Wright, who graduated with a bachelor's in English from UVM and teaches 12^th grade English and AP Literature, was one of 40 teachers and counselors nominated by principals across Philadelphia and was given the award at the Top of the Class Ceremony in Philadelphia, along with three other teachers. His creation of the Mastery Catamount Scholarship allows for up to five Mastery Charter School students to attend UVM on grants, scholarships and work study with student loan responsibility not exceeding $5,500 per year. Two students will enter UVM in the fall on the scholarships.

The idea for the scholarship started with a call by Wright to the UVM Admissions Office to inquire about Discovering UVM, a program assisting high school seniors from underrepresented groups with their college search by exploring academic and extracurricular offerings at UVM during a two-day immersion program. Wright worked with Deborah Gale, associate director of diversity and international admissions, to initiate the relationship between UVM and Mastery Charter, and credits Alan Tinkler, assistant professor in education and social services; Ellen Baker, director of teacher education; Beth Wiser, director of admissions; Chris Lucier, vice president for enrollment management; and senior admissions counselor Max Tracy for guiding him through the process of implementing the innovative scholarship program.

“While I was of course honored, the recognition would be incomplete without passing it along to those at UVM who were absolutely essential to the creation of this partnership,” said Wright. “I am certain that we all found ourselves in the world of education because we all in some way wanted to help children, improve our communities, and be a part of social change. Most educators never get a chance to see the impact they’ve made, but we, through our work together, have and will continue to change the lives of these young people from West Philadelphia.”

This event is cosponsored by the Israel on Campus Coalition, the Avi Chai Foundation, Stand With Us, AEpi Fraternity and Vermont Students for Israel.

Information: jay@uvmhillel.org, (802) 318-5139.

“Some of the diseases you have a name for – we don’t have a name for back home,” she said. “I have to explain the effects.”

Kasim, who is originally from Somalia, shared her story and talked about medical interpretation with first-year medical students at the University of Vermont College of Medicine in their Professionalism, Communication and Reflection (PCR) course. PCR is part of the College of Medicine’s Vermont Integrated Curriculum.  Nine interpreters from the Burlington area met with students in February, discussing everything from translating in the labor and delivery room to the nuances of interpretation over the phone. Hailing from countries including Somalia, Burundi, Bhutan, Burma, Congo, and Iraq, the group also shared some of their own stories as refugees from conflict-ridden areas of the world.

This is the second year medical interpreters have visited the PCR course, said Lee Rosen, Ph.D., PCR course director and assistant professor of psychiatry. During the 33-week course student build connections with their peers and reflect on their experience in medical school. When the interpreters visit, he said he sees students think about medicine in ways that goes beyond what they’re learning in labs and lectures. The interpreters have often overcome great odds to be where they are, and bearing witness to their stories can be a meaningful reminder of the responsibility inherent in being a physician. Students write reflections about what they learned from the interpreters, he said, and have a discussion in their small groups.

Kasim came to the United States in 2004. Born in Somalia, her family moved to Tanzania to escape civil war when she was three years-old.  At 13, her family fled to a refugee camp in Kenya. She spent three years there before coming to Rochester, N.Y., with her husband. About two years later she relocated again to Vermont to meet her parents and several siblings, who were able to leave Kenya and settle in Burlington.

For her family and for many others, the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program (VRRP) helped ease the transition to a new culture. The program, which is a field office of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, supports refugees as they find housing and jobs, enroll children in schools, and acclimate to life in the U.S. The program also administers the interpretation service, coordinating interpreter trainings in medical and legal settings, in addition to other areas. The VRRP has interpreters on staff for more than 25 languages.

There are many nuances to the process of interpreting, especially in a doctor’s office or hospital where patients may not be familiar with the interaction. Professional interpreters know how to make sure both parties are heard and understood.

“All of the interpreters are trained to sit beside the patient,” Kasim told the group of medical students she met with. This facilitates eye contact between the physician and the patient, helping to empower the patient and make them feel in control.

Cultural differences also play into how the interpreter communicates. Aline Niyonzima, from Burundi, said HIV/AIDS came up in her group as a particularly difficult disease to discuss given the stigma attached to it in some countries.

“When they are here they don’t want people to know about [their diagnosis] and they don’t want the interpreter to know,” she said in a discussion with fellow interpreters. Negotiating this dilemma requires diplomacy and patience as the relationship between the physician, interpreter and patient develops.

In some cases, especially for chronic conditions, a doctor may call the same interpreter back for multiple visits. Treating mental health issues in particular often benefits from one interpreter staying with a patient over time, said Sita Luitel, an interpreter from Bhutan. This is in part because patients, too, come to trust an interpreter and develop a rapport.

Bijoux Bahati, an interpreter who came to the U.S. from the Democratic Republic of Congo eight years ago, talked to her group about her journey to the U.S. She arrived knowing no English, and recently started working as an on-call interpreter. For her, the work allows her to stay connected to fellow refugees, and her own language. In many ways she sees her role as “interpreting culture” while she’s facilitating a conversation between doctor and patient.

“It’s not just passing on the words,” she said. “It’s building community.”

The conversations with interpreters left an impression on first-year medical students.

