Speaker Bio

Scherto R. Gill is Director of the Global Humanity for Peace Institute and Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, where she coordinates the UNESCO’s Collective Healing Initiative. Her research explores positive peace, human flourishing, relational theories, and the transformation of institutions towards more humane and just forms of social life. Amongst her books are Understanding Peace Holistically: From the Spiritual to the Political, Ethical Education: Towards an Ecology of Human Development, and Happiness, Flourishing and the Good Life: A Transformative Vision for Human Well-Being.

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Speaker Bio

Dr. Laura DeNardis is Professor and Endowed Chair in Technology, Ethics and Society at Georgetown University, where she also directs the Center for Digital Ethics. A scholar of technology governance and cybersecurity, DeNardis was listed as one of thirty-two Innovators Building a Better Future by Wired UK. Among her eight books, The Internet in Everything: Freedom and Security in a World with No Off Switch (Yale University Press) was listed as a Financial Times Top Technology Book of 2020 and her book The Global War for Internet Governance (Yale University Press) is considered a definitive source for understanding conflicts in cyberspace. DeNardis is an affiliated fellow of the Yale Information Society Project, where she previously served as Executive Director and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor DeNardis holds an AB in Engineering Science from Dartmouth College, an MEng from Cornell University, a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from Virginia Tech, and was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from Yale Law School.

Parking

Free parking is available on campus after 4pm in Lot 1 and Lot Z

The Map below highlights where the free parking is available, and also where the event will be held in the Stamp Student Union

This event is co-sponsored by:

Join the Language Science Center and Baha'i Chair for World Peace for a hybrid panel on language and conflict, featuring panelists Philip Renik (LING), Julia Mendelsohn (INFO), and Erik Nesse (ARLIS). This panel will be moderated by Hoda Mahmoudi, Director of The Baha'i Chair for World Peace.

This event is both in-person and online.

Philip Resnik (LING: political framing):

Prediction-based perception creates systematically divergent interpretations of shared information, making certain kinds of conflict structurally inevitable.

People don't just take in information.  Every act of perception is also an act of prediction -- we view incoming information through the lens of our existing knowledge and beliefs. People who study framing call this framing-in-thought.  On the flip side, people don't just provide information either. What we hear and read is often designed to promote a particular interpretation.  People who study framing call this framing-in-communication.  One perennial source of conflict is the fact that different people can be looking at exactly the same information and seeing entirely different things. A recent student of mine explored a fascinating puzzle related to this in studying misinformation: people with a history of misinformation-dissemination were sharing news articles online from publications they were ideologically opposed to, Why?  It turns out that even a true news story can, through its phrasing or especially its headlines, support a misinformation narrative -- that is, even an accurate story can be misleading, even if the story itself isn't misinformation. I think the general principle, that we don't just perceive, we create perceptions partly out of our expectations, is pervasive at all levels of cognition: there are scientists who describe perception as "controlled hallucination", and that feels like an equally accurate description of what we see at higher levels like the interpretation of political events and political discourse. Except of course sometimes it feels like the hallucination isn't even particularly well controlled.

Julia Mendelsohn (iSchool: internet discourse): 

Anti-immigration sentiment and how this shapes conversations on social media. 

I'm interested in the role of common ground when thinking about language in conflict contexts, maybe specifically discrimination. 

- Dogwhistles rely on a lack of common ground among the full audience/platform moderation

- Metaphorical dehumanization relies on the common ground we share about source domains like animals, water, etc. 

I'm going to spend a bit of time talking about multimodal antisemitic dogwhistles (appropriated images, video, music), and how these have really proliferated online in just the past year or so. 

Erik Nesse (ARLIS: multilingualism, machine translation): 

Computational linguistics and natural language processing for the Intelligence and Security Community. 

Premise: understanding each other across linguistic/cultural/etc. barriers is good (reduces chances for conflict), and also really hard to do well.

CompLing has generated a bunch of very useful tools. On the one hand, the tools have obvious value in reducing the potential for conflict (in general, and there’s a little bit of an intelligence community-adjacent perspective there too). They work pretty well! But on the other hand, there’s a kind of ‘paradox of quality’ the tools introduce re: language barriers and conflict

The fact that tools like machine translation and LLMs work pretty darn well has engendered somewhat misguided views about how “solved” certain problems like MT actually are, and for machine translation, for instance: when we see really good translations coming out of the tools, fluid translations, things that sound like (but are not necessarily) what a human would produce…

…we start providing those translations to lots and lots of people to use – and the people using them and making decisions based on them, and…

…we deprioritize the types of training/thinking that equip us to see the limits of interpretation (of ‘what the other person said’ – if the models do that well, do we really need translators…?), i.e., the process of learning second languages, learning about the associated culture(s), living there, history, context, habits of mind, … etc. etc. – in part because of a fundamental limitation (compared to humans) of what MT (or any other NLP tool) is and does

So: it’s pretty easy to be seduced into thinking we know what’s really being said here, we solved it when you have great-looking, fluid translations – but ‘knowing what’s really being said here’ is a much, much more complicated process than making excellent and statistically valid text patterns appear in response to source material.

In that, we risk letting ourselves be seduced by a misunderstanding of what translation really is, leading to a (kind of paradoxically) increased risk of conflict – we stop looking at things quite so critically (and stop training people to do so) when we convince ourselves the machine is doing it perfectly well, thank you very much

Same kind of dynamic applies to other tools, too, like large language models – marketing surrounding them is a good example.

All of this is happening at a time when we are providing relatively less of the type of training that opens folks’ eyes to how hard it really is to communicate – to truly communicate – which (not exclusively! Just trends) tends to be more concentrated in things like languages/literatures, not in more technical fields.

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Speaker Bio

Patricia Owens is Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. She is a multi-award winning author and editor of six books.

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Speaker Bio

Debbie Ging is Professor of Digital Media and Gender in the School of Communications at Dublin City University and Director of the DCU Institute for Research on Genders and Sexualities. She teaches and researches on gender, sexuality and digital media, with a focus on digital hate, online anti-feminist men's rights politics, the incel subculture and radicalisation of boys and men into male supremacist ideologies. Debbie’s research also addresses youth experiences of gender-based and sexual abuse online and educational interventions to tackle these issues. 

Dr Catherine Baker is a Research Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow with the Institute for Research on Genders and Sexualities (IRGS) at Dublin City University (DCU)and a Fellow with the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism (IRMS). Catherine has a PhD in

Media and Communications from Loughborough University’s Online Civic Centre. Her research interests include online misogyny, digital platforms, masculinities, educational interventions, algorithmic politics, pseudoscience, and anti-gender movements.

