Today we're going to hear from national leaders
and we're also, as Dr. DiPietro says,
going to have a conversation,
and one of the most
important things and exciting things
is we're going to hear from each other.
We're going to hear about what's
happening on our campuses.
We will be doing that by
presentations and by posters.
So, please, during the
day, look at the posters,
they are very, very exciting.
Some of the posters are
here, some of the posters
are in the hall, so please take advantage
of those presentations
in addition to those
that will be presented orally to you.
So, let us begin.
It is my immense pleasure to introduce
the summit's first
speaker, Dr. Lindley Black,
Chancellor of the University
of Minnesota Duluth,
to talk with us about making
diversity really matter.
And when you look at the program,
you see Chancellor Black's bio
and I will read it with you.
Chancellor Black joined the
University of Minnesota Duluth
as Chancellor in August 2010.
Previously he served as provost
and Vice President for Academic Affairs
at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.
He was Dean of the College
of Liberal Arts and Sciences
at Emporia State University
in Kansas for nine years.
He earned his doctorate in theater
at the University of Kansas.
When you look at the
University of Minnesota Duluth
campus climate webpage,
Chancellor Black writes,
when I joined the University
of Minnesota Duluth community
in August of 2010, I announced
a major campus initiative.
To create an inclusive campus climate
for all who learn and work at UMD.
Hence, one of the goals
of UMD's strategic plan
is to create a positive and
inclusive campus climate for all
by advancing equity,
diversity, and social justice.
Welcome Chancellor Black.
(audience applauding)
- Thank you very much, Dean Anderson,
I appreciate the kind introduction.
Well, good morning everyone.
- [All] Good morning.
- It's always a good
morning when I can come back
to my home state, 'cause
I'm gonna add a little bit
to the bio that you read.
I've not lived in Tennessee
for many years now,
but it still feels like
home when I return.
My home is now in Minnesota as you heard.
On the slide, there is a
picture of a double rainbow
over Lake Superior, this is
just a few miles up the shore
from our campus, does not
look like Martin, Tennessee.
(audience laughing)
Although Martin is awfully nice,
and I'll mention that in a minute.
We are one of five campuses in
the University of Minnesota system,
so our system does share
some characteristics
with Tennessee, UMD has
approximately 11,200 students,
about 1800 faculty and staff.
We are located on the
banks of Lake Superior,
the greatest of the Great
Lakes, ten percent of
the Earth's fresh water is
located in Lake Superior.
Duluth is a fairly progressive
community of about 86,000
and part of the metropolitan
area around 200,000.
We are a tourist community
12 months out of the year,
if you can believe that,
with a strong focus on higher education.
Within our metropolitan area, we have two
public universities, a
private college, and a number
of community colleges and tribal colleges.
Dean Anderson quoted from
our campus change website
and that is the URL
that's on the slide here,
so if you want to learn more about us,
I encourage you to visit and
see what all we're up to.
As you heard, prior to moving to Duluth,
I was provost and academic Vice
President at Kennesaw State
not too far from here, and
then spent many years in Kansas
after I received my doctorate
at the University of Kansas,
I worked there and at
Emporia State University
which is a regional university in Kansas.
We did a lot of diversity work there,
and I continued that diversity
work at Kennesaw State.
But what's not listed
in my bio is that yes,
I have a doctorate from
University of Kansas,
I have a master's from
University of Connecticut,
but I have a Bachelor of
Arts degree in English
from the University of Tennessee Martin.
(audience applauding)
I didn't change that on the written bio,
I wanted to announce that personally.
(audience laughing)
I did grow up in Memphis, my
wife grew up in Nashville.
(audience laughs)
Let's hear it for Memphis.
(audience laughing)
My wife grew up in Nashville,
we met as students at UTM,
and this summer we celebrate
our 40th wedding anniversary.
(audience applauding)
There was a focus on student
success at UMT, UMD, UTM.