“The biggest lesson that I took from this meeting was that remaining non-judgmental and keeping the lines of communication open with your patients is probably the most valuable skill of a clinician,” said Shane Greene ’16. “Although it helps to be aware of common practices within, for example, the Somali community, every patient is different and much can be learned by trying to determine the cultural context that helps them understand their symptoms.”

For Nick Monte ’16, the experience opened his eyes “to the realization that our interpreters serve an essential role that extends far beyond their translation skills.”

“[They] are fundamental in helping to bridge the cultural and social gaps that are vital to providing comprehensive care that meets all of our patients’ needs,” he said. “This experience is one that I will carry with me throughout my career, and one that I am certain will enhance my ability to care for my future patients.”

This year’s Blackboard Jungle, with the theme “Beyond Categories: Reaching Our Common Ground,” is designed for UVM faculty and staff – and interested outside educators – wanting to better understand identity development and expand their multicultural competency skills to shape conversations in the classroom as well as foster civility and inclusive behaviors in their work environments.

The daylong symposium on Friday, March 29 in the Davis Center will feature numerous workshops and panels with a luncheon keynote by provocative speaker Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, professor and chair of sociology at Duke University and author of Racism without Racists. Bonilla-Silva will speak on what he terms “the new racism” in his talk “The Sweet Enchantment of Post-Civil Rights Racism: America’s Racial Nightmare from the 1970s until the Obama Moment.”

Registration and a fee are required for the symposium: $20 for UVM employees and $30 for all others. Get more information, see a full event schedule and register.

Rebecca Walker was named one of the most influential leaders of her generation by Time magazine, engaging in the global conversation about identity, power and the evolution of the human family through her books lectures, blogs and contributions to both popular media and literary and academic journals. In addition to her memoirs, she is editor of the groundbreaking anthologies To Be Real, What Makes a Man, One Big Happy Family and Black Cool. Walker is currently developing several film and television projects and her new novel, Adé, will be published by Amazon’s New Harvest imprint later this year.

By all accounts a brilliant student, Ebalu says she came to UVM unprepared for the transition to college. "My freshman year I didn't have many resources," she says. "But I met some great people who helped and guided me."

Ebalu was born in the U.S. of Nigerian parents who took her and her four siblings back to their homeland when she was two, before they became acculturated as Americans. “I’m really glad they did,” she says, “because I got to experience the beauty of Nigeria and the glory of being an African.”

At 12, after losing a sister from sudden illness who was just a month away from starting medical school in America, Ebalu’s father brought the remaining children back “to fulfill our dreams because life doesn’t go according to plan.” Despite difficult circumstances in New York City, her mother behind in Nigeria, Ebalu says it was in high school that she came to love psychology (her major) and German (her minor, which took her to Austria for a semester abroad).

Time for Africa                                                                                                                     

As she settled into UVM, becoming heavily involved with the ALANA and Women’s centers, Ebalu was walking through Dewey Hall when she passed Karen Fondacaro’s open door, caught a glance of a clock in the shape of Africa and stopped short. Fondacaro, clinical professor of psychology and director of the Behavior Therapy and Psychotherapy Center (BTPC), invited her in. “She started looking around,” Fondacaro recalls, “and she said, “’I feel like I’m home, what do you do?’ And we just had this immediate connection to each other. That was it.”

Fondecaro explained that the clock and other African influences were related to her work directing Connecting Cultures through BTPC, a program providing mental health services to refugees. Ebalu was in from that moment, pouring herself into projects in the New American community through academics and personal service, all the while solidifying a focus for her long-term career goals in clinical psychology.

From her first year Ebalu became aware of the McNair Scholar program, designed to help advance first-generation, limited-income and/or underrepresented undergraduates who are academically competitive and have the intention of earning a doctoral degree. She prepared herself early she says, knowing the opportunity would serve her well. Named a McNair research fellow in 2012, Ebalu, under Fondacaro’s guidance, chose to study the relationship between post-migration stressors such as unemployment, lack of social support, language and education barriers and their impact on mental health outcomes in refugee populations (she had noticed that the research tended to focus on prior trauma).

If statistical analysis tends to be the least engaging task for most scientists, it wasn’t for Ebalu, hungry to expand her knowledge. “I just think of her,” Fondacaro recalls, “smiling through her multiple linear regressions. She was so excited to learn the statistical procedure. It was wonderful."

Gratitude in action

Despite Ebalu's intellectual strength, it's not what makes people effusive. “Her mind is constantly going but really and truly,” says Candace Taylor, coordinator of programming and leadership development at the university’s Women’s Center, “what I connect most with Tracie is this guiding moral compass, this heart... She is constantly thinking about how she can give back, I think it really is the lens through which she walks this world.”

One of Ebalu’s big personal initiatives this year was spearheading a coat drive for the refugee community -- a project Burton (through a connection with Taylor’s husband) enthusiastically supported -- collecting some 500 coats and other winter wear. Ebalu is a fan of the phrase, “pay it forward.” Because she knows.

It was Taylor, Ebalu will tell you, who gave her a coat when she needed one. But ask Taylor about it, and she tells you that Ebalu turned around and gave it to her little sister. “That’s Tracie,” she laughs. “She will hear that somebody needs something, and she will literally take it off of her own back.”

“The reason she did the coat drive,” says Beverly Colston, director of the ALANA center, is because she knows what it’s like for a family to not have coats. How do you function when you’re cold? Tracie is committed to making sure that it will be better for people than it was for her.”

