Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: Noelle.Lemoine@williams.edu
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., October 9, 2012—The Williams College Multicultural Center is being rededicated as the Davis Center in honor of pioneering scholars and activists W. Allison Davis ’24 and John A. Davis ’33. A campus-wide celebration of the rededication will include a series of events on Friday, Oct. 19, and Saturday, Oct. 20. The events honor the Multicultural Center’s legacy while affirming a commitment to positive social change. All events are free and open to the public. Please register for events at http://mcc.williams.edu/daviscenter/.
The weekend events will begin with a reception at 7:15 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 19, in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall lobby. Following the reception, Danielle Allen will give the Davis Lecture on Education and Equality at 8 p.m., also in Brooks-Rogers. Allen is a political theorist who has published widely in democratic theory, political sociology, and the history of political thought. Her lecture argues that participatory readiness, the goal of preparing all young people by age 18 for participation in the political life of a democracy, should be a major consideration of education policy. She received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2002 and is the author of The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (2000), Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education (2004), and Why Plato Wrote (2010). She is currently the UPS Foundation Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. The Oakley Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences is sponsoring this event in celebration of the dedication.
At 10 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 19, musical group Ozomatli will perform in Lasell Gymnasium. In their 15 years together as a band, celebrated L.A. culture-mashers Ozomatli have gone from being hometown heroes to being named U.S. State Department Cultural Ambassadors. Their music—a collision of hip hop and salsa, samba and funk, East L.A. R&B and New Orleans second line—long has followed a key mantra: it will take you around the world by taking you around L.A.
“Modes of Activism,” a panel exploring traditional and contemporary forms of activism, including social media, will begin at 2:30 p.m. in the Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall on Saturday, Oct. 20. Bilal Ansari, Lisa Lee, and Spectra will participate in this panel. Ansari, Williams’ Muslim Chaplain, is founder of the Muslim Chaplain Association, an online resource and advocacy site. Lisa Lee, a graduate of University of California at Berkeley, is the former publisher of Hyphen, an online and print magazine, and is interested in using social media to create a more complex representation of Asian America. Spectra is an award-winning Nigerian writer, media activist, queer Afrofeminist social commentator, human rights advocate, and social entrepreneur. Stewart Burns, coordinator of community engagement at Williams, will moderate the discussion.
W. Allison Davis Research Fellowship discussions will begin at 4 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 20 in Griffin Hall, Room, 3. To commemorate the renaming of the Williams College Undergraduate Research Fellowship, four alumni fellows will discuss how they have incorporated a commitment to social justice into their academic careers. Crystal Mun-Hye Baik ’02, Ashley Brown Burns ’07, Elizabeth Hoover ’01, and Esa Seegulam ’06 will present.
The Davis Center will be dedicated officially at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 20, in Morley Drive Circle. President Adam Falk and members of the Davis family will lead the ceremony.
A keynote address presented by renowned educator Johnnetta B. Cole will cap the Davis Center rededication weekend. Her address, “Difference Does Make a Difference: The Struggle for Diversity and Inclusion in American Higher Education,” will begin at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 20, on the MainStage of the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance. Cole was the first black female president of Spelman College, the first woman elected to the board of directors of Coca-Cola, and the first black woman to chair the board of the United Way of America. A scholar, author, and activist for social and economic justice, Cole leads breakthrough initiatives on diversity, leadership, and women’s issues. She served as president of Spelman College from 1987 to 1997, and of Bennett College from 2002 to 2007. She received an honorary degree from Williams in 1989. Cole is currently the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art.
W. Allison Davis ’24, notable anthropologist, psychologist, and educator, and his brother John A. Davis ’33, esteemed educator, political scientist and activist, received honorary degrees from Williams College in the 1970s to honor their contributions to national social, political, and educational reform. The Davis Center’s rededication recognizes the history of the center at Williams, while acknowledging the development of new ways to meet the challenges of an increasingly interdependent and complex global community. The Davis family legacy serves as a reminder of the college’s institutional mission: “that an education at Williams should not be regarded as a privilege destined to create further privilege, but as a privilege that creates opportunities to serve society at large, and imposes the responsibility to do so.”
Please register for events at http://mcc.williams.edu/daviscenter/. A full schedule of event programming is also available online.
END
For building locations on the Williams campus, please consult the map outside the driveway entrance to the Security Office located in Hopkins Hall on Main Street (Rte. 2), next to the Thompson Memorial Chapel, or call the Office of Communications (413) 597-4277. The map can also be found on the web at www.williams.edu/map
To visit the college on the Internet: www.williams.edu Williams College can also be found on Facebook: www.facebook.com/williamscollege and Twitter: twitter.com/williamscollege
0 comments:
Post a Comment