In this session, Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker provides insight into Indigenous knowledge systems which offer opportunities for building resilience to socioecological shocks, including climate effects and pandemics. Dina calls for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community’s rich history of activism. Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) is a lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos and an independent educator in American Indian environmental policy and other issues. Gilio-Whitaker is the author of two books; the most recent award-winning As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock. Cheryl Savageau (Abenaki) is the author of three collections of poetry, Mother/Land, Dirt Road Home, which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Home Country. In 2020, she published Out of the Crazywoods, an autobiography. She graduated from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and studied writing at the People’s Poets and Writers Workshop in Worcester. Currently, she is the editor of Dawnland Voices, a journal of indigenous voices from New England.
Virtual
Dr. Seema Yasmin was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news reporting in 2017 for her reporting on a mass shooting. As a former officer in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she was deployed as strategic advisor to foreign governments, won awards from the United States Public Health Service for leading epidemic investigations, and was principal investigator for scientific studies on disease outbreaks and their long-term consequences.
Virtual
Dr. Victor Cha is Senior Vice President and the inaugural holder of the Korea Chair at Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He is professor of government and holds the D.S. Song-KF Chair in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service (SFS) at Georgetown University. He left the White House in 2007 after serving since 2004 as Director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council (NSC). Dr. Cha was also the deputy head of delegation for the United States at the Six-Party Talks in Beijing and received two outstanding service commendations during his tenure at the NSC. Dr. Cha received his Ph.D. in political science at Columbia University in 1994, his Master’s in international affairs from Columbia in 1988, an M.A. with honors in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University (Hertford College), and an A.B. in economics from Columbia in 1979.
Virtual
Emma Donoghue
Virtual
Paola Ramos is a host and correspondent for VICE and VICE News, as well as a contributor to Telemundo News and MSNBC. Ramos was the deputy director of Hispanic media for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and a political appointee during the Barack Obama administration, and she also served in President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. She’s a former fellow at Emerson Collective. Ramos received her MA in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University. She lives in Brooklyn. Visit her website, paolaramos.com, to learn more, and follow her on Instagram and Twitter @paoramos.
Arsenal Center for the Arts
Gary Sandling, Vice President of Visitor Programs and Services at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Nathaniel Sheidley, CEO of Revolutionary Spaces Kyera Singleton, Executive Director of the Royall House & Slave Quarters Karin Wulf, Professor of History at William & Mary and Director of the Omohundro Institute Moderated by Cristela Guerra, arts and culture reporter for WBUR’s The ARTery
Virtual
Arsenal Center for the Arts
Poet: Jack Giaour
Virtual
Martín Espada
Virtual
Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, PhD has been described in a myriad of ways: a scholar-activist, scholar-leader, thought-leader, teacher, public theologian, ethicist, poet of moral reason, and word artist. Among these ways of describing Dr. Robyn, they are also a visionary thinker who has spent two decades working in the borderlands of church, academy, & movements seeking to not only disrupt but dismantle supremacy culture and help steward the logic of liberation as a Transqueer Latinx. They enflesh a deep hope of collaborating in these borderland spaces where their work seeks to contribute to the ongoing work of collective liberation.
Virtual
Reginald Dwayne Betts, Tracie Keesee, Khalil Muhammad, Chuck Wexler, and Jelani Cobb
John F. Kennedy Library
Peter Kaufman is MIT Professor and author of the book, The New Enlightenment And The Fight To Free Knowledge.
Virtual
Karen Tumulty and Eileen McNamara
John F. Kennedy Library
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