The success of this effort in a sense represents the culmination of Ebalu’s growth at UVM. According to Colston, Ebalu has always sought out leadership roles, even ones that may have been a bit beyond her at the time. “But the truth is,” Colston says, “she just soaked up those experiences and used them to get wise and go to the next level.”

Now Colston calls her a community connector, an activist who is passionate about issues that face women of color, a leader who uses her voice to speak up, educate others and bring them in.

Quirky, authentic, almost uncensored are among the descriptions of Ebalu that make her real. At times, they say, exuberant to a fault.

“She’s so compassionate and she cares so deeply,” Taylor says, “to the extent where you have to reel her in a little bit and say it’s okay for her to take care of herself too. But she’s got a big vision, big dreams and I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who has that energy that you know they’re going to accomplish it.”

Ebalu, too, has no doubt what she’ll do. For herself, for her mother, maybe for her older sister.

“I tell (my mom) I’m really certain I’m going to get a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and one day my name is going to be Dr. Tracie Ebalu.”

He was at UVM for the second occasion that paid homage to the civil rights movement and the work of great African Americans. In 2007, when he received one of those honorary degrees, he met commencement speaker Georgia Congressman John Lewis, one of King’s “lieutenants” who had been a hero of Gates’ since he was a teenager. “It was a bit like being in a time machine and watching our greatest generation in the race come alive on that stage here at the University of Vermont,” he said. “It was a magical, truly inspirational and transformative day.”

In his own speech, following a historic day in which the first black president was inaugurated on the country’s only holiday honoring an African American historical figure, Gates called it a “combination of identity politics unimaginable not only in 1968 but even a few years ago. If Dr. King miraculously came back for a visit he’d die all over again.”

But Gates was quick to question how revolutionary the change has been, citing a host of grim statistics including the fact that nearly half of black children who begin kindergarten do not graduate from high school and that the percentage of black children living beneath the poverty line was 34.9 percent in 2010 compared to 36 percent in 1969, the year after King died. And he notes a rift that he says was entirely unforeseen -- a division between middle class blacks and those living in poverty, two nations, he says, within the African American community itself.

Tangled roots

The stats quickly segued into more storytelling as Gates launched into his passion for genealogy, an interest born at an early age when his family buried his very white-looking grandfather, father to Gates’ white-looking, soft-haired father who, following the service, took then 9-year-old Gates and his brother into his grandfather’s home and dug up a picture of their great-grandmother, a slave, whose dignified picture he projected on screen. She had five children, all of whom, Gates said, “looked white… You don’t need a degree in genetics to figure out who fathered (them), right?” His father also showed them her obituary from 1888, which read, “…died this day in Cumberland, Jane Gates, an estimable colored woman.”

“The last thing I did before I went to sleep was I looked up the word 'estimable,' because I didn’t know what it meant, and I thought, ‘Wow, she was a very special lady, and maybe that means that I’m special too.’” Gates doesn’t make the connection directly, but it’s a feeling, before Yale and Cambridge and Harvard and all the awards, that may have prompted his middle-of-the-night inspiration for a new curriculum project that he first announced in the talk at UVM.

After taking the audience through the tales that led to his widely popular PBS documentaries, using modern genomic science to trace the early ancestors of celebrities from Oprah Winfrey to Quincy Jones to Tina Turner, he discussed a just-completed curriculum funded by the National Science Foundation to make a stab at addressing the crisis of class he had discussed within the African American community. After seeing deeply emotional reactions from superstars, Gates said, “how transformative could it be to an inner-city child who has no healthy sense of identity?”

He explains, “No matter how dark the African American, no genealogy company has ever tested an African American who is 100 percent African. (Comedian) Chris Rock, who was in my last series, is 20 percent white…. if we did the DNA of all the black men in the NBA… 35 percent descend not from a black man at all, but from a white man. Just like I do.”

So the hope is to try the project out with middle school kids, help them trace their family trees as far back as slavery, where the paper trail ends and then, with parental permission, test their DNA, revealing more about their ancestry. In the course of the project, the students will learn how to interview their families, how to perform archival research by tracing their ancestors on the computer and to understand some of the science behind the genetic testing while they wait for results.

Maybe the answers could spark the same reaction as “meeting” an estimable great-grandmother suggesting to a young Gates that he might be special.

“Dr. King’s tragic assassination in April of 1968,” Gates told the audience, “manifested itself in the quest, indeed in the demand, that black people had the right to have a past, because having a past was the key to identity and identity was the key to agency, to action, taking hold of and control of one’s fate… to use this resurrected past to foster dignity and self-respect.”

Gates discovered for himself that his ancestors are essentially half Sub-Saharan African and half European. “That,” he said, “helps to illuminate the unity of the human species.”

And maybe it will help the little girl President Obama imagined in his second inauguration speech on Monday, Martin Luther King Day, who “born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else” – not just in our eyes but also in hers.