(audience laughing)
Too many initials, UTM, that
has served my personal life
well as well as my professional life,
but in all seriousness,
I received an outstanding
liberal arts education at
Martin and it served me
extremely well when I
went from Martin to Yukon,
as a graduate student, I was
working with graduate students
who were from Princeton and Brown and SMU
and I certainly was able to hold my own
as a result of the education I got at UTM,
so I'm very much thankful for that.
As I mentioned, I grew up in Memphis,
a very segregated neighborhood
in what was then called
East Memphis, now East
Memphis goes way beyond
where I grew up.
I was in Overton High School
in Memphis in the late 1960's,
when Memphis became
one of the focal points
of the civil rights movement.
I remember very clearly the
Sanitation Workers Strike
and all the events that led
up to Dr. Martin Luther King
coming to Memphis to march
and to stand up for those
who were disadvantaged.
This was also obviously
when Dr. King was murdered
and when his death resulted in violence,
and not only in Memphis,
but in many major cities
across the country, and
these events and the violence
and the aftermath, I think, really changed
these cities in significant ways,
some for the better, some not.
But certainly we were different.
You could feel a difference
after those events.
And while growing up in Memphis,
I vividly remember both
the subtle as well as
the very glaring
manifestations of segregation,
of misunderstanding, of
ignorance, and of power.
Now, I grew up in a very
loving and modest family.
My parents were from very
hardworking farm families
in west Tennessee and
northern Mississippi.
My father was wounded in
World War II and had to stop
working in his thirties, and
he passed away when he was 49,
so financially, we struggled.
My mother had to go to
work at a fairly young age.
This was in the early
sixties at this point,
my dad did not want her to go to work
because women weren't supposed
to do that sort of thing,
according to him, but she had no choice.
I started throwing the morning paper,
the Memphis Commercial Appeal,
as soon as I was old enough.
I think I started at 14.
Would ride my bicycle and get up early.
Now, a young person riding their bicycle
in Memphis at five o'clock in the morning
just doesn't sound
right, but at that time,
that's what we did.
But in spite of these life challenges,
I grew up in a family with
many advantages or privileges.
Now, it's always been a
little difficult for me
to talk about privilege because
I certainly did not feel
privileged growing up.
We were not privileged in our
economic status, certainly.
We were not privileged in elite education.
Neither of my parents went to college.
I have an older sister
and she went to Martin,
she's three years older than
I am so she was already there,
and that was one of the
reasons I followed her there.
But my parents were still
smart and wise people,
but they were not highly educated.
So, but it took me many
years to sort of understand
and come to terms with this
whole aspect of privilege
and advantages that I
had simply because of
the color of my skin, because
I was healthy, I'm able-bodied
I'm male, I'm heterosexual.
Some might consider being
Protestant an advantage.
Of course, right now I'm
a Lutheran in Minnesota,
you don't get much more
majority than that.
So, during my first month at UMD,
I spoke openly on campus
about my privilege,
and I told a version of this
story to a group of people
my first week or so at UMD.
Now, this was uncomfortable
in some ways for me
and for others because the
whole topic of white privilege
has taken on so many
negatives and confrontations
over the past several
years that it's risky
to even open the discussion.
However, as Allan Johnson
states in his book,
Privilege, Power, and Difference,
you can't deal with a
problem if you don't name it.
Once you name it, you can think about it,
you can write about it,
you can make sense of it,
by seeing how it's
connected to other things
that explain it and
point towards solutions.
Hence, Johnson advocates
the use of the words like
privilege, racism, sexism, antisemitism,
heterosexism, classism,
ableism, dominance,
subordination, oppression, patriarchy.
In order to work towards
solving the challenges
we all have with difference
and better understanding
those who have been disadvantaged.
So, if diversity is
going to really matter,
it must begin with us and
we must all come to terms
with the challenges that each of us has
and continues to have with difference.
