Fall 2024 Series
The Courage to Challenge Racial Injustice and Build Equity in Education
Oct. 22, 2024
4 p.m.-5 p.m.
Pollak Theatre
A Conversation with Ruby Bridges in recognition of the 70th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education
Co-moderated by Vernon Smith, Ph.D., and Zaneta Rago-Craft, Ed.D.
Co-sponsored with the Monmouth University Intercultural Center
Fall Distinguished Speaker
Ruby Bridges is a civil rights icon, activist, author, and speaker who at the age of 6 was the first Black student to integrate an all-white elementary school alone in Louisiana. She was born in Mississippi in 1954, the same year the United States Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision ordering the integration of public schools. Her family later moved to New Orleans, where on Nov. 14, 1960, Bridges began attending William Frantz Elementary School, single-handedly initiating the desegregation of public education. Her walk to the front door of the school was immortalized in Norman Rockwell’s painting “The Problem We All Live With”, in Robert Coles’ book “The Story of Ruby Bridges”, and in the Disney movie “Ruby Bridges”.
She established the Ruby Bridges Foundation to provide leadership training programs that inspire youth and community leaders to embrace and value the richness of diversity. Bridges is the recipient of numerous awards, including the NAACP Martin Luther King Award, the Presidential Citizens Medal, and honorary doctorate degrees from Connecticut College, College of New Rochelle, Columbia University Teachers College, and Tulane University. Bridges is also the author of “Through My Eyes”, “This Is Your Time”, “I Am Ruby Bridges”, and “Dear Ruby, Hear Our Hearts”, released in January 2024. In March 2024, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Spring 2024 Series
Supporting Queer and Trans Students in K-16 Classrooms and Building an Intersectional Research Agenda in Education
Mario Suarez, Ph.D. (he/him/él)
Assistant Professor, Cultural Studies at Utah State University
Mario I. Suárez, Ph.D., (he/him/él) is an assistant professor of cultural studies in the School of Teacher Education and Leadership at Utah State University. Mario’s research agenda examines individual, environmental, contextual, and systemic factors that work together (or not) to (re)produce unequal educational outcomes for minoritized populations. He analyzes how these factors shape K-16 spaces through standards, curriculum, and teaching practices for LGBTQ+ and BIPOC students and teachers. To this end, he primarily employs critical quantitative research methods using secondary data analysis, though also draws on qualitative methods and primary data collection when large data are not available. He envisions these factors as metaphorical gears, some larger than others, that sometimes do not fit together and are working against each other, more so for some minoritized populations over others, to create inequality in K-16 spaces. His research has appeared in journals like Educational Researcher and Journal of LGBT Youth, among others, and recently co-edited the book “Trans Studies in K-12 Education: Creating an Agenda for Research and Practice” with Melinda M. Mangin, Ph.D., (Rutgers University) for Harvard Education Press.
Fall 2023 Series
Building and Practicing Racial Literacy: Moving from Theory to Practice
Featuring Our Fall Distinguished Speaker, Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Ph.D.
Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Ph.D., is a professor of English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a sought after speaker on race and educational equity issues. She is author of numerous academic articles, co-editor of four books, and co-author of the multiple award-winning book Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education: Activism for Equity in Digital Spaces, where she examines her concept of Archeology of Self™ in education. At Teachers College, she is founder of the Racial Literacy Roundtables Series where for 15 years, national scholars, teachers, and students facilitate conversations around race and other issues involving diversity. Yolanda has appeared in several documentaries including Spike Lee’s 2 Fists Up: We Gon’ Be Alright (2016), a documentary about the Black Lives Matter movement and the campus protests at Mizzou. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Love from the Vortex & Other Poems was published in March 2020. Her sophomore book of poetry, The Peace Chronicles, was published in July, 2021.
Spring 2023 Series
Disrupting Educational Inequities: Managing Roadblocks to Social Justice & Anti-Racist Practices in the Classroom
Featuring Educator and Activist Alfred “Shivy” Brooks
Moderator
Keon N. Berry, M.S.Ed.
Educational Leadership P-12 Doctoral Student
Graduate Assistant, Social Justice Academy
Director of Parent Services, Quality Care for Children
Fall 2022 Series
A Conversation with Dr. Bernice King on Building the Beloved Community
Co-moderators
Nicole Pulliam, Ph.D., and Vernon Smith, Ph.D.
Spring 2022 Virtual Series
Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom
Tuesday, February 22, 2022
3:30 – 4:30 p.m. EST
Dr. Bettina Love
Moderator: Birgit Mondesir, Brookdale Community College
Disrupting Educational (In)equities: A Critical Race-Gendered Approach
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
3:30 – 4:30 p.m. EST
Dr. Dolores Delgado Bernal
Moderator: Vanessa Bernal ’19M, Princeton Middle School
From Surviving to Thriving: Creating Equitable
Environments Through Emotional Intelligence
& Culturally Relevant Practices
Tuesday, April 19, 2022
3:30 – 4:30 p.m. EST
Dr. Dena Simmons
Moderator: Yessika Garcia-Guzman, Ocean County College
Fall 2021 Events
Demystifying Critical Race Theory in Schools: Let’s Talk Law & Policy
Robert Kim, J.D.
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Robert (Bob) Kim is a writer, consultant, and leading expert on education law and policy in the United States. A former civil rights attorney, his most recent book is Elevating Equity and Justice: Ten U.S. Supreme Court Cases Every Teacher Should Know (Heinemann, 2020). He is also the co-author of Education and the Law, 5thed. and Legal Issues in Education: Rights and Responsibilities in U.S. Public Schools Today (West Academic Publishing, 2019 & 2017). His column, “Under the Law,” appears monthly in Phi Delta Kappan, a professional journal for educators.
From 2011 through 2016, Mr. Kim served in the Obama Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, which enforces federal civil rights laws in K-12 and postsecondary institutions nationwide. Between 2017 and 2021, he was the William T. Grant Distinguished Fellow at Rutgers University, where he taught education law and conducted research on school finance and education equity in U.S. public schools, and investigated incidents related to Title IX and other forms of harassment and discrimination for the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Language, Culture, and Teaching: What Do Educators Need to Know to be Prepared for Today’s Students, Classrooms, and Schools?
Dr. Sonia Nieto
Tuesday, October 12, 2021
A member of the National Academy of Education, Sonia Nieto is Professor Emerita of Language, Literacy, and Culture, College of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her teaching has spanned early elementary through doctoral education and her research has focused on multicultural education, teacher education, literacy, and the education of students of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, with a special emphasis on Latin@ students.
She is the author of dozens of journal articles and book chapters and has written or edited 13 books, including a memoir, Brooklyn Dreams: My Life in Public Education (Harvard Education Press, 2015), and a co-authored book with her daughter Alicia López, an award-winning classroom teacher and part-time instructor at Mount Holyoke College, Teaching, a Life’s Work: A Mother-Daughter Dialogue (Teachers College Press, 2019).
Combating Racial Injustice Through Education
Nikole Hannah-Jones
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
Nikole Hannah-Jones is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the 1619 Project and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. She has spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the Genius grant, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and the National Magazine Award three times. Hannah-Jones also earned the John Chancellor Award for Distinguished Journalism and was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen’s Club of New York. In 2020 she was inducted into the Society of American Historians and in 2021, into the North Carolina Media Hall of Fame.