Inspiration will come this year from a keynote address by renowned Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, director of their W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. But it will also come from the campus at large, from students and from the recycling team, from Human Resources and from the individuals who will contribute to the weeklong “Share the Warmth” campaign, people who respond to an often repeated quote of King, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”

While Human Resources has used the occasion over the years to sponsor a food drive, the Department of Student Life will join them this year (always with the support of the Chief Diversity Office) in a clothing drive, asking for donations of new hats, mittens, gloves, scarves and socks, along with nonperishable edibles. Five drop-off locations (see below) make giving convenient -- and UVM’s recycling team has volunteered to collect and bring items to the Martin Luther King Lounge and later help distribute them to the Sara Holbrook Community Center, the Milton Family Community Center and the Salvation Army.

Rodman Cory, communications strategist in Human Resources, is thoughtful in considering why, as a group, HR has stayed committed to this project: “We believe that the MLK service projects are congruent with the vision and values of the university,” he says, “and we have a heart to model that vision and those values whenever possible. Developing community and bringing others on board to do the same gets at our core values as a department.”

Competitive giving

To get students charged up for the drive, Cornell Woodson, a graduate student in Higher Education and Student Affairs who has been working closely with Heading-Grant, explains that student groups, from athletic team club sports to Greek Life to SGA-sponsored clubs are being challenged to gather the most donations – which will be counted and weighed at the end of the week. The winner, Woodson says, will be awarded $250 for their group, along with playful trophies (shaped like a mitten?) for winners and runners up.

It’s an opportunity to inject a competitive spirit into the project, but SGA President Connor Daley admits he was a little surprised by the incentive. “The undergraduates I know,” he says, “have such a strong and passionate history of public service and engagement I think most students will get involved because it’s what they do. It’s a chance to reach out – it’s really powerful.”

These are words to make all of those at UVM who work to foster King’s spirit here know they are doing a lot of things right.

As Heading-Grant relates one of her favorite quotes from King, “Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve…. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

Martin Luther King Celebration, Education and Learning Week Schedule

• “Share the Warmth” campaign, Monday, Jan. 21 to Friday, Jan. 25. Donations may be dropped off throughout the week at the Davis Center Atrium, Given/Rowell Brickyard, Waterman Building (College St. entrance), Patrick Gym lobby and the Fireplace Lounge area in the Living/Learning Center.

• Henry Louis Gates, Jr. keynote speech, Tuesday, Jan. 22, 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Ira Allen Chapel. Free and open to the public, though tickets are required and available as follows: Starting Monday, Jan. 14, tickets will be offered to UVM students, faculty and staff (one per UVM ID); starting Friday, Jan. 18, tickets are open to the general public (one per person). Tickets will be available at the Davis Center, 3rd floor information desk; Patrick Gym, athletics ticket office (top level lobby); and Waterman Building, Registrar’s office 3rd floor student services kiosk. (Please note that the athletics and Waterman locations will be closed Monday, Jan. 21.)

• Commemorative ceremony, “Voices of Many: Our Community,” featuring Rev. James Forbes, senior minister emeritus of the Riverside Church in New York City and president of the Healing of the Nations Foundation, and a special performance by the SUNY Plattsburgh Gospel Choir, Thursday, Jan. 24, 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Ira Allen Chapel. Free and open to the pubic.

• In partnership with the Flynn, performance by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Friday, Feb. 1, 8 p.m. at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are $10 per person with UVM ID (one discounted ticket per student and two discounted tickets per faculty/staff member) at the FlynnTix regional box office lobby window at 153 Main St. in Burlington. Tickets for those outside of the UVM community are $15 to $42.

Tickets will be available at the following locations: Davis Center, 3rd floor information desk; Patrick Gym, athletics ticket office (top level lobby); and Waterman Building, Registrar’s office student services kiosk (3rd floor). Please note that the athletics and Waterman locations will be closed Monday, Jan. 21.

Gates is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is also editor-in-chief of the Oxford African American Studies Center, the first comprehensive scholarly online resource in the field and he is, most recently, the author of Finding Oprah’s Roots, Finding Your Own, a meditation on genetics, genealogy and race. Gates also wrote and produced several documentaries for PBS and the BBC including African American Lives and America Beyond the Color Line. In addition to his many other accomplishments and publications Gates serves on the boards of the New York Public Library, the Whitney Museum, the Lincoln Center Theater, the Aspen Institute, the Brookings Institution and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

The event is sponsored by the Office of the President, Department of Student Life and the Chief Diversity Office.

2012 scholarship winners:

• Katie Bedard, recipient of a Native American Scholarship, is currently a student at the University of Vermont majoring in biology with a minor in chemistry.
• Tazney Ryea, recipient of a Native American Scholarship, graduated from Missisquoi Valley Union High School in 2012 and began a nursing degree at UVM.
• Alex Ferno, a recipient of a First‐Generation Scholarship, graduated in May 2012 from Union‐32 High School in Montpelier, VT. Alex is attending UVM where he was accepted early‐action into the Mechanical Engineering school with a minor in computer science.

Applications for the 2013 scholarships are now being accepted. The deadline for applications is April 1, 2013. For more information, visit  http://www.uvm.edu/~epscor/new02/?q=node/134.

“Burlington has changed a lot since 1976, but with the help of local agencies and UVM’s early childhood program we’ve been able to adapt to the changing needs of our children and families,” says Danielczyk, director of Trinity Children’s Center (TCC) for more than 25 years. "This is a unique place because we integrate children with special needs with children from refugee families, homeless children, and children of UVM faculty and staff. It's a pretty special place."

