation being perpetuated: “ I am a Black Boy and I love school, but I have trouble reading, my teacher and peers tell me I am stupid and lazy.” At the institutional level “ The School will not pay for dyslexia test for me and my family does not have $500 to spare.” At the ideological level: “The narrative in society is that black en do not do well in school, because they do not work hard.”
So you can see at those multiple levels how the same issue might be perpetuated. So then you could think about an intervention that is at the ideological level..so changing a narrative, and so then something that could be at the institutional level like things that could affect policies at the school or how people are interacting, teacher practices, or you could have something at the individual level like how you understand yourself other interpersonal situations.
So on the other hand here we have: “ I am a teacher and I realize I have unfairly judged Xavier, upon further reflection…maybe he is trying hard, but has dyslexia. And at the institutional level could be: Xavier’s School subsidizes learning disability and evaluation services. Education Policy, there is an education policy requiring teachers to participate in racial bias training and learning disability diagnosis.” So based on that training perhaps the teacher is seeing things differently and interact with this young boy differently. Then there is an ideological shift in understanding that “there are racial disparities that create obstacles that prevent people from reaching their full potential.” So if we start building from understanding that then we can change the policies and that can change how we interact.
So those are kind of the different steps, so whatever racial justice problem you decide to talk about you need to show how it is playing out on different levels, right? So what we are really interested in is what are the interventions that we can do?
So for your paper submissions… you need to include a cover page which has your title, name, institution, year of school, and an abstract of no more than 250 words. All papers must be submitted as a word doc – with your last name and title in the file name -, a header with your last name on each page, page numbers, references and citations (ASA or APA style). So it’s a basic paper.
For poster submissions, posters must clearly explain a racial justice issue and how it can be addressed, similarly, submissions should include an abstract of no more than 250 words and a cover page with poster title, name, institution, year of school. Posters should be submitted as pdfs and your last name and title must be in the file name.
Then we will also be welcoming conference volunteers: If you are interested in being a volunteer, facilitator, or moderator for the conference, please send a cover letter with a description of why you are interested in volunteering, and what experience you have as a facilitator or moderator around issues of racial justice. Your cover letter can be in the body of the email. Your subject line should indicate that you are interested in volunteering.
So that’s the basic outline of the conference.
Let me start off with all of your questions because actually I heard you asking some good questions amongst yourselves. So if you could give me your name and the questions you have about the conference.
Yes
Participant: Catherine, one simple question, has this conference happened before?
Dr: Watkins Liu: This is the first time this has been done.
Participant: Anna, are you looking mostly for individual presentations or do groups, could they get together and present this together? Are there panels, I guess set-up?
Dr. Watkins Liu: Sure, great question, thank you. So for your presentation there will be a single submission, but it could be co-authored so it could be like two people who worked on it. I wouldn’t try to make it more than three because that would be a little hard to present. And for the conference in itself, people will be grouped and would be having conversations amongst themselves about the interventions, so it would be like a panel in a slightly different form like if you go to a general conference and there is a panel like “ Here’s everything we know” , right? You are the experts on all this stuff, and in this conference you will presenting this is my piece of the puzzle on this level and the other person is like here is my piece of the puzzle at this level. And together we get to have a bigger understanding of how we could operate at that level, so it would be more organized around the different levels. Uh.. interpersonal and individual, institutional, ideological and then we will have a conversations across all of it. Does that make sense?
Participant: Yeah I am Rajeev, so I was also unsure of the same thing like could people submit as a group and the different levels…
Dr. Watkins Liu: I would say for a group one the poster might be easier than the paper. I think it is easier to pull all that in together, you are welcome to do it however, we are just looking for interesting work and content and to highlight it. We really want this to be student center and focused, because students ask the most cutting edge questions. So we really want you all to take the things you have been learning in class and the conversations that you have been having, the questions and things you have been caring about in your life and giving you the opportunity to take it to that next step and finding other people who have also been thinking about What do we actually do? And for us to build on that together. So however works for you, if you do an individual submission, or a multiple people on it, all that works completely fine.
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Participant: How long should the presentations be?
Dr. Watkins Liu: Excellent question. Yeah, so there is not page limit on the papers, I say…yeah, when presentations are expected, then we will give information about all the presentations and everything. But it would be probably each presentation, let’s say, no more than 10 to 15 minutes, which is pretty standard for what happens at different academic conferences, on a panel you would take maybe for 10 or 15 minutes and then have a bigger discussion. Um and that’s why the particular focus on that’s what you want to really talk about. THAT’S IMPORTANT, and I would encourage everyone who is submitting to really think about your proposal a little separate from your presentation. Right because your paper, I am going to say paper because that is the more….I am saying paper, so for the paper it is for us to know that you have a very grounded back ground and like a strong foundation for what you are presenting. So that you are not proposing a solution that is not actually connected to how the problem is operating. You do not have to actually going through every single thing that you learned. Once you got that in your body, what you are giving to us in that presentation is I dove deep into this, I understand this thing, and here is the intervention that I think is really applicable for this problem. So you are really focusing on that for the presentation.