Past events in the Equity & Difference series

Megan Ming Francis is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington and is also the field director for history and political development at the Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality and Race. Francis specializes in the study of American politics, race, and the development of constitutional law. She is particularly interested in the construction of rights and citizenship, black political activism, and the post-civil war South. Born and raised in Seattle, she was educated at Garfield High School, Rice University in Houston and Princeton University, where she received her M.A. and her Ph.D. in politics. She is the author of the multiple-award winning book, “Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State” (2014). This book tells the story of how the early campaign against state sanctioned racial violence of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People shaped the modern civil rights movement. Her research and commentary have been featured on MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, NPR, PBS, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, and TEDx talks.

Kristen Soltis Anderson is author of “The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Keep Up).” She is a pollster and co-founder of Echelon Insights, a research and analytics firm. She was one of TIME’s “30 Under 30 Changing the World” and has been featured as one of ELLE’s 2016 “Most Compelling Women in Washington.”

Anderson is an ABC News political contributor, columnist at The Washington Examiner, and is the co-host of The Pollsters, a bipartisan weekly podcast. She regularly appears on programs such as Morning Joe, Fox News Sunday, Real Time With Bill Maher and more.

In 2014, Anderson was a Resident Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics. Her research on millennial attitudes has been featured in The New York Times Magazine and she regularly speaks to audiences of corporate leaders and public officials about how to reach the millennial generation.

Prior to launching Echelon Insights, Anderson was vice president of The Winston Group, a Republican polling firm. She received her master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and her undergraduate degree from the University of Florida.

For 25 years, Maria Hinojosa has helped tell America’s untold stories and brought to light unsung heroes in America and abroad. In April 2010, Hinojosa launched The Futuro Media Group with the mission to produce multi-platform, community-based journalism that gives critical voice to the voiceless by harnessing the power of independent media to tell stories that are overlooked or underreported by traditional media.

As the anchor and executive producer of the long-running weekly NPR show Latino USA, and as anchor of the Emmy Award-winning talk show Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One from WGBH/La Plaza, Hinojosa has informed millions of Americans about the fastest growing group in our country. Previously, a Senior Correspondent for NOW on PBS, and currently, a rotating anchor for Need to Know, Hinojosa has reported hundreds of important stories—from the immigrant work camps in NOLA after Katrina, to teen girl victims of sexual harassment on the job, to Emmy Award-winning stories of the poor in Alabama.

Hinojosa has won top honors in American journalism. In 2009, Hinojosa was honored with an AWRT Gracie Award for Individual Achievement as Best TV correspondent. In 2010 she was awarded an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, by DePaul University in Chicago, as well as the Sidney Hillman Prize honoring her social and economic justice reporting. In 2012 she additionally received an honorary degree from Simmons College, was named among the top 25 Latinos in Contemporary American Culture by the Huffington Post, and gave the prestigious Ware Lecture. In 2013, Hinojosa taught at DePaul University as the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz chair of the Latin American and Latino Studies program.

Donna E. Shalala is a board member and former president and CEO of the Clinton Foundation. Previously, she served as president of the University of Miami and professor of political science. Donna received her A.B. in history from Western College for Women and her Ph.D. from Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. She served as president of Hunter College of CUNY from 1980 to 1987, and as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1987 to 1993. In 1993, President Clinton nominated her as Secretary for Health and Human Services (HHS) where she served for eight years. In 2008, President Bush presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Iran from 1962-1964. In 2010, she received the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights recognizing her dedication to improving the health and life chances of disadvantaged populations in South Africa and internationally.

Megan Ming Francis is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington and is also the field director for history and political development at the Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality and Race. Francis specializes in the study of American politics, race, and the development of constitutional law. She is particularly interested in the construction of rights and citizenship, black political activism, and the post-civil war South. Born and raised in Seattle, she was educated at Garfield High School, Rice University in Houston and Princeton University, where she received her M.A. and her Ph.D. in politics. She is the author of the multiple-award winning book, “Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State” (2014). This book tells the story of how the early campaign against state sanctioned racial violence of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People shaped the modern civil rights movement. Her research and commentary have been featured on MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, NPR, PBS, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, and TEDx talks.