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This event is co-sponsored by

Speaker Bio

Dorothy Roberts is the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor and George A. Weiss University Professor at University of Pennsylvania, with joint appointments in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology and the Law School, where she is the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, and Founding Director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society. She is a MacArthur Fellow, an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Medicine, and recipient of honorary doctorate degrees from Rutgers University and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. An internationally acclaimed scholar, public intellectual, and social justice activist, Roberts has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of race, gender, and class inequities in U.S. institutions and has been a leader in transforming thinking on reproductive justice, child welfare, and bioethics. She is author of the award-winning Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (1997); Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (2001); Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century (2011); and Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World (2022), as well as more than 100 scholarly articles and book chapters. Her forthcoming memoir, THE MIXED MARRIAGE PROJECT, will be published in February 2026.

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How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America

How do schools make us think about race? And where does Latinx fit in?

In “How Schools Make Race,” Laura Chávez-Moreno, a researcher and former public school teacher, shows how schools play a pivotal role in shaping the concept of race and racialized groups.

In this talk, she tells the story of how the teachers and students in a racially diverse Spanish-English bilingual education program grappled with conflicting ideas about race and about the Latinx category.

Chávez-Moreno challenges us to reconsider what makes race and invites us to see Latinx as a racialized group. Her research reveals why this shift matters-–because how we think about race affects whether our schools can provide youth with an education that challenges racist ideas.

Laura Chávez-Moreno is an award-winning scholar, qualitative social scientist, and assistant professor in the Department of Chicana/o & Central American Studies and the Department of Education at UCLA. She is the author of How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America, published by Harvard Education Press, which won the Book of the Year Award by an early career scholar from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education. Her book has been featured in several podcasts and popular media, including the New Books Network and Ms. Magazine. Professor Chávez-Moreno’s research has been published in top-tier academic journals and recognized with prestigious awards from organizations such as the American Educational Research Association and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation. In 2023, she received the Alan C. Purves Award from the National Council of Teachers of English for her article, “The continuum of racial literacies: Teacher practices countering whitestream bilingual education,” published in Research in the Teaching of English. This annual award honors the article deemed most significant in advancing the field. Most recently, Professor Chávez-Moreno was awarded the 2025 Emerging Scholars Award from the Critical Race Studies in Education Association. For more about her work, please check out her website LauraChavezMoreno.com

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This event features three of the contributors to the recent volume published by the Bahá’í Chair for World Peace, Global Climate Crisis: Seeking Environmental Justice and Climate Equality, Dr Ben Mylius, Dr Na’Taki Osborne Jelks and Dr Tiffani Betts Razavi. The discussion will explore the questions raised in the volume around approaching the challenge of climate justice from the perspective of environmental justice. The discussion will be moderated by Professor Hoda Mahmoudi and Dr. Kate Seaman, the editors of the volume.

This event is Co-Sponsored by:

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

DAY ONE

5:00pm - 6:00pm 

Participants Arrive 

6:00pm - 7:00pm

Conference Dinner (By Invitation)

7:00pm - 8:30pm

Keynote Address 

Professor Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Duke University 

DAY TWO

8:00am - 9:00am Breakfast and Registration

9:00am- 10:30am Panel One: Policy and Systemic Change 

Moderator:

Professor Alana Hackshaw, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland College Park  

Speakers: 

Dr. Andrea Headley, Associate Professor and Faculty Director, Evidence for Justice Lab, McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University 

Professor Rashawn Ray, Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland College Park, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution

Professor Andre M. Perry Senior fellow, Director, Center for Community Uplift, Brookings Institution. Professor of practice of economics, Washington University in St. Louis.

10:30am - 10:45am Coffee Break 

10:45am - 12:15pm Roundtable One 

Moderator:

Dr. Craig Fryer, Associate Professor, Behavioral and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Maryland College Park 

Speakers: 

Dr. Devlon N. Jackson, Assistant Research Professor, Behavioral and Community Health

University of Maryland College Park 

Dr. Nicholas Smith, Assistant Professor Department of Sociology, University of Maryland College Park  

Dr. Francesca Weaks, Faculty Research and Health Equity Fellow, School of Public Health, University of Maryland College Park 

Dr. Rossina Zamora Liu, Assistant Professor, Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership, College of Education, University of Maryland College Park 

12:15pm - 1:00pm Lunch 

1:00pm - 2:30pm Panel Two: The Role of Higher Education 

Moderator:

Dean Kimberly A. Griffin, College of Education, University of Maryland College Park

Speakers: 

Professor Sharon Fries-Britt, Distinguished University Professor, College of Education, University of Maryland College Park 

Professor Odis Johnson, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Executive Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, Director, Institute in Critical Quantitative, Computational, and Mixed Methodologies, Johns Hopkins University 

Professor Marcus Hunter, Professor, Department of African American Studies; Professor, Department of Sociology; Scott Waugh Endowed Chair in the Division of the Social Sciences, UCLA 

2.30pm - 2:45pm Coffee Break 

2:45pm - 4:15pm Roundtable Two 

Moderator:

Professor John Drabinski, Department of African American and Africana Studies and Department of English, University of Maryland College Park

Speakers:

Dr Periloux Peay, Assistant Professor, Department of African American Studies, University of Maryland College Park  

Dr. Andrew Parayil Boge, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, University of Maryland, College Park

Dr. Reka Barton, Assistant Professor, Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership, University of Maryland College Park  

Dr. Keisha Allen, Assistant Professor, Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership, University of Maryland College Park  

4:15pm - 4:30pm Closing Remarks 

A free buffet dinner will be served from 5.30pm - 6.30pm prior to the lecture, in the Colony Ballroom, Stamp Student Union

Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time

The neighborhoods we live in impact our lives in so many ways: they determine who we know, what resources and opportunities we have access to, the quality of schools our kids go to, our sense of security and belonging, and even how long we live. Yet too many of us live in neighborhoods plagued by rising crime, school violence, family disintegration, addiction, alienation, and despair. Even the wealthiest neighborhoods are not immune; while poverty exacerbates these challenges, they exist in zip codes rich and poor, rural and urban, and everything in between. In Fragile Neighborhoods, fragile states expert Seth D. Kaplan offers a bold new vision for addressing social decline in America, one zip code at a time. By revitalizing our local institutions – and the social ties that knit them together – we can all turn our neighborhoods into places where people and families can thrive. Based on his book, audience members will meet the innovative individuals and organizations pioneering new approaches to everything from youth mentoring, to urban planning, to keeping families intact: people like Dreama, a former lawyer whose organization works with local leaders and educators in rural Appalachia to equip young people with the social support they need to succeed in school, and Chris, whose Detroit-based non-profit turns vacant school buildings into community resource hubs while also organizing local volunteers to repair homes and beautify streets in neighborhoods across the city. Along the way, Kaplan offers a set of practical lessons to inspire similar work, reminding us that when change is hyperlocal, everyone has the opportunity to contribute.