The growing diversity of TCC, a non-profit early childhood facility located on UVM’s Trinity Campus, has created an ideal learning lab for students in UVM’s Early Childhood Special Education Program. By the time students graduate they will have interacted with professionals from a wide range of local agenices including Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS), Head Start, and the Burlington School District’s Essential Early Education Program. Other local agencies that collaborate with TCC include the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program; Association for Africans Living in Vermont; Visiting Nurses Association; Easter Seals; and the Department of Children and Families/State Services.

The 37-year relationship between Trinity and the Burlington’s Essential Early Education Program, located in the same building, is especially beneficial because it allows students to observe how the school district identifies children with significant developmental challenges and administers family-centered early childhood special education services. TCC has 15 children on individualized education programs (IEPs) who are integrated into a diverse overall student population of 70 children, including at least three children with special needs in each classroom.

Grant to pay tuition of seniors in Early Childhood Special Education Program

Jennifer Hurley, assistant professor of education and program coordinator for the Early Shildhood Special Education Program, recently landed a $1.25 million grant from Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs that will be used to pay for the tuition for seniors in the program who are interning at TCC. Susan Ryan, director of the Center on Disability and Community Inclusion, was also an author on the grant.

“There’s no way we would have gotten this grant without the strong relationship we have with Trinity Children’s Center and the agencies they work with,” says Hurley, adding that TCC earned the rare National Association for the Education of Young Children accreditation and was awarded the highest possible five-star rating by the State of Vermont. “It’s an ideal setting to prepare scholars to work with all of Vermont’s children, including children with disabilities experiencing the additional challenges of being English language learners, and experiencing poverty or homelessness. Many of the teachers at TCC are graduates of the program and come in well prepared.”

In her application, Hurley outlined plans for preparing students to meet the needs of children with disabilities and the shockingly high number of homeless children. “Families with young children are one of the most rapidly increasing groups with homelessness nationwide,” Hurley says. “Nearly one-quarter of all homeless people are under the age of six, so there's a real need for intentional collaboration between agencies that provide services for families experiencing homelessness, including Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Ed agencies. Scholars in teacher preparation programs must be made aware of the need for research-based methods for serving homeless families and children with disabilities and have pre-service experiences in family shelters.”

Rita Markley, executive director of COTS, the largest organization for the homeless in Vermont, explains in her letter of support for the grant application that the number of Vermont children under the age of five living in emergency shelters and overflow motels has tripled since 2008.

“We have tried to cobble together educational and enrichment programs but have no real expertise in this field,” writes Markley, who is working with Hurley to plan a practicum experience that will benefit UVM students and children with disabilities in area shelters. “There is a dire need in our community for early childhood educators who have appropriate training and preparation to work with families and children who are homeless. We are thrilled to be forming a partnership with the Early Childhood Special Education Program at UVM.”

Paying back loans by helping children in need

Over the last decade the demand for early childhood special education teachers has increased from about 13,000 to more than 27,000, while the number of graduates in such programs remains inadequate to satisfy the needs of the approximately 299,848 infants and toddlers receiving early intervention services, according to the National Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center. In an effort to bridge this gap, students receiving free tuition from the grant are required to work as an early childhood special educator for one year for every semester of tuition they receive. Students receiving one year of tuition, for example, could satisfy their service obligation to the federal government by working for two years as an early childhood special educator anywhere in the country.

Students are also required to complete the UVM course “Problems in Education,” which includes 40 hours of research on the Young Children with Special Needs Project. Students must also complete 40 hours of practicum experience at COTS by providing support at one of four family shelters in Burlington on a regular basis to play and engage in activities with young children living in the shelters.

“You can read all about teaching skills like pro-social conflict resolution and emotionally supportive conflict resolution, but until you apply it in the classroom it’s hard to see how it works in practice,” says Kate Evans, a 2012 graduate of the UVM Honors College and one of eight UVM alumni working at TCC. “By working here as an undergraduate I got a good feel for the day-to-day routine of being a teacher. It made the transition to working as a fulltime teacher much easier after graduation. I would have been well prepared for wherever I got a job.”

For information about providing scholarship support for students in the College of Education and Social Services, contact Trish Shabbaz, (802) 656-3910, trish.shabazz@uvm.edu.

Tom Sullivan, UVM president, professor of political science and legal expert

I am pessimistic that the court may change significantly or overrule the precedent that was set in Grutter v. Bollinger, a case out of the University of Michigan Law School that I believe was correctly decided, validating a long history of well settled practice. I also believe that universities, both public and private, need to have the discretion to set their own admissions goals. If we’re going to ensure the vibrancy of our society and this democracy going forward, we need to have an educational system – from the early grades through higher education – that understands the value of diversity and pluralism and has the discretion and flexibility to foster that kind of environment. Otherwise we will fail our responsibility in universities, and society will be the less for it.

There’s a presumption in Supreme Court practice that if the court takes a case from a lower court – and a large portion of its cases are discretionary – that they’re going to reverse the court below which, here, affirmed the right of the University of Texas to make admission decisions, some of which are based upon diversity and race. So if this court were satisfied with the state of the law, with Grutter v. Bollinger, and satisfied with the way the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit handled this, they wouldn’t have taken the case. Justice O’Conner, who wrote the 5-4 opinion the last time – I believe a very balanced, thoughtful opinion – is of course no longer on the court. And the newest justice, Elena Kagan, has recused herself (having been involved in the case in her former position as U.S. solicitor general), which means there are only eight justices sitting. If the justices were to tie 4-4 that automatically affirms the court below. But if there’s a majority that can come out of that eight, that could change the law of the land. I fear that this case could be going in the wrong direction.