We have to know individually where we are
in our own biases and what
steps we are willing to take
to advance to the next level
of intercultural understanding
and engagement with people
who are different from us.
So, I began this morning
by telling you something
about myself because we need to understand
the individual stories
that we all work with.
If we better understand
where people come from
and how they come to
be where they are now,
we are better able to connect with them
and work with them on a deeper level.
It's much harder to hate
someone or to display
unacceptable behavior towards someone
if you understand who they really are.
Now, in some ways I credit my
theater and humanities studies
which began at Martin, and
also the research and teaching
I did as a faculty
member, my research area
was Russian theater and drama
when I was a full-time faculty member.
But I credit this academic perspective
with some of my interest in diversity,
because in those areas we were centered on
in the humanities and the theater,
we're very much centered on understanding
what it's like to be human.
And also, especially in the theater,
trying to get under the skin of people
who are very different from ourselves.
So, I could argue that
English and theater majors
connect with diversity
in significant ways.
I could also argue they make
the best college administrators.
(audience laughs)
When I became Chancellor
at UMD in August of 2010,
the campus needed a
stronger focus on diversity,
and it needed a process to
confront and move beyond
a racist incident that had
occurred the previous spring.
In the spring of 2010,
two white female students
laughed at and made racist comments about
two African-American
students on the UMD campus
in their residence hall,
and posted, they posted
the insulting and racist
comments on Facebook.
So, you know what happens,
it spread very quickly,
became an extremely
controversial issue on campus.
Now, from what I could tell,
the campus had responded well
and appropriately and really supported
the African-American students.
However, the incident left
a residue of hurt feelings
and a desire to improve the
overall climate on campus.
So, during my first weeks at UMD,
I felt the urgency that your
president just talked about,
the immediacy, we had a
reason to act quickly.
And there was some energy
and the time was right,
I thought, to take a big step.
So, we organized a two day training
on creating an inclusive campus climate,
an inclusive campus climate,
with faculty, staff,
administrators, and students.
I began the training by talking
about my own experiences
and commitment to diversity,
and this training was
facilitated by Kathy
Obear and Jamie Washington
from the Social Justice
Training Institute.
So, from this effort, we developed
the UMD Campus Climate Initiative
that consisted of a
renewed campus commitment
and a new structure that would
facilitate sustainable change
and to me, it was critical that we had
sustainable change, a commitment
to sustainable change.
I was not interested in
talking about diversity,
I wasn't interested in just having
a generic diversity program.
We needed something that could
be impactful and sustainable.
So, the objective of
this campus climate work
was captured in our campus commitment.
Ah, there we go.
Sometimes I have the tendency as others do
to point this toward the screen,
like it's gonna do it some good.
(audience laughs)
We got it right over here.
So, we developed a campus
commitment that provided
an intellectual foundation for
the work we were going to do.
And this is sort of in three segments
and I won't read it all to you,
but I'll go over it quickly
and then we can come back to it later,
or, like I said, you can go to our website
and read about it in more detail.
But part of the purpose
was an integration.
An integration of equity, diversity,
inclusion, social justice.
We also were focusing on campus life,
the totality of campus
life, the academic areas,
as well as our student life areas.
And we wanted to be
intentional in the work.
We wanted to create an environment
that is both physically
and psychologically safe.
It's that safety factor that I find
concerns our students the most.
And as we do a variety of focus groups
with our students who
have been disadvantaged,
what I hear over and
over again is them say,
I need to feel safe.
We also wanted to
eliminate both structural
and interpersonal
barriers that would limit
the opportunities of our students,
that would keep them from
reaching their full potential.
We also said in this commitment statement
that we recognize and
understand that people
have been marginalized, and to us,
it was important to admit that.
And sometimes we dance
around these issues too much.
Instead of coming out and saying,
we got a problem here, folks.
And it's not the problems
we have at Duluth,
they're different from what
I saw in Georgia and Kansas
and Tennessee growing up.