Seth D. Kaplan is a leading expert on fragile states. He is a Professorial Lecturer in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Adviser for the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), and consultant to multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, U.S. State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, and OECD as well as developing country governments and NGOs. Seth is the author of several books, including Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time (2023).

Parking

Free parking is available on campus after 4pm in Lot 1 and Lot Z

The Map below highlights where the free parking is available, and also where the event will be held in the Stamp Student Union

This event is co-sponsored by:

Developmental science perspectives on prejudice provide a window into determining how to reduce social inequalities, prejudicial attitudes, and biases. Children begin to understand concepts of fairness and equality early and recognize that social groups often exclude others for stereotypic reasons which reflect a form of prejudice. Challenging groups to be more inclusive is costly, however, and may result in exclusion from their group which provides protection, safety, and enjoyment. Facilitating positive cross-group friendships helps reduce  "in-group vs outgroup" attitudes which are a salient part of why prejudice forms in the first place. The negative consequences of experiencing prejudice and bias include depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal. This necessitates action to promote healthy child development and a more inclusive society. In this talk, I will discuss our recent research findings on children’s viewpoints about fairness and social exclusion. Then I will discuss our school-based program called Developing Inclusive Youth, which was designed to reduce prejudice, change group norms, and increase school belonging. We tested its effectiveness and found promising results, which I will share during the talk.

Speaker:

Dr. Melanie Killen is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, Professor of Psychology (Affiliate) and the Director of the Social and Moral Development Lab at the University of Maryland. She is the Editor of the Handbook of Moral Development (2008, 2014, 2022) and has over 265 publications. Commissioned by Anderson Cooper at CNN AC360, Dr. Killen and her team conducted a study on children’s racial bias for a set of stories aired on CNN AC360, “Kids on Race: The Hidden Picture” in April 2012 which won an Emmy Award for Outstanding News and Analysis. Dr. Killen is an elected member of the National Academy of Education.  She is funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes for Child Health and Human Development for her research. She studies social cognition and moral reasoning, social exclusion and inclusion, stereotypes and bias, intergroup attitudes and relationships, conceptions of social inequalities, broadening participation in STEM, and school-based programs to facilitate inclusive classroom environments.   

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This event features two of the contributors to the recent volume Women and Inequality in a Changing World: Exploring New Paradigms for Peace, Dr Tiffani Betts Razavi and Dr Kate Seaman. The discussion will explore the questions raised in the volume around the obstacles women continue to face to their equal participation in all areas of daily life—political, social, and economic—which persist despite the growth in the education of girls, large-scale social movements, and political waves. The discussion will be moderated by Professor Hoda Mahmoudi, one of the editors of the volume.Dr Tiffani Betts Razavi

Speakers:

This Event is Co-Sponsored By:

Join linguist John McWhorter from Columbia University for a talk and Q&A on why humans speak in multiple ways. The talk will explore how people worldwide switch dialects, languages, and vocabularies depending on the situation, challenging the assumption that we speak consistently and offering a new perspective on "code-switching."

This event is intended for non-specialists and is free and open to the public. The event will be at the Hoff Theatre in the Adele H. Stamp Student Union at the University of Maryland, College Park. This talk is co-sponsored by the Maryland Language Science Center and the Baha'i Chair for World Peace.

The Bahá’í Chair for World Peace is delighted to co-sponsor this event alongside the Maryland Language Science Center.

Description: In a world where the concept of “race” continues to permeate our societies and shape our perceptions, the need for a radical shift in our approach to combating racism has never been more evident. The “Abolishing Racism: Creating a Future without Race” conference is a groundbreaking event that brings together a diverse range of speakers, scholars, artists, and activists who advocate for racial eliminativism — the bold belief that to truly end racism, we must dismantle the very notion of “race” itself. 

Objective: Our objective is to revolutionize how we view racism and antiracism by exploring racial eliminativism—the idea that removing our belief in “race” and practice of racialization—assigning “race” to the human species—from our sociocultural framework is crucial for real, lasting change. We aim to tackle racism at its core, envisioning a world where everyone is respected equally.

Key Themes:

1. Undoing Racial Boundaries: Discover the history and impact of “race” and why it’s time to dismantle this concept.

2. Real-World Racial Eliminativism: Learn about practical efforts and strategies for building a community that transcends racial divisions.

3. Artistic Voices for Change: Experience how art can disrupt racism, encourage inclusion, and imagine a world without boundaries caused by racism.

Conference Schedule

9:15-9:30

Opening Remarks: Dr. Hoda Mahmoudi, Bahá’í Chair for World Peace, University of Maryland 

9:30-10:45

Morning Keynote: Dr. Joseph Graves, North Carolina A&T State University  

Racism, Not Race

In this lecture I hope to impart three important lessons:

1. Racism created the idea of race.

2. The idea of race has real effects. It gives cover to racism.

3. Human genetic variation is real (and quite wonderful) and is absolutely not the same as race.

Race is not based on biology and genetics. Race is not “in the genes,” and it is not the same as human variation. Racial differences in opportunity and outcomes cannot be blamed on genetics.

Unpacking this myth of a link between socially defined races and genetic variation requires an understanding of the relationship among social classification, evolution, and how human genetic variation is globally distributed.  Once these lessons are understood, we can dispel many myths about race associated with, for example, health, athletic ability, and intelligence, and present a path for living in a more just and equitable world.  Because contemporary myths about race are historical, it is critical to explain what race is and what it is not.  Finally, I bring our discussion up to the present and look ahead to a more equitable and just future. 

10:45 - 11:00 

Coffee Break

11:00 - 12:30 

Panel One: Philosophy/Theology/Science 

Dr. Jacoby Carter, Howard University 

Racial Constructionist Fallacies and the Future of Racial Elimination

Racial skeptics such as Naomi Zack have argued that if race is a fiction and does not exist, but racism does exist, then the elimination of race alone is unlikely to solve the problem of racism. This has been taken in the philosophy of race to entail that racial eliminativism is a non-starter because it seems ineffectual in addressing its primary concern which is combating racism. I argue that such criticism of racial eliminativism misses an important point. If the object of racial practices, the social groups whose members are victims of racism, are not in fact races, but instead socioeconomic groups, cultures, ethnicities etc. then at least one practical advantage of racial eliminativism is that it provides greater clarity for those who wish to combat racism of the actual groups who are its victims and the social forces that enable the phenomenon.