Larry Gossett, ’71 — Larry Gossett serves on the Metropolitan King County Council representing many Seattle neighborhoods, including the Central Area, Capitol Hill, Beacon Hill, the Rainier Valley, Seward Park, UW, Fremont, Ravenna, Laurelhurst and the Skyway neighborhood in unincorporated King County.

Councilmember Gossett is chair of the Law and Justice Committee and serves on the Budget and Fiscal Management, Employment and Administration, Health, Housing and Human Services and Regional Policy committees. He also serves on the Flood Control District Board of Supervisors.

Born and raised in Seattle, Councilmember Larry Gossett has been a dedicated servant of the people for over 45 years. Gossett’s Council district represents an area where he has lived and worked on issues his entire life.

Councilmember Gossett is a graduate of Franklin High School; after two years at the University of Washington, he became a VISTA volunteer in Harlem (1966-1967) and worked with poor youth and families. Following his service obligation to VISTA, he returned to University of Washington where he was one of the original founders of the Black Student Union (BSU). As a respected student activist, he fought to eliminate racial discrimination and increase the enrollment of African Americans and other students of color at the University. After graduation, he became the first supervisor of the Black Student Division, in the Office of Minority Affairs.

Councilmember Gossett is extremely proud that in 1999, 13 years after the 1986 change of the County’s name to honor the slain civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he spearheaded the campaign to change the King County logo from an imperial crown to an image of Dr. King. In 2007, the King County Council unanimously adopted the change, becoming the only governmental entity in the nation to have as its logo the likeness of Dr. King. In the summer of 2008 the University of Washington Alumni Association gave him the esteemed honor of being selected as one of the “Wonderous 100,” one of the most influential UW graduates over the past 100 years.

Verlaine Keith-Miller, ’74, J.D. ’80 — Seattle native, Verlaine Keith-Miller graduated from Seattle’s Cleveland High School in 1966. Upon her high school graduation, she enrolled at the University of Washington. At that time the UW,  along with many other universities throughout the United States, was experiencing significant social ferment, not the least of which was represented by the University’s Black Student Union.

During her undergraduate days, Keith-Miller became active in the BSU. She was one of the students who participated in a sit in in the office of the University’s President, Dr. Charles Odegaard. That act lead to the UW’s commitment to recruit more black, Indian and Latino students, as well as recruit a more ethnically diverse faculty.

Ms. Keith-Miller is a dual degree Husky with a BA in Black Studies  (1973) and J.D (1980).  She served as Assistant Attorney General for the Washington State Office of the Attorney General until 1983. She then entered private practice representing plaintiffs. After leaving private practice, she began work as an industrial Appeals Judge for the Washington State Board of Appeals. She has since retired from that position in 2015.

Sharon Maeda, ’68 — Sharon Maeda’s parents and grandparents, living in Oregon during World War II, were sent to Japanese internment camps in Minidoka, Idaho.

Soon after their release, Maeda’s parents moved to Milwaukee, where Maeda was born. The family later returned to Portland, where Maeda spent summers at her grandparents’ Hood River farm, then moved to Seattle where her father worked for Boeing.

As a student at the UW, she served as a member of the ASUW Board of Control and became involved in many political causes and civil right campaigns on campus. After earning her graduate degree, Sharon was the Student Activities Advisor at the UW where she mentored minority student groups — the Black Student Union, MECHA and the Asian Student Coalition. Minority students were finding and asserting their ethnic identity, demanding equal rights on campus and in student government, supporting causes off campus like the United Farmworkers, the preservation of the International District and black power. Sharon’s job was to get them to demonstrations and keep them out of jail. She co-founded the Third World Coalition, an organization which crossed racial lines to bring activists of color together for the first time to find common ground.

Maeda began a career in journalism in the mid 1970’s, producing television documentaries and subsequently working in radio, serving as Executive Director for Pacifica Radio from 1980 to 1986. Rather than retire, Maeda started her own consulting firm, Spectra Communications a consulting firm that “works to empower clients to better manage their resources and implement the vision of a just and peaceful, multicultural society.”

