Wednesday October 18th - Virtual Track
Session Block 1, 2:00 - 3:00pm
Disability Justice in DEI Work
Workshop
Sarah Doherty, Lisa Flowers Clements
In this session participants will learn about ableism, its connections to racism and white supremacy culture, the Disability Justice movement, and ways ableism/white supremacy culture show up in DEI work. Participants will hear from diverse disabled/chronically ill people about DEIBJ. Participants will think deeply about ableism/white supremacy culture at work & how to infuse Disability Justice into DEI work. Participants will analyze their campuses/offices to identify practices and cultural norms that do/do not support Disability Justice, and identify resources, roadblocks, and opportunities to bring a DJ lens to institutional social justice work.
Session Block 2, 3:15 - 4:15pm
Oral Session
Racism and the Epistemology of Ignorance in Higher Education
Charmaine Crawford
"Ignorance allied with Power is the Most Ferocious Enemy Justice Can Have," James Baldwin.
In this paper, I will examine how a neo-conservative attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as Critical Race Theory and non-Eurocentric worldviews in public higher education signals a precarious relationship between race, education, and liberatory pedagogy in the United States during the 21st century. In the post-Brown v. Board of Education era, white privilege and power continue to operate in innocuous ways to reproduce itself in education, institutions, media, law, and state through different methods, including hermeneutically through an epistemology of ignorance. In this presentation, the audience will learn how ignorance is weaponized to discriminate against BIPOC and other marginalized groups and why epistemic justice is important to anti-racist organizing in academia.