Rev. Dr. Starlette Thomas, Good Faith Media 

Making Future Arrangements: A Raceless Gospel for Ex- Colored People

Race lacks the dimensions to measure the actual self and the linguistic capacity to affirm all human beings as co-equal. A minority- majority/ inferior- superior orientation, the makers of this pseudo- scientific delusion recreated human beings as colors: beige, that is mixed race, black, brown, red, yellow and white or simpler still, white people and people of color. Not identities but categories, race ensures the fractionalization of human beings for capitalist advancement, political power, and the maintenance of a color- coded caste system. However, there will come a time and a call from those weary of these self and socially- alienating identities as well as the resulting humiliations and indignities suffered. The narrow goals of a post- racial society that summarily suggest we need only put race behind us are insufficient. Instead, compounded and overlapping oppressions and exploitation call for a new message that delivers us from dueling relationships of us versus them and a dualistic reality. Supported by the framework of somebodiness, that is the innate dignity and worth of every human being, a raceless gospel for ex- colored people who want to be understood on decolonized terms anticipates a new world and is making future arrangements.

Dr. Tade Souaiaia, SUNY Downstate 

Race, Sports, Genes, and Storytelling

Internationational sporting event’s pit athletes from all over the world against each other. The distribution of winners has long been subject to scientific and sociological scrutiny. Narratives around ethnic specificity merge with mythology about genetics and race to produce popular science stories that serve both to explain outcomes and reinforce their validity. Here we investigate the history of racialization in sport and examine a debate that has been going on for more than one hundred years. Leveraging modern genomics and statistics we investigate the strength of evidence of disparity based arguments and consider how racialism obscures a more robust psychocultural model for athletic performance.

12:30 - 1:00 

Lunch

1:00 - 2:00

Afternoon Keynote: Dr. Sheena Mason, SUNY Oneonta  

Togetherness Wayfinding: Navigating to a Future without Racism

In this keynote, titled “Togetherness Wayfinding: Navigating to a Future without Racism,” Dr. Sheena Michele Mason introduces the “togetherness wayfinder,” a transformative framework designed to dismantle the illusion of race and effectively end the causes and effects of racism. Rooted in the philosophy that to abolish racism, we must first abolish the very belief in and upholding of race. This approach challenges the deeply ingrained belief in race as a biological or necessary cultural reality. The togetherness wayfinder offers a comprehensive toolkit that includes tenets, tools, philosophies, historical insights, and linguistic strategies to guide individuals and societies toward a future where racism is a reality of the past.

This keynote will explore how the togetherness wayfinder can serve as a practical guide for educators, activists, policymakers, and anyone committed to social justice. It will demonstrate how adopting alternative practices and perspectives can lead to the deconstruction of systemic racism and foster a more inclusive, equitable society. Dr. Mason will illustrate the practical application of this framework in various social, educational, and political contexts, showing how it can be used to navigate the complexities of identity, culture, and power without upholding power imbalances. This keynote is an invitation to join the movement toward a post-racist world, where the togetherness wayfinder lights the path forward.

2:00 - 2:15

Coffee Break 

2:15 - 4:00 

Panel Session Two: Art/Music/Humanities 

Ms. Angélica Dass, Humanæ Project

Photography as a tool for empathy

In Photography as a tool for empathy, Angélica draws on her own personal experiences and creative process to amplify the social message of her photographic works. She is the author of Humanæ, a constantly evolving photographic work that proposes an unusually direct reflection on skin colour. She aims to document the true colours of humanity rather than the false labels ‘white’, ‘red’, ‘black’ and ‘yellow’ associated with race. Ultimately, it seeks to demonstrate that what defines human beings is their inescapable uniqueness and, therefore, their diversity.

Dr. Anika Prather, The Catholic University of America 

The Healing Power of Classics: Finding Hope and Healing in the Classical Tradition  

Dr. Anika Prather will delve into how the classical tradition has served as a source of healing and hope throughout human history. Through storytelling, music, and her voice, she will highlight these narratives, demonstrating how the enduring power of this ancient tradition remains accessible and relevant to us today.

Mr Greg Thomas, Jazz Leadership Project

Deracialization and the Omni-American Vision

The scourge of race and racialization has poisoned American life from before the nation’s official founding. Is it possible to overcome the racism that results from the concept of race and the invidious practice of racialization? From a deracialized Omni-American perspective, the answer is yes. 

Deracialization is a process through which individuals, groups of people, and social structures untangle a web of racial deceit. It resists the hierarchical sorting of humans based on superficial characteristics and the assumptions and stereotypes derived thereby, which becomes racism. One aspect of this process is distinguishing race from culture, which is a firmer basis for recognizing shared meanings, values, traditions, and practices for human fraternity beyond superficial differences. 

Cultural forms such as blues and jazz were created by Afro-Americans to embody and express their outlook on the world and the cosmos, as well as their highest principles and aims. A cosmopolitan Omni-American vision, as seen in the works of authors Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, is rooted in such cultural forms while also embracing the highest principles in the nation’s founding documents. Such a grounded yet transcendent vision allows for a horizon of aspiration in which the many can become one. 

Dr Carlos Hoyt, PhD, LICSW, Psychotherapy |Diversity Equity & Inclusion |Educational Consultant  

It's Time to Mobilize: Fixing the U.S. Census Approach to "Race"

This talk will engage participants in understanding how the U.S. Census is the critical locus for efforts to correct our "race" problem, and it will be a call to action to begin the campaign for change. It will be based on Dr. Hoyt's presentation to U.S. Census officials: How to Improve the 2030 Census Approach to Race Data Collection. Some useful context for this talk can be found in the Washington Post article: Race isn’t real, science says. Advocates want the census to reflect that. Participants are encouraged to familiarize themselves with these resources in order to maximize the benefits of this talk. 

4:00-4:30

Wrap-Up roundtable Session

Conference Speakers

This event is co-sponsored by:

Supporting international Indigenous peoples is crucial for global security and stability. As we navigate complex global challenges, recognizing the important role Indigenous peoples must play is paramount in forging a safer and more equitable future for all.

Comprising nearly 500 million individuals across 90 countries, Indigenous peoples represent 5,000 diverse cultures and possess invaluable traditional knowledge critical to sustainable development, peacebuilding, and environmental conservation.

The lecture critically examines historical marginalization while highlighting Indigenous peoples' potential as key partners in resolving contemporary global issues. Specific focus areas include Indigenous approaches to gender equality, conflict resolution, governance and peacebuilding. Notably, Indigenous communities demonstrate unique capabilities in environmental stewardship, with territories like the Brazilian Amazon experiencing significantly lower deforestation rates under Indigenous management.