And they're similar at the same time,
but it's not about just
UMD being a bad place,
'cause it's not, it's a great
place, it's a wonderful place.
But the more we can admit
we have some problems,
we have issues that
needed to be addressed,
the greater progress
we felt we could make.
So, what we did was to create a structure
that had three primary parts.
A Campus Climate Leadership Team,
a Campus Change Team,
and 18 Unit Change Teams
throughout the campus.
And these Unit Change Teams
are centered in the departments
in the various units,
colleges, and schools.
We have five colleges and schools at UMD.
Pretty traditional in terms of structure.
We have a liberal arts college,
we have science and
engineering, we have fine arts,
we have a school of business and we have
a college of education in
human service professions.
So, these three teams
were the primary structure
of our campus change.
So, the Leadership Team consists
of me, my vice chancellors,
and other senior level administrators
who are our primary
campus climate leaders.
So, the purpose of this Leadership
Team, first and foremost,
is to put diversity and campus change
at the forefront of my
senior leadership team.
Bless you.
(audience laughs)
We meet usually about twice a month.
And so it forces us for
an hour, hour and a half,
to be totally consumed by campus climate,
at least twice a month.
So, we provide the primary leadership,
we look at proposals, we
prioritize recommendations,
and we allocate resources to support
the campus change initiatives.
We also facilitate discussions of mission,
core values, goals, et cetera.
Now, the Campus Change Team
consists of representatives
from our schools and colleges
and from other administrative units.
We have, in addition to Academic Affairs,
we have a division we call Student Life,
called Student Affairs in some places,
and then our third major unit
is Finance and Operations.
So, throughout all of those areas,
we have representatives
on the Campus Change Team.
We also have representatives
from our diversity commission,
we have a commission for women,
a disabilities commission,
and a GLBTQA commission.
So, the purpose of this group
is to foster development
of equity and diversity
action plans in the various
departments and units.
They also research plans with
respect to their feasibility,
their cost, and their timeliness.
And through this process,
the Campus Change Team
often makes recommendations
to the Leadership Team
in terms of where they think we need to
put our focus and our resources.
They also build and maintain relationships
with the other campus
units, campus populations,
and the general community.
Now, the Unit Change
Teams, as I said earlier,
are located in our five
colleges and schools.
We also have representation from our,
we do have a school of medicine at UMD
as well as a college of pharmacy.
There's representation from student life
and other administrative units,
and then we have some
specialized components
or specialized Unit Change Teams.
We have one in American Indian
science and engineering.
Since, given where we're
located, and our population,
we have a strong American Indian focus.
And we have very strong
science engineering
and engineering programs at
UMD, so that's a key area.
We have a Social Justice Action Coalition
and the College of Education
and Human Service Professions,
and then we also have representation from
the Student Association, which is our
student government group at UMD.
So, the Unit Change Teams
identify and develop
promising practices in order to create
a welcoming and inclusive
campus at the unit level.
And again, the more we
can drive this work down
to the unit level, the more
successful we tend to be.
Now, they recommend actions to
the Campus Change Team as appropriate.
But in collaboration with
their unit leadership,
oftentimes they will take
action simply on their own,
which we encourage.
So, we don't force them up a hierarchy
in order to get things done.
So, this structure is,
it's really more bottom up
than top down, but there's
probably a better way
to describe it, it's almost like a web,
because people are connected
in different places,
and the Unit Change Teams
may make a recommendation
directly to the Leadership Team
or the Campus Change Team or vice versa.
So, in order for our
campus change work to be
really meaningful and to be lasting,
we felt we needed a structure like this
to facilitate difficult conversations,
to initiate changes that
make a positive difference,
and to hold each other accountable,
because one thing that
happens when you step out
with work like this is
that people expect results,
as they should, and they
want to and they should,
hold you accountable for your actions.