Emile Pitre, M.S. ’69 — Emile Pitre, a native of Louisiana, is a graduate of Southern University (Magna Cum Laude) in Baton Rouge, LA and the University of Washington (National Institutes of Health Fellow). The son of a sharecropper (seven siblings) and the first to graduate from high school, he received a full ride for the first seven years of college.

Emile began his career by working for several organizations in various roles such as: the Environmental Protection Agency, as a chemist; CIBA-GEIGY USA in Greensboro, North Carolina as a Senior Analytical Chemist; and the Seattle Public Schools as an educational planner/evaluator.

Rejecting an offer from Monsanto which would have paid $20,000 more, Emile returned to UW in 1982 to serve as Head Chemistry Instructor of the Office of Minority Instructional Center (IC).  In 1989 he was promoted Director. In this role he oversaw a professional staff of 16 Study Skills Instructors and a tutorial staff of 75-100. Approximately 60 of Emile’s chemistry tutors went on to earn degrees in medical school. Another 25 have successfully completed dental or graduate school. During his tenure as director the IC won two University Recognition Awards (one for instructional excellence and one for diversity efforts).After more than 33 years, Emile retired as Associate Vice President for Assessment in the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity (OMA&D). By the time of his retirement in 2014 he was recognized as an “elder statesman” of the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity, not only for his knowledge of OMA&D history but also for his dedication to student success throughout his career.

Currently, he works part-time at OMA&D serving as Senior Advisor to the UW OMA&D Vice President, working on special projects, one of which is to lead efforts to write a book on the fifty-year history of minority affairs. Another project involves working with the UW College of Education on an initiative to improve the access, retention and graduation rates of underrepresented minority males.

In addition to his work with the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity (OMAD), Emile has served more than 20 years as advisor to the Black Student Union (BSU), an organization he helped found in 1968. Emile helped spearhead the production of an award-winning documentary (“In Pursuit of Social Justice”) in 2007 which highlighted the role played by the 1968 BSU in the establishment of OMAD.  It should be noted that on May 7, 2008, Emile and other founding members of the 1968 BSU received the Charles Odegaard Award for unwavering commitment to educational opportunity and diversity at the University of Washington.

Two academic scholarships have been established in his name: One at the University of Washington (endowed) and the other in his fraternity, Epsilon Epsilon Sigma.

Rogelio Riojas, ’73, ’75, M.H.A. ’77 — Since 1978, Rogelio Riojas has served as President and CEO of Sea Mar Community, a health and human services non-profit organization committed to providing quality, comprehensive health, human and housing services to diverse communities, specializing in service to Latinos. Under his leadership, the organization has grown from a small community clinic in the South Park neighborhood of Seattle, to a large multi-faceted health and human services organization serving more than 240,000 individuals annually in eleven counties throughout Washington state.

Currently Mr. Riojas serves on the University of Washington Board of Regents and the Sound Community Bank Board. Mr. Riojas has served on several advisory boards, including Western Governors University and South Seattle Community College. He has also served on the Seattle Market Community Advisory Board for JP Morgan Chase and the Board of Directors for Community Health Plan of Washington.

Mr. Riojas is a graduate of the University of Washington with bachelor’s degrees in economics and political science and a master’s degree in health administration.

Ralina Joseph — Panel moderator, Ralina L. Joseph is an associate professor in the UW’s Department of Communication and adjunct associate professor in the Departments of American Ethnic Studies and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego and B. A. in American Civilization from Brown University.

Dr. Joseph is the founding director of the University of Washington’s Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity.  Dr. Joseph is interested in the mediated communication of difference, or, more specifically, contemporary representations of race, gender and sexuality in the media. Her first book, “Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial” (Duke University Press, 2012), critiques anti-Black racism in mixed-race African American representations in the decade leading up to Obama’s 2008 election. She is a frequent guest on Seattle’s NPR affiliate, KUOW. She is currently working on her second book project, “Speaking Back to Screens: How Black Women on Television Resist PostIdentity Culture,” a television studies examination of African American women’s resistance to “postidentity,” the ostensibly “after” moment of racism and sexism and race- and gender-based identities. She is currently writing her second book, Screening Strategic Ambiguity: Reading Black Women’s Resistance to the Post-Racial Lie, a television studies examination of African American women’s resistance to “post-race,” the ostensibly “after” moment of racism and race itself.