Powerfully, when the last case came up, I think the two most important briefs in the case were not the University of Michigan or the plaintiff briefs, but rather briefs filed on behalf of the United States generals and by corporate America, signed by CEOs, that said, without question, in our sphere of hiring in corporate America or in the case of the military in foreign affairs and national security, we simply have to have diversity in hiring and promotion and education. It’s a national imperative. Those were two relatively conservative groups stepping up to a conservative Supreme Court saying, don’t change this; it will cause havoc in this country for national security reasons and for development in the workforce. Those same entities have filed briefs in this case. I hope this court will not be driven by a certain ideology held by some of the constitution that is said to be colorblind. It isn’t, it hasn’t been and we’re not ready for it to be colorblind because society hasn’t leveled the playing field for so many segments of our society. The court will do a great disservice if it now changes the laws on affirmative action. It would be very damaging for the country’s future. And I think the court will hurt itself very substantially if it reverses itself so quickly after this matter had been settled. It will look political and ideological and it will polarize this country even more than it is.

Ellen Andersen, associate professor of political science

This is one of the hardest issues and in some ways one of the most emotionally fraught issues for people of goodwill to talk about. There’s a certain class of people – Justice Scalia and Justice Alito fit into that – for whom you can’t have any policy that takes race into account. Done. End of sentence. But for the rest of us, including justices on the Supreme Court, if there continues to be some recognition that the playing field isn’t level, then saying from this non-level playing field we’re just not going to take race into account? The field never gets level. So when I talk to my students about this I analogize it to a game of Monopoly. If you start a game and one of the players already has a couple of houses, maybe a hotel, you lose the game, you will never catch up if you start from behind – at least without an amazingly lucky combination of throws. And we do see the amazing, lucky, smart people who make it through. But we continue to have waves and waves of evidence out there that says we’re not a race-blind society.

I find it so interesting when I talk with my students because they are not at all uncomfortable with the notion of using affirmative action when we talk about socio-economics. Or one of the secrets of college education right now: colleges making it easier for young men to get in than women because if we went strictly by the scoring we would have much more skewed ratios than we do. But everybody gets why a college might want to have a roughly even gender ratio. We don’t seem to have much of a problem with legacies or athletes. All of those seem acceptable to us. It’s race that makes us crazy. We are still incapable as a culture of having a thoughtful conversation about race and how it plays out in our political and social culture. Race speaks to something deep within us, a deep American anxiety. I’m not saying there’s no gender anxiety, but I’m saying that our race anxiety is even bigger – and I say that as somebody who studies sexuality and gender identity. Our dividing line is still race. So we have all of these workarounds.

The courts have known for years that affirmative action was going to have a hard time being upheld. The plain language of the 14th amendment would seem to indicate that just as you can’t write laws disfavoring people on the basis of race you can’t write laws favoring people on the basis of race either. So you get Justice O’Connor’s statement in Grutter that basically says we can’t do this for more than another 25 years. Previous courts have said we’ll do this for a little while but it’s got to be time-bounded. Even justices who want to continue with affirmative action policies recognize the somewhat tenuous legal grounding of it given the 14th amendment.

One of the things that seems to make people so angry is the notion that middle class and wealthy African Americans can benefit from affirmative action in ways that poorer whites can’t. I think that whites want to say that class trumps race, that class is the most important thing, but there also seems to me to be this kind of anger that there are middle class black people. And when we’re talking about diversity in colleges, it has to include a diverse population of African Americans and that might include African Americans who play cello. Or are on the ski team. If we’re thinking as educators here, which of course I always am, I absolutely want that spectrum. Fewer life experiences make the classroom intellectually poorer. So I can see all of the reasons why colleges want the freedom to do this.

I want to give colleges the discretion to make good student bodies and those aren’t all about who got the highest SAT scores, they’re just not. But how do we take this issue and factor it into what the law requires? I don’t know if I have any clear answers. Do I think that affirmative action policies will eventually be overruled by the court? Yes. Do I think it’s going to happen this time? As with everybody else, I’m going to tell you that it is all about Justice Kennedy, but I don’t have any great insight there. I don’t think (decisions) are just politics. It’s very clear – though ideology plays into how justices read the law – that the Supreme Court actually does spend a lot of time thinking about what the law requires of them.

And when liberty comes into conflict with equality, which one wins? Because you know what? The constitution doesn’t tell us. It just doesn’t.

Rashad Shabazz, assistant professor of geography

If we look at the push against affirmative action in the University of California system in Bakke in 1978, we saw enrollment for blacks and Latinos and also for poor working class students plummet. Potentially what we can see now is a nationalization of that trend. It’s troubling.

