"Connecting Lived Experiences to Action"
The next virtual Social Justice Summit will be held on Thursday, Feb. 11, from 1 to 4 p.m. via Zoom. These summits are a continuing series of events to address racism and racial injustice.
At this next Summit, Connecting Lived Experience to Action, the focus will be Narratives and Black Voices, exploring the question of “What happens when stories are silenced, taken out of context, and/or misunderstood?” The objective is to be able to connect these stories to policy recommendations in a report to be issued to the Senate Faculty Committee in May 2021.
Free Registration
If you plan to attend this summit, please register online. Once there, you will be able to sign up for the meeting and indicate your interest in contributing a story to this effort.
Contributing Stories
If you have or know of an experience that you can share, please let us know on the registration page. It is possible share your story anonymously.
Agenda for Summit
The agenda for the summit can be found online.
Featured Speaker
The featured speaker and facilitator is Alissa Rae Funderburk, a graduate of the Oral History Master’s Program at Columbia and the Oral Historian for the Margaret Walker Center at the HBCU Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi. She maintains an oral history archive dedicated to the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of African American history and culture.
Performance artist Doris A. Fields will also join the Summit. Fields is a native West Virginians, a professional vocalist, actor and songwriter. She has toured her one-woman show, "The Lady and the Empress," a musical stage play based on the life and music of blues legend Bessie Smith. In 2008, her song "Go Higher" was chosen as the best Obama Inaugural Song.
Background
The Faculty Senate Inclusion and Diversity Committee seeks to create a transparent, systematic mechanism that facilitates an open dialogue on power imbalances, commitment to diversity and inclusion goals, and equity between WVU leadership and marginalized faculty, staff, students, and community.
Notes, videos, and findings from the last Summit are available. The Committee was able to group ideas and issues into six categories, each with its own set of subtopics. They realize that some categories and topics are cross cutting, not mutually exclusive, and that many others intersect and act as catalysts or outcomes to one another. A summary of the six issues is also available.
Summit Organizers
- Keri Valentine, Ph.D.
Chair, Faculty Senate Inclusion and Diversity Committee - Lauri Andress, MPH, J.D., Ph.D.
Previous Chair, Faculty Senate Inclusion and Diversity Committee - Stefanie P. Hines, J.D., CPLTA
Chair-Elect, Faculty Senate Inclusion and Diversity Committee