The presentation will underscore the importance of inclusive development strategies that directly engage Indigenous peoples as equal partners. Examples from Sweden, Brazil, Australia, and Mexico illustrate emerging policy frameworks that recognize Indigenous leadership and agency. The analysis emphasizes the transformative potential of Indigenous participation in decision-making processes at local, national, and global levels.

Ultimately, systematically integrating international Indigenous perspectives is not merely a moral imperative but a strategic approach to addressing complex global challenges, promoting justice, and fostering sustainable development.

Speaker:

Michael Orona has served at the U.S. Department of State for over 20 years where he has held an array of senior-level foreign policy advisory positions in Washington, D.C. and around the world.  This includes serving at the White House as National Security Council Director for Africa Affairs, and at the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam where he negotiated the release of three prisoners of conscience.  In 2004, Mr. Orona established and led the State Department’s Sudan Atrocities Documentation team, which was dispatched by the Secretary of State to investigate the violence in Darfur.  

Previously, Michael was selected to serve as the State Department’s Senior Advisor for International Indigenous Issues where he co-led the White House Committee on International Indigenous Human Rights and oversaw U.S. foreign policy regarding the rights of Indigenous peoples. 

Aside from a juris doctorate degree in international law, Mr. Orona also earned an M.S. in Military and Strategic Policy Studies from the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College. He is a life member of The Council on Foreign Relations. 

Mr. Orona is a member of the Chihene Mimbreno band of Apache and of Yaqui ancestry.  He recently published his first novel, The Brave Ones. A historical Native American perspective on the struggle for equality and social justice.

This event is cosponsored by:

This symposium features two speakers, Dr. Thomas Abt and Dr. Jaclyn Schildkraut, who will present their research surrounding mass shootings,

public and legislative responses to these events, and the theoretical approaches to understanding and preventing these tragedies.

Speakers:

Thomas Abt is the Founding Director of Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction and an associate research professor in UMD’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Abt teaches, studies, and advises on the use of evidence-informed approaches for reducing violence. He is the author of Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence - and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets. Abt’s work is cited in academic journals and featured in media outlets including the Atlantic, Economist, New Yorker, New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, CNN, PBS, and NPR. His TED talk on community violence has been viewed more than 225,000 times.

Abt also serves as a Senior Fellow with the Council on Criminal Justice. Prior to that, he worked as a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy and Law Schools. Before Harvard, Abt served as Deputy Secretary for Public Safety in New York, where he oversaw all criminal justice, homeland security, and emergency management agencies. Before New York, Abt served as Chief of Staff to the Office of Justice Programs at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked with the nation’s criminal justice grant-making agencies to integrate evidence, policy, and practice."

Talk title: Saving Lives by Stopping Violence, Using Science

Thomas Abt will discuss how evidence-informed programs, practices, and policies can reduce rates of gun-related and other violence now, without resorting to new laws or big budgets, provided we can put politics aside. Abt's pragmatic, science-based approach focuses on solving concrete problems, not winning abstract arguments.

Jaclyn Schildkraut, PhD is the Executive Director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government. Prior to this appointment, she served as an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oswego. Her research interests include mass/school shootings, school safety, violence prevention, and media effects.  Since 2018, Dr. Schildkraut has led the largest research study, to date, on the impact of lockdown drills, working with more than 20,000 students and 4,300 educators and community partners in New York’s fifth largest school district. She is the co-author/editor of six books, including Mass Shootings: Media, Myths, and Realities (Praeger, 2016), Columbine, 20 Years Later and Beyond: Lessons from Tragedy (Praeger, 2019), and Lockdown Drills: Connecting Research and Best Practices for School Administrators, Teachers, and Parents (MIT Press, 2022). Dr. Schildkraut has published more than 50 research articles, book chapters, and policy briefs assessing different facets of school and mass shootings. A nationally recognized expert on mass shootings and school safety, her research is regularly cited by the local, national, and international media.

Talk Title: 

Mass Shootings through the Public and Legislative Lenses: How Do We Make Sense of Tragedy? 

Mass shootings, although statistically rare events, have generated widespread concern and a demand to do something to prevent the next tragedy. Public reactions to these events, particularly those that are more high profile – and more lethal – in nature, drive legislative responses. Despite widespread outcry, however, little has been done legislatively, particularly at the federal level, to prevent these tragedies from occurring. This talk will highlight what is known about mass shootings and how the public have responded with a demand to do something. Legislative responses at both the state and federal levels will be examined, highlighting where inaction has led to missed opportunities to prevent future tragedies or improve responses if they do occur. Finally, this talk will provide insight into how the public can better understand mass shootings, including their root causes, and how we can collectively work together to prevent future tragedies from occurring.

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This Event will be held in a hybrid format both in-person and online

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About:

The Level of Human Rights: Malcolm X and the Dilemmas of Black Internationalism, Then and Now

In the early 1960s, Malcolm X challenged the focus of the civil rights movement, urging African Americans to shift from seeking justice through “civil rights” and U.S. institutions and instead frame their struggle as one for "human rights" on the global stage. Central to Malcolm’s idea was a call for involvement from the United Nations. This lecture explores both the opportunities and contradictions in Malcolm’s ideas of global politics by examining how they compare to earlier but lesser known African American efforts to engage with the United Nations, like those of W.E.B. Du Bois and William Patterson. By considering the competing philosophies of global justice advocated by Black intellectuals, the lecture will explore how these still under appreciated ideas might inform today’s controversial and contentious struggles for both peace and racial justice.

Speaker :

Brandon M. Terry is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and the co-director of the Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. For 2024-2025, he is the Joy Foundation Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Born in Baltimore, Terry earned a PhD with distinction in Political Science and African American Studies from Yale University, an MSc in Political Theory Research at the University of Oxford, and an AB, magna cum laude, in Government and African and African American Studies from Harvard College.

An award-winning scholar of African American political thought, political theory, and the politics of race and inequality, Brandon is the editor, with Tommie Shelby, of To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Harvard University Press, 2018) and the editor of Fifty Years Since MLK (MIT Press, 2018). His forthcoming book, Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope: A Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement (Harvard University Press) interrogates the moral and political significance of different narratives of civil rights history in political philosophy and public life. He is currently at work on a study of the political thought and judgment of Malcolm X, tentatively titled Home to Roost: Malcolm X Between Prophecy and Peril (Penguin/Random House). He has also published work in Modern Intellectual History, Political Theory, The New York Review of Books, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, Dissent, The Point, and New Labor Forum and been interviewed by The Ezra Klein Show, Vox, the New York Times, and other media outlets.