Now, another process that
occurred during my first year
at UMD was the development
of a new strategic plan
for our campus, so during
the 2010-2011 academic year,
we conducted a year long
systematic planning process
to clarify our mission, to
identify a campus vision,
core values, and goals.
So, this new plan was a
product of an inclusive
and collaborative process
involving the entire campus
as well as the Duluth
community and business leaders.
Through this process, we
developed six major goals
that have helped focus our
efforts on key priorities
over the past few years.
Now, you've already heard
reference to goal two,
and this is goal two, as a
way to renew our commitment
to equity and diversity,
to put a high priority
on creating an environment that
is welcoming and respectful.
So, goal two says, create
a positive and inclusive
campus climate for all
by advancing equity,
diversity, and social justice,
and I do read that one to you
because this has become
sort of the bedrock
of our diversity work.
And since it is now a strategic
goal for the institution,
it's another way to hold us accountable,
it's another way to put the diversity work
in the forefront of what we're about.
Goal two has eight or nine
action steps underneath it,
as ways to really get
into the nitty-gritty
of what needs to happen on campus.
Action steps deal with things
like increasing the numbers
of underrepresented
students, faculty, and staff,
it includes establishing definitions
of equity, diversity, and social justice,
which we have now done.
It also includes things like increasing
the intercultural competencies
of our faculty, staff,
and students, so we put a lot
of focus on training at UMD.
Another thing that's an action step here,
underneath this goal, is
that campus leadership
in the evaluations of campus
leaders on a yearly basis,
they have to speak to the ways in which
they address goal two in their work.
So, we started with my leadership team,
and so each year during
the annual reviews,
one of the questions
they have to answer is,
what have you done to
help advance goal two?
Well, now, we have that spread
throughout the institution,
so all staff members now
at UMD have this question
on their annual review,
because it's a way we felt,
again, to hold people accountable,
and make sure we were not
just paying lip service to this work.
So, what's been the
result of all this so far?
Well, many of the goal two
action steps have been completed
or are in progress.
And indeed, our numbers of
students and faculty and staff
of color are increasing,
although they're still relatively small.
Over the past five
years, students of color
have increased from 7.1
percent of the total population
to 10.4 percent, and then we
have another about 3 percent
of international students,
faculty of color have increased
from 12.5 to 14.5, and staff of color
have increased from approximately
4 percent to 7 percent.
So, still small numbers,
but we're trending
in the right direction
and we'll continue to
make this a high priority.
So, what else have we done?
The conversations on campus,
the challenging conversations,
the courageous conversations on campus,
have increased markedly, and
part of what this work has done
is it has allowed us to
delve into these issues
in much more meaningful ways.
But we realize that
creating an inclusive campus
is an ongoing process, and
we continue to be committed
to helping the campus heal
from disappointing actions.
While at the same time,
not letting setbacks
overshadow all the many accomplishments.
Because we continue to
have incidents that occur,
in spite of our best efforts.
But now, at least, we're better positioned
to address them, to deal with
them, and to move forward.
But there has been progress,
and actually, as a result
of our accomplishments,
we were proud to receive
the University of Minnesota Unit Award
for Outstanding Achievement
in Equity and Diversity.
So, I'm gonna pause for a second,
so that you don't have to
just listen to me talk.
I'm gonna show you a
video that was created
when we won this award,
and you'll be able to see
some of our people on
campus speak about diversity
and the work that we're doing.
All I have to do is get the video started.
- [Voiceover] The
following is a production
of the University of Minnesota.
The Outstanding Unit Award
honors transformational
equity and diversity work
by a University of Minnesota
campus, college, department, or unit.
(upbeat music)
- [Voiceover] We are very
honored to receive this award.
It's a recognition of our
collective campus commitment
to improve the campus climate,
an initiative we call Campus Change.
It was very important that the outcomes of
the Campus Change initiative align with
the comprehensive strategic plan.