One of the things I find fascinating about the case is it follows a standard logic that has been used to gut affirmative action over the last three decades – entitlement. Affirmative action uses race as one among many criteria determining whether or not someone would be a good fit for a university. I think that can’t be overemphasized in cases such as this one. Ms. Fisher said that had she not been a white woman she would have been admitted to the University of Texas and they said, well, no, not necessarily, based on your record. In that exchange we see two things: one is that Ms. Fisher sees race as the only reason that certain people, particularly people of color, got into the University of Texas and she didn’t. The second is that it demonstrates the entitlement she feels – that she would have gotten into the university and she sees that position as already hers, all she had to do was apply to it. I think that logic has played out over and over again in debates around affirmative action. You hope that the Supreme Court, having heard this kind of logic over and over, would be savvy enough to identify it and push back against it. But we have a different court today.

So what we’re seeing broadly is a rehashing of decades-old discussions about why affirmative action is bad but we’re seeing it in a new context: the idea that we live in a post-racial country, we live in a country with a black president and therefore policies that address past discrimination are no longer necessary. That make this a dangerous time for affirmative action because we can see that the ascendance of Barack Obama can, ironically, help to erode the pathway that enabled him to go to Columbia, to go to Harvard, to become the president of the United States. Affirmative action was one of the mechanisms that helped create a pathway for people like him, people like myself who teach in the academy.

We’re seeing universities attempting to diversify the student body, the faculty, the staff and those efforts are positive. They’ve helped enrich institutions like ours. But at the same time, we’ve been seeing poverty and unemployment rise and so that pressure that’s being put on both communities of color and white communities is making affirmative action a more contentious issue, a flashpoint. It’s read as this archaic social policy that’s far outlived its use, and the reality is that people of color and poor people in general are in worse situations than they were two decades ago. This seems to me to be the time when we need policies that help create a pathway for people into institutions like the university to help them get jobs when they have historically been locked out. It seems like the moment for affirmative action, not the moment to erode it.

Driven by a lack of laborers on the state’s 1,007 dairy farms, Vermont’s Latino population has grown 24 times faster than the state's total population between 2000 and 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Since 2007, more than 50 percent of the milk in the 12th-largest milk producing state in the nation was harvested by the hands of Latino migrant workers, according to the Agency of Agriculture, making Vermont one of America’s new Latino destinations.

With such a dramatic demographic change come a host of new issues related to health, education, language, law enforcement and immigration, especially in the state’s two largest agricultural counties, where Latino populations increased by 73 percent and 111 percent, respectively. Dan Baker, assistant professor in Community Development and Applied Economics, has produced some of the first survey data in the nation on the health of migrant workers on dairy farms based on interviews with 120 Latino workers on 59 dairy farms that included self-assessment health status information and perceived barriers to healthcare.

The results, published in the article, "Health Status and Needs of Latino Dairy Farm Workers in Vermont," in the July 2012 issue of the Journal of Agromedicine showed that migrant workers rarely seek medical attention despite experiencing back and neck pain, dental issues, allergies, flu, rashes or skin problems, eye and vision issues, gastrointestinal problems, and psychological issues such as anxiety, depression and isolation. The top reason for not seeking medical attention was “fear of immigration/law enforcement,” followed by language barriers, lack of transportation and cost of care.

Consequently, most Latino workers wait until they return to Mexico to access medical care, according to Baker, who cites community-based initiatives involving greater education and outreach to farmers about health resources for migrants, including partnerships with colleges and universities, and the adoption of “bias-free policing” that enables foreign-born workers to travel to clinics without concern about deportation, as strategies that may reduce barriers to care.

“There were a number of surprising findings,” says Baker. “Many of the workers reported feeling healthy, but workers have been in Vermont a relatively short time, so there hasn’t been time for chronic issues to develop. There were a high percentage of people who reported feeling depression and anxiety most likely because they are so isolated on Vermont farms and far from home.”

Conducting research with impact

Baker’s most current study flows out of earlier research from 2007 focusing on language barriers between Vermont farmers and Hispanic dairy workers, resulting in the launching of the Vermont Dairy Spanish Program through the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. Farmers “made significant improvement in their ability to understand and adapt to a foreign labor force” after taking the course, writes Baker in an article in the June 2012 edition of the Journal of Extension, “In Vermont, Se Habal Espanol: Using Occupational Spanish to Help Dairy Farmers manage a Changing Workforce.” His recommendations for designing the course have been used by other governmental agencies. They include the prioritizing of phrase lists that farmers use most frequently; addressing cultural barriers to communication as well as language; emphasizing repetition and memorization; and being flexible in course design.

“It has been an evolving process of figuring out what type of useful research we can provide to help Vermont deal with an influx of Spanish workers in the state,” says Baker, who has organized two statewide roundtable discussions at UVM in February on issues related to Latino immigrants. “We’re focused on sharing our research with policy makers, health clinics and groups focused on immigrant well-being like Migrant Justice because they can make a difference in the lives of the people who need it most.”

Putting a face on the statistics

Health and safety issues on farms came to the forefront in 2009 when José Obeth Santis Cruz was killed in a Vermont farming accident. The death of Cruz played a key role in the co-founding of Burlington-based immigrant advocacy group Migrant Justice by UVM alumnus Brendan O’Neill G’05 and with major support from founding member Natalia Fajardo ’06, both of whom have worked tirelessly on behalf of Latinos living in Vermont. They’ve found Baker’s research useful, especially when trying to humanize the data.