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Abstract:

The conversation will be moderated by Professor John Drabinski, and will include brief presentations from Professor Olufemi Taiwo, Professor of African Political Thought at the Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, U.S.A, and Professor Jean-Michel Mabeko-Tali, Professor of African History at Howard University, in Washington, DC. The presentations will be followed by a moderated panel discussion and audience Q&A. 

Speakers:

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This event features two of the contributors to the recent volume Infrastructure, Wellbeing, and the Measurement of Happiness, Professor June Thomas and Professor Carol Ryff. The discussion will explore the questions raised in the volume around current thinking and strategies around wellbeing, the measurement of happiness, and how infrastructure design and construction impacts on these. The discussion will be moderated by Professor Hoda Mahmoudi and Dr. Kate Seaman, two of the editors of the volume.

Speakers :

June Manning Thomas is the Centennial Professor Emerita of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where she also is the Mary Frances Berry Distinguished University Professor of Urban Planning. In 2003, she was inducted as a fellow in the American Institute of Certified Planners.

Thomas served as president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning from 2013 to 2015 and was immediate past president from 2015 to 2016. Thomas writes about diversification of the planning profession, planning history, and social equity in neighborhoods and urban revitalization. Recent research explored the relationship between the concept of social equity and the civil rights movement, and examined the land-use reactions of community organizations to vacant land in Detroit. Her books include the co-edited Urban Planning and the African American Community: In the Shadows (Sage, 1996); Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997; second edition, Wayne State University Press, 2013); Planning Progress: Lessons from Shoghi Effendi (Association for Baha’i Studies, 1999); he co-edited The City after Abandonment (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); and the co-edited Mapping Detroit: Evolving Land Use Patterns and Connections (Wayne State University Press, 2015). Her latest book is the semi-autobiographical Struggling to Learn: An Intimate History of School Desegregation in South Carolina (University of So. Carolina Press, 2022).

Carol D. Ryff is Director of the Institute on Aging and Hilldale Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Dr. Ryff is Principal Investigator of the MIDUS (Midlife in the U.S.) national longitudinal study, which is widely used by researchers around the world.  She also directed MIDJA (Midlife in Japan), for which she received an NIH Merit Award.  A major objective of these studies is biopsychosocial integration – i.e., understanding pathways to health or illness via linkage of sociodemographic factors (age, gender, race, socioeconomic status) with behavioral, psychological, and social factors, including stress exposures and contextual influences.  Her own research focused on a model of psychological well-being she developed decades ago, which has been translated to 40 languages and is used across diverse scientific fields.  Dr. Ryff studies how psychological well-being varies by age, educational status and cultural context as well as by the challenges and transitions of adult life. Whether well-being is protective of good physical health is a major interest, with numerous findings linking different aspects of well-being to morbidity and mortality, diverse biomarkers (neuroendocrine, immune, cardiovascular) and neural circuitry.  A guiding theme is resilience – how some are able to maintain, or regain, well-being in the face of adversity and what neurobiology underlies this capacity. Increasingly, she is interested in how encounters with nature, which can occur in urban environments, matter for well-being and health.

Moderators: 

Hoda Mahmoudi has held The Bahá’í Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland, College Park since 2012. As director of this endowed academic program, Professor Mahmoudi collaborates with a wide range of scholars, researchers, and practitioners to advance interdisciplinary analysis and open discourse on global peace. Before joining the University of Maryland faculty, Professor Mahmoudi served as the coordinator of the Research Department at the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa, Israel. Prior to that, Dr. Mahmoudi was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northeastern Illinois University, where she was also a faculty member in the Department of Sociology. Professor Mahmoudi is co-editor of Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Dignity and Human Rights (Emerald, 2019) and of Children and Globalization; Multidisciplinary Perspectives (Routledge, 2019). Professor Mahmoudi is also co-author of A World Without War (Bahá’í Publishing, 2020), co-editor of The Changing Ethos of Human Rights (Elgar, 2021), and most recently co-editor of Fundamental Challenges to Peace and Security: The Future of Humanity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), and co-editor of Systemic Racism in America: Sociological Theory, Education Inequality, and Social Change (Routledge, 2022)

Dr. Kate Seaman is Assistant Director of The Bahá’í Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland. Dr. Seaman previously held positions at the University of Baltimore, the University of Bath and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Dr. Seaman received her Ph.D. from Lancaster University. She is the author of UN-tied Nations; The UN, Peacekeeping and the development of global security governance (Ashgate, 2014).  Dr. Seaman is the co-editor of The Changing Ethos of Human Rights (Elgar, 2021), co-editor of Fundamental Challenges to Global Peace and Security: The Future of Humanity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and co-editor of Infrastructure, Wellbeing and the Measurement of Happiness’ (Routledge, 2022). Her research has also been published in Global Governance and Politics and Governance.

Abstract:

Violence worldwide has prompted forced migration on an unprecedented scale, creating complex challenges for education, particularly in the Global South, where most of the world’s refugees reside. The widespread endorsement of education as a universal human right has given rise to a burgeoning field of global engagement in education to meet the needs of refugee learners. However, growing attention to longstanding issues linked to racism and coloniality in humanitarian assistance has impelled important conversations in recent years. This talk offers insights into the near-absent attention to structural racism and White supremacy in global education circles—meaning spaces of global governance, policymaking, and advocacy in international education development and humanitarian response. Drawing on over a decade of research on Syria refugee education, the talk engages in timely conversations about power inequities in humanitarianism and explores the notion of “ordinary solidarities” as an anticolonial mandate for rights-based humanitarian interventions. Intertwining humanitarian discourse and one school’s practices, the talk considers implications for ongoing efforts to reconfigure humanitarian relations and structures, and our own roles in forging reparative futures.

Speaker

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Abstract:

More than 150 years ago, Horace Mann, the 19th century champion of publicly funded universal education, argued that education is “is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance wheel of the social machinery.” While his words were shaped by the context of the time, Mann’s recognition that an educated and engaged populous is essential for our individual and collective well-being remains true today. The central idea behind Mann’s balance wheel metaphor is that equal opportunity to acquire a quality education is a prerequisite for equal opportunity to participate in our political, civic, and economic institutions—and that the welfare of a democratic society depends on broad participation in those institutions. While much progress has been made in establishing and supporting a universal educational system in the U.S., substantial disparities in educational resources, opportunities, and outcomes persist.  These educational disparities – too often correlated with race, ethnicity, and economic background – continue to undermine the potential of education to serve as “the great equalizer.” In fact, our system of public education has often functioned as a fundamental source of structural inequality in the U.S., with impacts felt by individuals, communities, and our society as a whole.  This lecture focuses on why our educational systems perpetuate inequality, how disparities in educational opportunities negatively impact individuals and the collective good, and what policies and resources are required to ensure equal opportunity for all. The estimated returns on investing in education—and the estimated costs of not doing so—provide strong evidence supporting public investment in universal education. Perhaps even more compelling are the implications for democracy—and the moral and ethical imperatives of a just society. 