We didn't want to have one
set of campus change outcomes
outside the main campus
priorities and recommendations.
Our success in creating an
inclusive campus environment
depends on the commitment
and engagement of each of us
from the grassroots to the
institutional leadership level,
as the re-imagining
diversity statement says,
we must all lead from where we are.
- [Voiceover] Everybody needs to ask,
what do I think first, and
put their own ideas out there
because if it's just always
coming to a few people,
our answers remain limited
and we might not find
that critical answer we're
really seeking to find.
- [Voiceover] The work of
diversity and equity never ends.
We have new students
coming in, new faculty.
We do have a responsibility
to prepare students
to live and work in diverse communities.
One of my responsibilities is to work with
the student organizations.
It is critical that we
engage students perspectives
and voices, hear their concerns
and ideas as we continue
to move forward improving
the campus climate.
The students gave us many recommendations
on how to improve the campus climate.
It is important that we honor
and value their experiences,
but at the same time, as an institution,
we have a responsibility to
improve the campus climate.
- [Voiceover] I'm a part of a
lot of different organizations
here on campus that work with diversity
and making the campus more inclusive.
- [Voiceover] I grew up as
an openly gay individual,
and I was treated unfairly
and unjust for a long time,
and I wanna make sure
that students here at UMD
are not treated that way.
- [Voiceover] I would like the university
to stand behind its mission
of making this campus
more inclusive for all
staff, faculty, and students.
- [Voiceover] Something needs to be done,
so we get community support,
and really further ourselves
in becoming a multicultural organization.
- [Voiceover] The Diversity Commission,
for the last two years, has
been working on an initiative
to integrate equity,
diversity, and social justice
throughout the curriculum campus-wide.
A big part of that
effort has been creating
a resource site for
faculty and staff to use
in their curricular and
cocurricular offerings,
on how can I not only
integrate diverse perspectives
into my content area, but also how can I,
from a process perspective,
reach a diverse student learner.
- [Voiceover] Our intended outcome
is cultural self-awareness
for faculty, staff,
students, and administrators,
so that they can become
interculturally effective.
- [Voiceover] One of the
things that we've tried to do
is really understand what
these big words mean,
you know, what does it mean
to be a diverse campus,
what does it mean to have
diverse practice in a classroom,
what does it mean to have a diverse body
of students and faculty here?
- [ Dr. Black] Memphis,
Tennessee is my hometown.
I was in high school during the 1960's,
and remember very clearly the night
that Dr. King was
killed, and the aftermath
of the civil rights movement.
This has shaped me quite profoundly
and has certainly influenced
my feelings and my commitment
to equity and diversity.
In terms of challenges,
we are well aware that,
unfortunately, many of our
students face difficulties
on a day-to-day basis in
areas of equity and diversity.
We're also well aware that
this is difficult work
that is oftentimes messy,
oftentimes takes many years
to address, and that unfortunately,
not everyone is supportive
of this valuable work.
Here at the University
of Minnesota Duluth,
we are truly honored to receive
this equity and diversity award.
At the same time, we are well aware
that there is much work to be done.
Okay, so that gives you a
little more sense of who we are
and some of the things that we're doing.
Just want to highlight a few of the other
initiatives we've had related to this,
and then I'll open it up
to questions or discussion.
One of the things we did fairly early on
was to develop a Climate Response Team
because what we were finding was that
when things happen on campus,
when there's a racial incident
where there's something
that is detrimental
to the kind of campus climate we want,
oftentimes we're too slow in responding,
and so we now have a team of five people
that, as soon as something occurs,
they're on it, and this includes
people from Student Life,
from academics, from external affairs,
from the police department.
And they are now able
to respond very quickly.
They also regularly review and analyze
how incidents were handled,
and provide recommendations
on future improvements.
We've also established a number
of campus climate
assessments, both surveys
as well as focus groups,
and as I mentioned earlier,
we find that the focus
groups with students
are sometimes the richer way
to assess how we're doing.