Peggy McIntosh, Ph.D., former associate director of the Wellesley Centers for Women, is also the founder and now Senior Associate of the National SEED Project on Inclusive Curriculum (Seeking Educational Equity & Diversity). SEED helps teachers and community members create their own local, year-long, peer-led seminars in which participants use their own experiences and those of their students, children and colleagues to widen and deepen school and college curricula and make communities and workplaces more inclusive.

Dr. McIntosh directs the Gender, Race, and Inclusive Education Project, which provides workshops on privilege systems, feelings of fraudulence and diversifying workplaces, curricula and teaching methods. Dr. McIntosh has taught English, American studies and women’s studies at the Brearley School, Harvard University, Trinity College (Washington, D.C.), Durham University (England) and Wellesley College.

She is co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute and has been consulting editor to Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women. In 1993–1994, she consulted with women on 22 campuses in Asia on the development of Women’s Studies and programs to bring materials from Women’s Studies into the main curriculum. In addition to having four honorary degrees, she is a recipient of the Klingenstein Award for Distinguished Educational Leadership from Columbia Teachers College. She earned her doctorate degree from Harvard University.

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in San Pedro, California, Misty Copeland began her ballet studies at the age of 13 at the San Pedro City Ballet. At the age of 15 she won first place in the Music Center Spotlight Awards. She then began her studies at the Lauridsen Ballet Center. Copeland has studied at the San Francisco Ballet School and American Ballet Theatre’s Summer Intensive on full scholarship and was declared ABT’s National Coca-Cola Scholar in 2000.

Copeland joined ABT’s Studio Company in September 2000, then joined American Ballet Theatre as a member of the corps de ballet in April 2001. She was appointed a Soloist in August 2007 and a Principal Dancer in August 2015. Her roles with the Company include Gamzatti, a Shade and the Lead D’Jampe in “La Bayadère,” a leading role in “Birthday Offering”, Milkmaid in “The Bright Stream,” the Fairy Autumn in Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella,” Blossom in James Kudelka’s “Cinderella,” Swanilda and the Mazurka Lady in “Coppélia,” Gulnare and an Odalisque in “Le Corsaire,” Mercedes, Driad Queen, the lead gypsy and a flower girl in “Don Quixote,” Duo “Concertant,” the Masks in Christopher Wheeldon’s “VIII,” the Firebird in Alexei Ratmansky’s “Firebird,” Flower Girl in “Gaîté Parisienne,” Zulma and the peasant pas de deux in “Giselle,” Queen of Shemakhan in “The Golden Cockerel,” the Waltz in “Les Sylphides,” Lescaut’s Mistress in “Manon,” Clara the Princess, Columbine and one of The Nutcracker’s Sisters in Alexei Ratmansky’s “The Nutcracker,” Bianca in “Othello,” a Gypsy in “Petrouchka,” the Lead Polovtsian Girl in the “Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor,” the Saracen Dancer in “Raymonda,” Cowgirl in “Rodeo, Juliet” and a Harlot in “Romeo and Juliet,” Princess Florine in “The Sleeping Beauty,” Odette-Odile, the pas de trios, a cygnet and the Hungarian Princess in “Swan Lake,” the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, leading roles in “Bach Partita,” “The Brahms-Haydn Variations” and “Monotones I” and roles in “Airs,” “Amazed in Burning Dreams,” “Baker’s Dozen,” “Ballo della Regina,” “Birthday Offering,” “Black Tuesday,” “The Brahms-Haydn Variations,” “Brief Fling,” “Company B,” “Désir,” “Gong,” “Hereafter,” “In the Upper Room,” “Overgrown Path,” “Pretty Good Year,” “Private Light,” “Raymonda Divertissements,” “Sechs Tänze,” “Sinatra Suite,” “Sinfonietta,” “Thirteen Diversions,” “Within You Without You: A Tribute to George Harrison” and “workwithinwork.”

Copeland created His Loss in “AfterEffect,” the Spanish Dance in Ratmansky’s “The Nutcracker,” the Fairy Fleur de farine (Wheat flower) in Ratmansky’s “The Sleeping Beauty” and leading roles in C. to C. “(Close to Chuck),” “Dumbarton,” “Glow – Stop, One of Three” and “With a Chance of Rain.”