Speaker:

PROVOST JENNIFER KING RICE

Jennifer King Rice began her appointment as senior vice president and provost in July 2021.

She was previously dean of the College of Education, where she focused her efforts to align educational resources with initiatives to advance excellence, equity and social justice in preschool through graduate school. Rice has served on the faculty and in college leadership roles at UMD for more than 25 years, and has been recognized as a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.

Before coming to Maryland, she was a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Rice’s research draws on the discipline of economics to study policy questions concerning excellence and equity in K-12 education systems. An expert on school finance and teacher policy, she regularly advises state and federal agencies.

A prolific scholar, she has served on the editorial boards of American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and Education Finance and Policy. In addition to positions as a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation postdoctoral fellow and a visiting fellow at the Urban Institute, she is a past president of the Association for Education Finance and Policy.

She completed her B.S. in mathematics and English at Marquette University and earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in educational administration and social foundations from Cornell University.

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Abstract:

Ralph Ellison famously characterized ensemble jazz improvisation as “antagonistic cooperation.” Both collaborative and competitive, musicians play with and against one another to create art and community. In Antagonistic Cooperation, Robert G. O’Meally shows how this idea runs throughout twentieth-century African American culture to provide a new history of Black creativity and aesthetics.

From the collages of Romare Bearden and paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat to the fiction of Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison to the music of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, O’Meally explores how the worlds of African American jazz, art, and literature have informed one another. He argues that these artists drew on the improvisatory nature of jazz and the techniques of collage not as a way to depict a fractured or broken sense of Blackness but rather to see the Black self as beautifully layered and complex. They developed a shared set of methods and motives driven by the belief that art must involve a sense of community. O’Meally’s readings of these artists and their work emphasize how they have not only contributed to understanding of Black history and culture but also provided hope for fulfilling the broken promises of American democracy.

Speaker:

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Abstract:

This event features a discussion on how conflicts such as the current one in Israel/Palestine should be handled by campus communities, and the need for a different approach with a focus on ensuring a deeper, more educated understanding of the conflict, how to continue constructive dialogue, and build a supportive community.

Speakers:

Moderators:

Abstract:

This event features some of the editors and contributors of the edited volume Fundamental Challenges to Global Peace and Security: The Future of Humanity. The discussion will explore the challenges raised in the volume around current thinking and strategies in the field of global peace and security. 

Speaker Bios:

About:

Conflict, whether political or personal, can escalate and become toxic, as we keep seeing in the news, on social media, in politics. At this level, known as "high conflict," we start sorting the world into good and evil, us and them. Things become suddenly very clear. Our brains behave differently. We tend to exaggerate the differences between ourselves and the other political party or racial or religious group (or sibling or co-worker), without realizing we are doing it. We believe the other side cannot change, even when it can. Eventually, everyone suffers, to varying degrees. To try to understand how people get bewitched by high conflict--and how they get out--Amanda spent four years following a politician in California, a former gang leader in Chicago, a divided synagogue in New York City and other conflict survivors all over the world. She discovered that the secret is not to get out of conflict; conflict itself is essential, and it can be healthy and good. The key is to get out of high conflict. From the stories and the science of conflict, Amanda has identified the "fire-starter" forces that tend to cause high conflict--as well as the practical but counterintuitive rules of "good conflict." This work is surprising and ultimately hopeful, and it has transformed how Amanda operates as a journalist. 

Speaker:

Parking

Free parking is available on campus after 4pm in Lot 1 and Lot Z

The Map below highlights where the free parking is available, and also where the event will be held in the Stamp Student Union.

Because of ongoing construction there are interruptions to the normal flow of traffic and pedestrian walkways.

On the map below the blue dotted line illustrates the walking route from Lot 1 and Lot Z to the Stamp Student Union.

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About:

This collaborative discussion will explore the idea of land and place as the foundations of public discourses and in turn, democracy. Beginning with an inquiry into the role of the Agora as a place of debate, discussion, and dissent, we will then consider how the land on which we make public places shapes and is shaped by the engagements of democratic discourses. Turning to the 20th century and the role of feminism and practices of intersectionality, the discussion will interrogate how such public places have both grounded the expansion of democracy while in other places been used to exclude practices of democracy. While much has been made of the practices of democracy as a political and social/ cultural set of practices, and others  have explored the role of architecture, less has been explored in terms of the ground, the landscapes of democratic practice. Where do communities come together to practice democracy, where do communities engage in debate and dissent? How does the place shape public discourse, the content and the community of participants? This discussion will not necessarily answer such complex questions, but are intended to raise questions that are essential in efforts to create a more robust democracy here and around the globe. 

Speakers:

Samantha L. Martin is an associate professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy at University College Dublin. Her main research and teaching interests lie in Classical antiquity and the phenomenology of landscapes. She is the editor of Food and Architecture: At the Table (Bloomsbury, 2016) and co-editor of Mobs & Microbes: Market Halls, Civic Order & Public Health (Leuven, 2023). Her other book projects include New Directions in Ancient Urban Planning in the Mediterranean (Routledge, 2018) and a forthcoming monograph on the urban order of ancient Athens. She is presently the editor-in-chief of Architectural Histories, the field journal of the European Architectural History Network. Martin has long worked on archaeological excavations, beginning in 1999 in the Athenian Agora, and later at the Lofkënd Archaeological Project in Albania. Most recently she has served as the architectural historian for the Methone Archaeological Project in northern Greece. Martin has won many awards for her teaching, including the 2019 College Teaching Award at University College Dublin. In 2021 she was a Mellon Teaching Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC. She has also received grants from the GAHTC, and in 2019 she established a STEAM learning initiative in Samburu, northern Kenya in 2019. An exhibition based on this initiative was named a flagship project by the Irish Research Council in 2020. She is currently a Senior Associate Member of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Martin completed her PhD in Architecture from the University of Cambridge in 2007. Before that she received an MPhil in the History and Philosophy of Architecture, also from Cambridge (2003). She is a graduate of Smith College.