We also are part of the
University of Minnesota
Diversity Predoctoral Fellows Program,
which has helped in the
diversification of our faculty.
This program takes individuals
from underrepresented groups
who are working on their dissertations,
they're in the final
stages of their doctorates,
we bring them to campus,
we have them teach,
we have them continue
their research at UMD,
and then after they finish
their dissertations,
we're hoping they'll stay with us,
and we've had a couple stay with us,
but even those who don't stay,
it's a way to immediately
diversify the faculty,
because you're bringing
people in right away
that work with our students
and diversify the faculty.
We create a faculty fellow
for intercultural initiatives,
and this is a faculty member
who's on a reassignment
in my office, it's a
cabinet level position
to help us facilitate the
campus climate initiatives.
This person is also leading
an intercultural leadership
development training
program, an ILD program,
that's now been offered to eight cohorts
and over 140 faculty,
staff, and administrators.
We have a number of new
academic majors and minors
that focus on diversity,
and we have a new major
in cultural entrepreneurship.
We have now both bachelor
and master's degrees
in Tribal Administration and Governance.
We work these out in collaborations
with the American Indian
tribes in our area
but also in the Dakotas.
This is the only program
like it in the country,
so we have people coming
to us from Oklahoma,
Arizona, to pursue this work.
We have an Ojibwe elementary
school education program.
Ojibwe is the native language
of the American Indians
from our area, and our newest program
is a minor in GLBTQ studies.
So, those are some of the
things we've done academically.
We've taken some actions,
also, around the campus
to improve the climate.
We now have gender-neutral bathrooms
mandated in all of our new buildings
and we're renovating the buildings we have
and we have a new program
that starts this fall
in gender-inclusive housing.
So, we're proud of the
progress we're making
but fully realize the
challenges we have to face,
and as I share this with you this morning,
I did not share it from
a standpoint of claiming
to be the expert, I'm just a chancellor
who's been involved in
this work for a long time.
It's important to me, I think
we've done some good things,
we've also made some mistakes,
so I don't present it to
you as the ideal model.
But I think it is a good model for us
and if in some ways it can help
you develop your own model,
then perhaps we'll be successful.
But, you know, as I think about
the challenges that we face
and the setbacks that we've
had from time to time,
I'm reminded of what Dr. King
said about the difficulties
of achieving racial equality and freedom.
When he spoke to the Dexter
Avenue Baptist Church
in Montgomery, Alabama,
on April the 7th, 1957.
Dr. King, in this speech, uses
a Judeo-Christian metaphor
that has universal applications,
and I think also applies
to the diversity work
we're discussing today.
In that speech, Dr. King was
talking about freedom in Ghana
when he said, "Freedom never comes easy.
"It comes through hard work,
and it comes through toil.
"It comes through hours of
despair and disappointment."
Dr. King goes on to say, "There
is no crown without a cross.
"I wish we could get to Easter
without going to Good Friday,
"but history tells us we
gotta go by Good Friday
"before we can get to Easter.
"That is the long story
of freedom, isn't it?"
He says, "Before you get to Canaan,
"you've got a Red Sea to confront.
"You have a hardened heart
of a Pharaoh to confront.
"You have the prodigious hilltops of evil
"in the wilderness to confront,
"and even when you get
to the Promised Land,
"you have giants in the land."
Dr. King then said, "Even
though the giants are there,
"we can possess the
land, because we've got
"the internal fiber to
stand up amid anything
"we have to face."
So, today as we focus on
how we can make diversity
really matter, I encourage us
all to use our internal fiber
to combat challenges to
our goals and aspirations,
to find what binds us
together and not be deterred
by our differences, and to
work in concert together
to rid our campuses and our communities
of actions that threaten
the inclusive, welcoming,
and safe environments
that everyone deserves.
Thank you.
(audience applauding)