Copeland received the 2008 Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in the Arts and was named National Youth of the Year Ambassador for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America in 2013. In 2014, President Obama appointed Copeland to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. She is the winner of a 2014 Dance Magazine Award. Copeland is the author of the best-selling memoir “Life in Motion” and the children’s book “Firebird.” In 2015, she was named to the Time 100 list and honored by Glamour Magazine as one of its Women of the Year. Ms. Copeland’s performances with American Ballet Theatre are sponsored by Valentino D. Carlotti.

Julian Agyeman, Ph.D. FRSA FRGS, is a professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University in Medford, MA. As an ecologist/biogeographer turned environmental social scientist, he has both a science and social science background, which helps frame his perspectives, research and scholarship. He thrives at the borders and intersections of a wide range of knowledges, disciplines and methodologies which he utilizes in creative and original ways in his research.

He was co-founder in 1988, and chair until 1994, of the Black Environment Network (BEN). He was co-founder in 1996, and is now editor-in-chief of Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability and was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA) in the same year.

He is series editor of “Just Sustainabilities: Policy, Planning and Practice,” published by Zed Books and co-editor of the series “Routledge Equity, Justice and the Sustainable City.” He is also contributing editor to “Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development” and a member of the editorial board of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education. In addition, he is an affiliate at the Civitas Athenaeum Laboratory at KTH—Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, a studio associate at “The Studio at the Edge of the World,” University of Tasmania Creative Exchange Institute and a senior scholar at The Center for Humans and Nature, Chicago.

His publications, which number over 160, include books, peer reviewed articles, book chapters, published conference presentations, published reports, book reviews, newspaper articles, op-eds and articles in professional magazines and journals. His books include “Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World” (co-edited with Robert D. Bullard and Bob Evans: MIT Press 2003), “Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice” (NYU Press 2005), “Environmental Inequalities Beyond Borders: Local Perspectives on Global Injustices” (co-edited with JoAnn Carmin: MIT Press 2011), “Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class and Sustainability” (co-edited with Alison Hope Alkon: MIT Press 2011), “Introducing Just Sustainabilities: Policy, Planning and Practice” (Zed Books 2013) and “Incomplete Streets: Processes, Practices, and Possibilities” (co-edited with Stephen Zavestoski: Routledge 2014) and “Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities” (co-authored with Duncan McLaren: MIT Press 2015).

Dr. Williamson-Lott is professor of education at the University of Washington. Her research examines the reciprocal relationship between social movements—particularly those of the middle twentieth century—and institutions of higher education. She is the author of multiple books. The most recent, “Radicalizing the Ebony Tower: Black Colleges and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi,” examines issues of institutional autonomy, institutional response to internal and external pressures, and the relationship between historically black colleges and the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. She has also written about the Black Panther Party’s educational programs, the history of social justice in education, and the portrayal of the black freedom struggle in high school history textbooks. She is currently working on a manuscript, tentatively titled “Jim Crow Campus: Higher Education and the Southern Social Order in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” which examines “regional convergence” with regard to southern higher education between the late 1950s and early 1970s. She received her Ph.D. in History of American Education from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Tim Wise has spent the past 20 years speaking to audiences in all 50 states, on over 1,000 college and high school campuses, at hundreds of professional and academic conferences and to community groups across the country.

He has also lectured internationally, in Canada and Bermuda, and has trained corporate, government, entertainment, media, law enforcement, military and medical industry professionals on methods for dismantling racism in their institutions. Wise has provided anti-racism training to educators and administrators nationwide.

Wise is the author of seven books, including his latest, “Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America” (City Lights Books). Other books include “Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority” (City Lights Books); his highly acclaimed memoir, “White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son” (recently updated and re-released by Soft Skull Press); “Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White;” “Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male;” “Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama;” and “Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity”.

Wise has been featured in several documentaries, including the 2013 Media Education Foundation release, “White Like Me: Race, Racism and White Privilege in America.” The film, which he co-wrote and co-produced, has been called “A phenomenal educational tool in the struggle against racism,” and “One of the best films made on the unfinished quest for racial justice,” by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva of Duke University, and Robert Jensen of the University of Texas, respectively. He also appeared alongside legendary scholar and activist, Angela Davis, in the 2011 documentary, “Vocabulary of Change.” In this public dialogue between the two activists, Davis and Wise discussed the connections between issues of race, class, gender, sexuality and militarism, as well as inter-generational movement building and the prospects for social change.