Thaisa Way FASLA, FAAR is the Director for Garden & Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, a Harvard University research institution located in Washington DC. She is the PI for a Mellon Initiative, “Democracy and the Urban Landscape: Race, Identity, and Difference.” As a landscape historian, she teaches history, theory, and design in at the College of Built Environments, University of Washington. She was awarded the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture at the American Academy in Rome in 2016. Dr. Way served as the founding Director of Urban@UW, an initiative of the University of Washington. Her publications foreground questions of history, gender, and shaping the landscape. Her book, Unbounded Practices: Women, Landscape Architecture, and Early Twentieth Century Design (UVa Press, 2009/2013) was awarded the J.B. Jackson Book Award.   From Modern Space to Urban Ecological Design: the Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag (UW Press 2015) explores the narrative of post-industrial cities and practices of landscape architecture. River Cities/ City Rivers (Harvard Press 2018) contributes to urban and environmental history. GGN 1999-2018 (Timber Press, 2018) is a foray into descriptions of design as a process. Her most recent book is co-edited with Eric Avila, Segregation and Resistance in the Urban Landscape.

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Abstract:

Technology is often designed and deployed without critical reflection of the values that it embodies.  Value trade-offs—between security and privacy, free speech and dignity, autonomy and human agency, and different conceptions of fairness—abound in many technologies that are now achieving great scale in commonly used tech platforms.  The decisions made by the people inside the companies deploying those technologies impose their value choices upon millions of users, often with negative externalities that are now on full display. 

In our new book, System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot, we provide a multidisciplinary view—the perspectives of a philosopher, a political scientist, and a computer scientist, respectively—to disentangle the systematic drivers that we believe have led to the ethical reckoning that Big Tech is now facing.  We examine the value trade-offs arising in systems for algorithmic decision-making, questions related to data gathering and privacy, the impacts of AI and automation, and the power of private platforms to control our information eco-system.  We then discuss the ways we can all play a role in helping to shape technology and the policies that govern it with an eye toward achieving better outcomes for society.

Speakers:

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Abstract:

What if we saw the end of property relations, settler colonialism and racial capitalism in our lifetime? What if we were called to return to (or begin again) a different kind of living in our ‘now’? Could we answer that call? Would we be ready to bring, or bring back into existence these otherwise futures? I want to consider such questions as central to theories and practices of mothering, other-mothering and caretaking that unfold within totalizing atmospheres of anti-blackness. They chart what Eve Tuck calls the “desire-based research” that is just as needed as the more “damage-centered” work of critiquing/resisting the constellation of world-ending systems that make for the impossibility of black life. In other words, these are questions that orient our imaginative energies toward the worlds we seek to build, even as an atmosphere of antiblackness (and its accompanying settler conquest and capital accumulation) says that there is no other alternative. My claim, here, is that the work of black mothering, other-mothering and caretaking have these generative orientations at its center, exceeding mere resistance against white supremacy and its futurity. In this excess, caretaking for black life rehearses in the ‘now’ what is ‘not yet’, inserts variant and otherwise futurities into a machinery of black death-making. As such, this work of mothering, other-mothering and caretaking always unfolds as if a different future is now.

Kris F Sealey is Professor of Philosophy at Fairfield University, where she also serves as Department Chair. In Fall 2023, she joins the Department of Philosophy at the University Park campus of Penn State University. Dr. Sealey graduated from Spelman College in 2001 with a B.Sc. in Mathematics, and received both her M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from The University of Memphis. Her areas of research include Continental Philosophy, Critical Philosophy of Race, Caribbean Philosophy, and decolonial theory. Her first book, Moments of Disruption: Levinas, Sartre and the Question of Transcendence, was published in December 2013 with SUNY Press. Dr. Sealey’s second book, Creolizing the Nation, published in September 2020 with Northwestern University Press, was awarded the Guillén Batista book award by the Caribbean Philosophical Association in 2022.

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SPEAKERS:

PROFESSOR HODA MAHMOUDI

Hoda Mahmoudi has held The Bahá’í Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland, College Park since 2012. As director of this endowed academic program, Professor Mahmoudi collaborates with a wide range of scholars, researchers, and practitioners to advance interdisciplinary analysis and open discourse on global peace. Before joining the University of Maryland faculty, Professor Mahmoudi served as the coordinator of the Research Department at the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa, Israel. Prior to that, Dr. Mahmoudi was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northeastern Illinois University, where she was also a faculty member in the Department of Sociology. Professor Mahmoudi is co-editor of Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Dignity and Human Rights (Emerald, 2019) and of Children and Globalization; Multidisciplinary Perspectives (Routledge, 2019). Professor Mahmoudi is also co-author of A World Without War (Bahá’í Publishing, 2020), co-editor of The Changing Ethos of Human Rights (Elgar, 2021), and most recently co-editor of Fundamental Challenges to Peace and Security: The Future of Humanity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).

PROFESSOR JENNY ROE

Education: School of the Built Environment, Heriot Watt University UK, PhD; University of Greenwich UK, PG Diploma in Landscape Architecture; University of Nottingham UK, BA (Joint Hons) English and American Studies

Jenny Roe is Professor and Director of the Center for Design & Health in the School of Architecture, University of Virginia. An environmental psychologist and former head of Landscape Architecture for an international architectural practice, she writes, lectures, and consults for a wide range of academic and public audiences on human health-centered design for the built environment. She is an expert in restorative environments that support mental health including an important role for public parks and urban green space.  Her book on this subject, Restorative Cities: Urban Design for Mental Health and Wellbeing (Roe and McCay, 2021) explores a new way of designing cities that puts mental health at the forefront. A new co-edited book continues this theme by exploring ‘Infrastructure, Wellbeing and the Measurement of Happiness’ (Mahmoudi, Roe & Seaman, Routledge, 2022)

Roe has won numerous awards and research grants exploring a rich variety of architectural and landscape contexts and their psychological impact on people.   Her scholarly outputs include over fifty-five peer review publications including for the World Health Organization and the Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal.  She acts as expert advisor to the UK’s Design Council and advises various community organizations and foundations on strategies for promoting and implementing health-centered design.  She serves as a mentor and coach to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Scholars Program.

DR KATE SEAMAN

Kate Seaman is Assistant Director of The Bahá’í Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland. Dr. Seaman previously held positions at the University of Baltimore, the University of Bath and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Dr. Seaman received her Ph.D. from Lancaster University. She is the author of UN-tied Nations; The UN, Peacekeeping and the development of global security governance (Ashgate, 2014).  Dr. Seaman is the co-editor of The Changing Ethos of Human Rights (Elgar, 2021), and co-editor of Fundamental Challenges to Global Peace and Security: The Future of Humanity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Her research has been published in Global Governance and Politics and Governance.

Moderator:

STELLA HOLLADAY HUDSON

Stella is a Masters of Library and Information Science Student and a Graduate and Teaching Assistant with the Bahá'í Chair for World Peace, in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences. She earned her BA from the College of William and Mary, where she majored in English and minored in Classical Studies.