All are invited to an event on Tuesday (April 20) at 7:00 p.m.: “Religion, Race, and Environmental Activism after Standing Rock” at Montclair State University. Professor Smithey will participate in the panel that follows a screening of Half-Mile, Upwind, On Foot.
Some of you will remember a similar film screening at Swarthmore College in 2019.
All are welcome, and you can register to attend online (or in person) using this link.
Swarthmore Hosts Aspiring Academics of Color at Mellon Mays Conference
The Communications Office
14 November 2019
Jayanti Owens ’06 and Sa’ed Atshan ’06
Jayanti Owens ’06 (left), a professor at Brown University, will speak at the conference, organized by Assistant Professor of Peace & Conflict Studies Sa’ed Atshan ’06. Both are MMUF alums.
Jayanti Owens ’06 credits the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program with playing a “defining role” in her Swarthmore experience and in her decision to pursue graduate school.
Now the Mary Tefft and John Hazen White, Sr. Assistant Professor of Sociology and International & Public Affairs at Brown University, Owens is returning to Swarthmore to share insights from that journey when she gives the first keynote address at this year’s MMUF Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference this weekend. About 80 people are expected to attend the event from Swarthmore as well as Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Cornell, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania.
“I will be talking about pulling back the curtain on graduate school applications and navigating the ‘hidden curriculum’ for success in graduate school,” says Owens, who graduated from Swarthmore with honors in political science and educational policy. “My hope is that by sharing both my personal experiences and the evidence base of social science research around the unique challenges faced by many students and faculty of color in the academy, students will leave with some strategies and a larger sense of some of the factors they might think about as they set out on their own journeys.”
Swarthmore is one of eight founding members of the MMUF Program, which primarily aims to increase diversity in the faculty of institutions of higher learning. In the program’s more than 30-year history at Swarthmore, nearly 150 students have graduated as MMUF Fellows. Of them, 47 have earned doctorates or are in the process of doing so, in addition to those who have earned law or medical degrees.
“The conference is a wonderful opportunity for students, faculty, and staff who care about the MMUF program in our region to connect,” says conference organizer and Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies Sa’ed Atshan ’06. “The student presentations are the heart of the conference, where the fellows will be able to showcase their excellent research and to engage in dialogue and intellectual exchange with each other.”
In addition to the support that she received to conduct original research and to attend intensive writing retreats to complete her dissertation, Owens cites the program’s fostering of lifelong friendships with peers and mentors that supported her journey through graduate school and beyond. She also credits Swarthmore’s first MMUF coordinator, Sara Lawrence Lightfoot Professor Emeritus of English Literature Chuck James, with providing unfailing support and advocacy. “I will be forever grateful to him,” she says, “and to MMUF and all the colleagues and friends I have formed through its network.”
Atshan, also an MMUF alum, is now in his first year as coordinator of Swarthmore’s program. “This is a tremendous honor and such a dream come true,” he says. “I would not be here today if it was not for Swarthmore and the MMUF program, and I feel that this is my moral responsibility to give back for this rising generation.”
To learn about Swarthmore’s commitment to access and inclusion, visit lifechanging.swarthmore.edu.
Peace and Conflict Studies is co-sponsoring this awesome event tomorrow!
“How the 1971 Burglary of the Media, PA, FBI Office Changed History”
Round table discussion with:
Keith Forsyth, antiwar activist and burglar, auto worker, optical engineer and jazz guitarist; Bonnie Raines, anti-war activist and burglar, civil rights activist and advocate for the needs of children;
and Betty Medsger, former Washington Post reporter, professor of journalism, and author of The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI
McCabe Library Atrium
Swarthmore College
7 p.m., April 3, 2019
Open to the public
The Swarthmore Campus & Community Store will provide books for purchase and signing during the reception to follow
Co-sponsored by
Swarthmore College Peace Collection
Black Studies
Black Cultural Center
Lang Center for Social Responsibility
Peace and Conflict Studies
Political Science
Peace, Justice, and Human Rights-Haverford College
This event will also recognize Betty Medsger’s donation of her papers to the Peace Collection
Check out the video below for a background on the original event:
Please mark your calendar for an exciting event serving as the capstone for Black History Month and the opening for Women’s History Month:
March 2, 2018
Public Lecture
“Climate Justice and Civil Rights”
1:30-2:30pm: Swarthmore Meeting House
Reception and Gathering
3:30-5:00pm: Black Cultural Center
You are invited to a public lecture and conversation with Jacqueline Patterson, the Director of the NAACP’s Environmental and Climate Justice Program.
A national leader who bridges civil rights and environmental justice, Patterson heads the NAACP’s initiatives to advance an inclusive, “just transition” to a renewable, green economy. At the heart of this initiative is Patterson’s commitment to ensuring that communities of color and those who are the most impacted by the harmful effects of climate change are at the center of the movement to create an equitable and sustainable future. Patterson’s long history of leadership has led her to serve as coordinator and co-founder of Women of Color United, and to advocate for the intersection of issues relating to women‘s rights, violence against women, HIV&AIDS, racial justice, economic justice, and environmental and climate justice.
This event is co-sponsored by: Environmental Studies, Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, Black Studies, Black Cultural Center, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Diversity, Inclusion & Community Development, Religious Studies, Peace & Conflict Studies, Political Science, Philosophy, Sociology & Anthropology, Office of the President, Health & Societies Initiative, and the Sustainability Office.
Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship: Quakers, African Americans and the Myth of Racial Justice
Please join us for a lecture by Vanessa Julye
Monday, February 26th at 4:15 pm
Black Cultural Center
Ms. Julye is a member of Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting and she is Friends General Conference’s Coordinator for the Committee for Nurturing Ministries focusing on Racism and Youth Ministries.
Sponsored by the Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Department of Religion, Program in Black Studies, Program in Peace and Conflict Studies, Program in Islamic Studies and the Black Cultural Center
By Lee Smithey
I hope everyone finds an opportunity to reflect and take some sort of action (or preparation for action) in pursuit of justice and peace on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
While the nation focuses on service, I am usually drawn on this day to Dr. King’s speech, “Beyond Vietnam.” Public schools are closed today, and I sit in my office at home listening to the speech with my daughter (11 yrs old). I am amazed and touched that we can listen to this together knowing that Alison had the opportunity to meet Dr. Vincent Harding (who wrote the speech for King) at Pendle Hill shortly before his death in 2014.
This speech at Riverside Church was one of King’s most important and controversial speeches because he spoke against the War in Vietnam, drawing the ire of nationalists and even allies, who felt King should remain focused on domestic racial injustices. This was the address during which King decried “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.”
It is with such activity that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” [applause] Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin [applause], we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see than an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
Let’s also remember that this year is the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination, exactly one year to the day after he delivered the Beyond Vietnam speech. (Stay tuned for announcements about commemorative events at the College this spring.) I hope to get a few minutes today to make a bit more progress through Michael K. Honey’s book, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign. On the night before he was killed, as he delivered another momentous speech about the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, King was again talking about both service (using the parable of the Good Samaritan and emphasizing fixing the dangerous Jericho Road itself.
What a humbling challenge. It is a privilege to share this day with you, and I look forward to the coming semester as we renew our work together.
“Historically Black Colleges and the Struggle for Citizenship in America”
Professor Cally Waite (Columbia University)
National Director, Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program, Social Science Research Council
Thursday, March 16, 2017
4:30pm
Kohlberg Hall Room 228
Swarthmore College
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos recently described historically black colleges and universities as “pioneers” of the school choice movement, with HBCU leaders from across the United States meeting with President Trump.
How do we contextualize these developments? What is at stake for the historic struggle of Black Americans for citizenship and social justice?
Organized by Peace and Conflict Studies, Sponsored by the Black Cultural Center, the Intercultural Center, Black Studies, Education, History, Sociology & Anthropology, Political Science, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility.
Nikhil Pal Singh
(New York University)
Tuesday, November 15th
4:15 pm Sci 101
Drawing on his forthcoming book Exceptional Empire: Race, War and Sovereignty in U.S. Globalism (Harvard University Press 2017), Nikhil Singh will speak on the topic of race, war and police power in the ‘American Century.’
Dr. Singh is Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and History at New York University, where he also directs the NYU Prison Education Program. He is the author of Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Harvard UP, 2004), which won several prizes, including the Liberty Legacy Foundation Award for the best book in civil rights history from the Organization of American Historians in 2005.
He is the editor of Climbin’ Jacob’s Ladder: the Black Freedom Movement Writings of Jack O’Dell (University of California Press, 2010). Author of numerous essays on race, empire and U.S. liberalism, he is a member of the editorial board of the American Crossroads Book Series at the University of California Press.
Sponsored by the Department of Political Science, Black Studies Program, Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, English Literature, Peace and Conflict Studies, and Sociology and Anthropology
Contact: obalkan1
As part of Black History Month activities, Matt Meyer, organizer, author, and editor of We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism (PM Press) discussed revolutionary nonviolence, privilege, solidarity, and alliance building in higher education.
Video of the event is now available.
Audio of the event is now available.
Meyer’s work in K-12 public education and teacher training included ten years of service as Multicultural Coordinator for the NYC Board of Education’s Alternative High Schools & Programs, as well as a stint as Union Leader of a local section of the United Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO. He helped found and direct a mini-school in collaboration with St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Hospital’s Child and Family Institute (CFI), and led a psycho-educational CFI research delegation on re-integration and treatment of child soldiers in West and Central Africa and related work in “inner-city” USA; he also helped in the early development of the Harvey Milk High School, the first US “safe space” school for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth. Twice-decorated as “teacher of the year” by two Community School District Superintendents, Meyer’s continuous efforts as a high school-based historian and peace educator have spanned over 30 years.
Matt is an outstanding scholar-practitioner and leader in the field of peace and justice studies and is an accomplished Africanist scholar and educator, and has done much to bring critical race theory into dialogue with peace and conflict studies. You may read his recent co-authored piece “Refusing to Choose Between Martin and Malcolm: Ferguson, Black Lives Matter, and a New Nonviolent Revolution” at Counterpunch.org.
Co-sponsors: Peace and Conflict Studies, President’s Office, Black Cultural Center, Black Studies Program, Intercultural Center, History Department, Educational Studies Department, Sociology and Anthropology Department
This event builds on a theme the Peace and Conflict Studies program initiated last semester with the American Friends Service Committee poster exhibit in McCabe Library, “All of Us or None: Responses & Resistance to Militarism.”