Wise appears regularly on CNN and MSNBC to discuss race issues and was featured in a 2007 segment on 20/20. He graduated from Tulane University in 1990 and received antiracism training from the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, in New Orleans.

Pedro Noguera is a professor of education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA he served as a tenured professor and holder of endowed chairs at New York University (2003–2015), Harvard University (2000–2003) and the University of California, Berkeley (1990–2000). He is the author of 11 books and over 200 articles and monographs. He appears as a regular commentator on educational issues on CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio and other national news outlets. His most recent books are “Excellence Through Equity” (Corwin 2015) with Alan Blankstein, “School for Resilience: Improving the Life Trajectory of African American and Latino Boys” with E. Fergus and M. Martin (Harvard Education Press 2014) and “Creating the Opportunity to Learn” with A. Wade Boykin (ASCD, 2011).

Noguera serves on the boards of numerous national and local organizations including the Economic Policy Institute, the Young Women’s Leadership Institute, the After School Corporation and The Nation magazine. From 2009 to 2012 he served as a trustee for the State University of New York (SUNY) as an appointee of the governor. In 2013 he was appointed to the Kappa Delta Pi Honor Society and in 2014 he was appointed to the National Academy of Education. Noguera has numerous awards including: the Center for the Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University for outstanding achievement in advancing the understanding of the behavioral and social sciences as they are applied to pressing social issues; the National Association of Secondary Principals for distinguished service to the field of education; and the McSilver Institute at NYU for his research and advocacy efforts aimed at fighting poverty.

Robin DiAngelo is a dynamic and provocative speaker addressing the highly charged topic of what it means to be white in a society that proclaims race meaningless, yet is deeply divided by race. Speaking as a white person, DiAngelo clearly and compellingly takes her audience through an analysis of white socialization — what she calls white racial illiteracy. She describes how race shapes the lives of white people, explains what makes racism so hard for whites to see, identifies common white racial patterns and speaks back to popular white narratives that work to deny racism. With remarkable skill she helps participants to see the “water” that obscures how racism works in our daily lives – the miseducation about what racism actually is: ideologies such as individualism and colorblindness, defensiveness and the tendency to protect (rather than expand) our worldviews.

DiAngelo’s scholarship and research in Whiteness Studies has been concerned with the challenges of an increasingly white teaching force and an increasingly diverse student population. A former associate professor of multicultural education, DiAngelo was twice honored with the Student’s Choice Award for Educator of the Year at the University of Washington. In addition to her academic work, DiAngelo has been a workplace diversity and racial justice consultant and trainer for over 20 years. In this capacity she was appointed to co-design, develop and deliver the Race and Social Justice Initiative anti-racism training for the City of Seattle.

DiAngelo has numerous publications and just released her second book, “What Does it Mean to be White? Developing White Racial Literacy.” Her previous book (with Özlem Sensoy), “Is Everyone Really Equal: An Introduction to Social Justice Education” received the Critics’ Choice Award by the American Educational Studies Association. Her work on White Fragility has appeared in Alternet, Salon.com, NPR, Colorlines, Huffington Post and The Good Men Project.

Megan Ming Francis is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington, and is also the field director for History and Political Development at the Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality and Race (WISIR). Francis specializes in the study of American politics, race and the development of constitutional law. She is particularly interested in the construction of rights and citizenship, black political activism and the post-civil war South.

Born and raised in Seattle, WA, she was educated at Garfield High School, Rice University in Houston, and Princeton University where she received her M.A. and her Ph.D. in politics.

She is the author of the multiple award-winning book, “Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State” (2014). This book tells the story of how the early campaign against state sanctioned racial violence of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) shaped the modern civil rights movement.

Her research and commentary have been featured on MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, NPR, PBS, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the Seattle Times, and TEDx Talks.

Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and filmmaker whose work centers on the changing American identity. He is the founder of Define American, a non-profit media and culture organization that seeks to elevate the conversation around immigration and citizenship in America. In 2015, MTV aired “White People,” a television special he directed on what it means to be young and white in America as part of its Look Different campaign. In February 2016, Vargas launched #EmergingUS, a multimedia news platform he conceived focusing on race, immigration and the complexities of multiculturalism.

Vargas has covered tech and video game culture, HIV/AIDS in the nation’s capital, the 2008 presidential campaign for the Washington Post and was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for covering the Virginia Tech massacre. In 2007, Politico named him one of 50 Politicos to Watch. His 2006 series on HIV/AIDS in Washington, D.C. inspired a documentary feature film, “The Other City,” which he co-produced and wrote. It world premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival and aired on Showtime. He has appeared on an array of television and radio programs, including: “Good Morning America,” “The O’Reilly Factor,” “The Colbert Report,” Univision’s “Aqui y Ahora,” and Filipino Channel’s “Balitang America.”

In June 2011, The New York Times Magazine published a groundbreaking essay he wrote in which he revealed and chronicled his life in America as an undocumented immigrant. A year later, he appeared on the cover of TIME magazine worldwide with fellow undocumented immigrants as part of a follow-up cover story he wrote. He then wrote, produced, and directed “Documented,” a documentary feature film on his undocumented experience. It world premiered at the AFI Docs film festival in Washington, D.C. in 2013, was released theatrically and broadcast on CNN in 2014, and received a 2015 NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Documentary.

Among other accolades he has received are a Public Service Award from the National Council of La Raza, the country’s largest Latino advocacy organization; the Salem Award from the Salem Award Foundation, which draws upon the lessons of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692; and the Freedom to Write Award from PEN Center USA.

Professor Klawitter has published widely on public policies that affect family work and income, including studies of welfare, family savings and anti-discrimination policies for sexual orientation. She is the co-editor of the Journal of Public Affairs Education. Professor Klawitter teaches courses on public policy analysis, quantitative methods, program evaluation and asset building for low income families. She holds a master of public policy from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin.

Touré is a music journalist, author, cultural critic and television personality. He was a co-host of the TV show “The Cycle“ on MSNBC. He was also a contributor to MSNBC’s “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and the host of Fuse’s “Hip Hop Shop” and “On the Record with Fuse.”

Touré taught a course on the history of hip hop at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, part of the Tisch School of the Arts in New York. He is the author of several books, including “The Portable Promised Land: Stories” (2003), “Soul City: A Novel “(2005), “Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means To Be Black Now” (2011) and “I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon” (2013).

Charles M. Payne is the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago, where he is also an affiliate of the Urban Education Institute. His interests include urban education and school reform, social inequality, social change and modern African American history. His books include So Much Reform, So Little Change (Harvard Education Publishing Group), which is concerned with what we have learned about the persistence of failure in urban districts, and Teach Freedom: The African American Tradition of Education for Liberation (Teachers College Press).

His current book project is entitled Schooling the Ghetto: Fifty Years of “Reforming” Urban Schools. Payne is among the founders of the Education for Liberation Network, which drives the development of educational initiatives that encourage young people to think critically about social issues and understand their own capacity for addressing them. Payne has taught at Southern University, Williams College, Northwestern University and Duke University. He has won several teaching awards. Payne holds a bachelor’s degree in Afro-American studies from Syracuse University and a doctorate in sociology from Northwestern.

K. Tsianina Lomawaima (Mvskoke/Creek Nation of Eastern Oklahoma, not enrolled) is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work straddles Indigenous Studies, anthropology, education, ethnohistory, history, legal analysis and political science. Lomawaima focuses on the early 20th century, examining the “footprint” of federal Indian policy and practice in Indian country. Her research on the federal off-reservation boarding school system is rooted in the experiences of her father, Curtis Thorpe Carr, who at age 9 arrived at Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma. Some of her recent work focuses on early 20th century debates over the status of Native individuals and nations, and the ways U.S. citizenship has been constructed to hierarchically privilege and/or dispossess different classes of subjects.

