Equity Interrupted in the Academy: Rights, Resistance, and Power
Council for Affirmative Action • Spring 2018 Equity Conference
Friday, March 16, 10am – Saturday, March 17, 5pm
Sheraton Gateway Hotel, Los Angeles
Scroll down for schedule
Conference Narrative:
The resurgence of racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-labor, and white supremacist discourses in the aftermath of the 2016 American Presidential election has necessarily produced an existential crisis in labor organizing and called into question the efficacy of traditional leftist principles and practices. At the same time, grassroots political and social movements including #BlackLivesMatter, American Indian resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline, ADAPT protesters, the populist appeal of the Bernie Sanders campaign, the Women’s March and the #MeToo movement in the wake of the 2016 election continue to illuminate a path forward that utilizes intersectional theory and practice.
Intersectionality is a framework created by Black feminist scholar and civil rights advocate Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989 to describe conflicting and reciprocal identities that confront both individuals and social movements as they seek to navigategender, race, social class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, age, mental disability, physical disability, mental and physical illness as well as other forms of identity. Crenshaw argued that these aspects of identity are not “unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather … reciprocally constructing phenomena.” Intersectionality can be used to understand the multidimensionality of systemic injustice and how different expressions of power and oppression collaborate to create an all-encompassing system reflecting multiple forms of discrimination. Further, any serious comparative historical view of resistance to power suggests that demands for solidarity across social divisions are as likely to compete as to coalesce.
This conference seeks to further CFA’s demands for solidarity across the lines of social division by engaging the framework of intersectionality as a critical mode of organizing and coalescing the multiple identities that comprise the American labor movement.
Conference Participation
The Council for Affirmative Action commits to sponsoring up to five (5) persons from each chapter to attend. Chapter presidents will be sponsored by their own local chapters. Moreover, the Council’s Executive Board strongly encourages chapter presidents to invite current or prospective activist colleagues to participate in the conference. In addition, chapters are strongly encouraged to support at their expense additional faculty (beyond the 5 supported by CAA) with whom it wishes to build stronger activists relationships.
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
Friday, March 16, 2018
10:00a – 11:00a Caucus meetings
11:15a – 12:15p Council for Affirmative Action
12:15p– 1:30p Conference Welcome Luncheon
Session 1: 1:45p – 2:30p
Being Female: The Many Faces of Sexism in The Twenty-first Century
Campus Climate for LGBTQ and Ally Faculty and Students
Session 2: 2:45p – 4:00p
Intersectionality and Affirmative Action
The Intersectionality of Inequality: Latinx Students in the CSU
Session 3: 4:15p – 6:15p
Film viewing More Than A Word by John and Kenn Little and panel discussion with Craig Stone, Brian Baker, Amanda Blackhorse, Ozzie Monge
6:15p – 7:00p Cocktails/Hors d’oeuvres
7:00p – 8:00p Dinner with guest speaker Kent Wong, Director of the UCLA Labor Center
8:00p – 10:30p Gus Lease Hospitality Suite for karaoke, fun, and games
Saturday, March 17, 2018
7:00a – 7:45a Yoga with Adesh Kaur
8:00a – 9:00a Breakfast with Jen Eagan, President CFA
Session 4: 9:15a – 10:30a
“Practice What You Preach”: Infusing Social Justice Unionism into Teacher Education Programs
Data & Research Presentation: Changing Faces of CSU Faculty and Students
Session 5: 10:45a – Noon
Disability Studies, Community, Culture, and Activism
Lifting as We Climb: African American Faculty in the California Faculty Association
Lunch & Keynote: Noon – 1:45p
Derald Wing Sue, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology & Education Teachers College, Columbia University
Session 6: 2:00p – 3:15p
Talking Union: Rights, Resistance & Power in the Wake of Janus vs. AFSCME
Data & Research Presentation: Changing Faces of CSU Faculty and Students
Session 7: 3:30 – 4:15p
Improv with Obama’s Other Daughters
4:15 -5:00pm CLOSING
Conference Planning Committee
- Cecil Canton, Chair CAA (Sacramento)
- Nicholas L. Baham III, Co-Chair (East Bay)
- Dorothy Chen-Maynard, Co-Chair (San Bernardino)
- Sharon Elise (San Marcos)
- Rafael Gomez (Monterey Bay)
- Meghan O’Donnell (Monterey Bay)
- Erma Jean Sims (Sonoma)
- Charles Toombs (San Diego)
- Maureen Loughran, CFA Staff
- Audrena Redmond, CFA Staff
- Michelle Cerecerez, CFA Staff
- Rose Mendelsohn, CFA Staff
- Tanesha Travis, CFA Staff