She is the author of several books including, To Remain an Indian: Lessons for Democracy from a Century of Native American Education (co-authored with Teresa L. McCarty), which received the Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association; Uneven Ground: American Indian Sovereignty and Federal Law (co-authored with David E. Wilkins); Away From Home, American Indian Boarding School Experiences (co-author and co-editor with Margaret Archuleta and Brenda Child); and They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School, which received the North American Indian Prose Award and the American Educational Association Critics’ Choice Award.

Mehnaz Afridi is committed to interfaith work, contemporary Islam and Holocaust education. Her articles have appeared in edited books such as Sacred Tropes: Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur’an as Literature and Culture (Brill, 2006), Not Your father’s Anti-Semitism: Hatred of the Jews in the 21^st Century (Paragon House, 2008). Her recent articles include “Gurdwara Sikh Killings: Domestic or Global Taxonomy of Terrorism?” in Sikh Formations (2013) and “The Role of Muslims and the Holocaust” in Oxford Handbooks Online (Oxford University Press, 2014).

She is the co-editor of Orhan Pamuk and Global Literature: Existentialism and Politics (May 2012, Palgrave Macmillan). Her studies of the struggle with anti-Semitism within Muslim communities and her interviews with survivors of the Holocaust have informed her first book, Shoah through Muslim Eyes (Academic Studies Press), which will be published in November 2016.

She has presented on Capitol Hill in conjunction with the Tom Lantos Foundation on “Islam and Anti-Semitism” and she has a podcast on “Voices of Anti-Semitism” for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

She serves on several boards of non-profit organizations, which include the Arava Institute located in Israel, the Levantine Cultural Center in Los Angeles, the Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies at Saint Leo University in Florida and the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE) in New York City. She is also a member of the ethics and religion committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Born in Karachi, Pakistan, raised in Europe and the Middle East, she brings with her a multicultural perspective.

Anita Sarkeesian is a media critic and the creator of Feminist Frequency, a video webseries that explores the representations of women in pop culture narratives. Her work focuses on deconstructing the stereotypes, patterns and tropes associated with women in popular culture as well as highlighting issues surrounding the targeted harassment of women in online and gaming spaces.

Anita was the recipient of the 2014 Game Developers Choice Ambassador Award, she was given a 2013 honorary award from National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers and was nominated for Microsoft’s 2014 Women in Games Ambassador Award. Anita was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.

As part of her work with Feminist Frequency, Anita lectures and presents at universities, conferences and game development studios internationally. She has been interviewed and featured in publications such as The New York Times, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail and The Boston Globe. Her videos are freely available via the Feminist Frequency YouTube channel and widely serve as educational tools in high school and university classrooms.

Ralina Joseph is interested in the mediated communication of difference, or how race, gender, class, and sexuality structure our understandings of the world. Her first book, Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial (Duke University Press, 2013), critiques anti-Black racism in mixed-race African American representations in the decade leading up to Obama’s 2008 election. She is currently working on her second book project, Screening Strategic Ambiguity: Black Women, Television Culture and the PostIdentity Dance, an examination of African American women’s negotiation of the ostensibly “after” moment of racism and sexism. She has published work in a variety of scholarly journals. She is also co-editing and contributing to two collections of essays: one on women of color in higher education and a second on African American “respectability politics.”

In her time at UW, Dr. Joseph has participated in a wide variety of diversity-related issues on campus, including initiating the Communication Department’s Communication and Difference Course arc, and co-founding WIRED (Women Investigating Race, Ethnicity, and Difference), a group for UW tenure-track faculty working in the areas of difference. She is on editorial boards of Communication, Culture, and Critique and Cinema Journal and chairs the Critical Ethnic Studies Committee of the American Studies Association. Professor Joseph is a recipient of awards and fellowships from the Ford Foundation, Woodrow Wilson/Mellon, the University of California, the American Association of University Women, and the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego and B. A. in American Civilization from Brown University.

An actor, humanitarian and the acknowledged “King of Calypso,” Harry Belafonte ranked among the most seminal performers of the postwar era. One of the most successful African-American pop stars in history, Belafonte’s staggering talent, good looks and masterful assimilation of folk, jazz, and worldbeat rhythms allowed him to achieve a level of mainstream eminence and crossover popularity virtually unparalleled in the days before the advent of the civil rights movement — a cultural uprising which he himself helped spearhead.