“We try to get people to think of immigrants as more than work machines and more in terms of a shared humanity -- to value each other beyond what we can contribute to an industry,” says O’Neill. “Dan has sought to objectively identify problems. He does numbers, and we do the stories behind them. He provides helpful academic background and research data, and we’re mobilizing to change some of the outcomes. It works well together.” 

Danilo Lopez is one of the faces behind the numbers. After working on a farm in Charlotte in 2009 he started advocating on behalf of fellow migrant workers and is now in a leadership and advocacy role at Migrant Justice. Lopez, who is spearheading Migrant Justice’s driver's license campaign, says Vermont is a welcoming place that cares about its people and communities, but that because it’s very rural and white, migrant workers are often treated as outsiders and experience discrimination.

“Migrant workers are afraid to leave the farm or don’t have transportation,” says Lopez, who has been harassed by state and federal officials and had a customer at Wal-Mart call border patrol after hearing him speaking Spanish. “Migrant workers should be able to drive (legally) to the store, because right now they are working hard to produce milk that they can’t even buy at the store.”

Dairy industry would crash without migrant workers

The State of Vermont has relied on information and research from Migrant Justice and Baker, who testified before the Vermont Senate Agriculture Committee in February of 2012. In his report, “Public Policy Research: Implications for Foreign Labor Policy in Vermont,” Baker presented survey data from farmers, Latino workers, domestic workers and some of the first opinion-based information gathered from the general public.

If legislators, who are well aware that the dairy industry accounts for more than 65 percent of total state farm receipts in 2011, were concerned about passing laws that might not sit well with voters, Baker’s presentation may have put them at ease.

In short, he found that 49 percent of Vermonters view the impact of undocumented workers on Vermont communities as “generally positive” with another 32 another percent feeling “neither positive nor negative.” With just under 63 percent “strongly disagreeing” that undocumented farm workers take jobs away from Vermonters and 59 percent believing that undocumented farm workers are helping Vermont farms stay in business, it’s not surprising that 82.6 percent of Vermonters are in favor of a guest worker program that allows foreign laborers to work legally on Vermont dairy farms for up to three years.

“That’s the contradiction,” O’Neill says. “We have a community that our government is unwilling to recognize, yet the state’s economy is heavily dependent on migrant labor. Our dairy economy would completely crash if there was a sweep by border patrol or immigration.”

Zhao Chunli, who grew up with a brittle bone disease and dwarfism, was forced into hiding as a 16-year-old because officials in her ancient Chinese fishing village thought she was not fit to be seen by President Clinton during his visit to China in 1998. Unable to afford healthcare on her family’s meager fishing subsistence, Chunli suffered chronic pain and social discrimination, and was not allowed to attend school.

Despite her disability and lack of formal education, Chunli eventually gained employment at the Yangzhou Mountain Retreat Hotel, where proficiency in Mandarin, English and accounting were required. She eventually married Mo En Yao and adopted an abandoned baby girl named Monica. Chunli, whose story aired on CNN, has recently completed an educational leadership internship at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota.

Chunli and Dr. Kathy Johnson of St. Cloud State University will share information about Ginko Academy, a Center for Educational Excellence and co-sponsor of the event along with UVM's Center on Disability and Community Inclusion, and attempt to learn more about UVM’s commitment to education and services for people with disabilities. Ginko Academy receives support from President and Secretary Hillary Clinton; American entrepreneur Chris Barclay; the President’s Office of St. Cloud State University in Minnesota; Save the Children in China; the Gevirtz School of Education; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Judy Heumann, special adviser to President Obama on international disability rights.

The Board of Directors for Ginko Academy is in the process of securing partnerships with the Clinton Global Initiative, the Harvard Law School Disabilities Project, and major universities in the U.S. and China. Craig Barringer, southeastern regional educational consultant for the Vermont I-Team and CDCI, serves on the Executive Committee of the Ginko Academy.

Information: Craig Barringer, cbarring@uvm.edu, (802) 238-7874 or visit www.uvm.edu/~cdci/

The organization, which works to improve campus environments nationally, says that schools on the list have demonstrated -- in policy, program and practice -- inclusion and safety for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and ally populations. The rankings are based on a climate index compiled from comprehensive answers to surveys of LGBT students, faculty and staff.

“When I think about these accomplishments,” says Dot Brauer, director of UVM’s LGBTQA Center, “it just makes me smile. So many wonderful people at UVM have helped make all of this happen and that makes me especially proud.”

Read the story and see the full list at HuffingtonPost.com.

According to the announcement on Advocate.com, transgender people within higher education continue to be a largely invisible community, with only about ten percent of institutions having trans-inclusive nondiscrimination statements. Moreover, research shows that trans people face higher rates of harassment compared to lesbian, gay and bisexual people and are three times more likely to fear for their physical safety.

Strong leadership from a number of progressive institutions over the past decade, however, is beginning to change that pervasive climate, particularly at UVM where “one would be hard pressed to find a more trans aware campus,” the Campus Pride report says. Among the efforts that earned the university’s ranking:

• Adding “gender identity/expression” to its nondiscrimination policy seven years ago and conducting “Trans 101” training sessions

• Presenting an annual, student-run "Translating Identity Conference" that will mark its tenth anniversary this fall

• Developing management system software that enables students to use a name other than their legal first name on campus records – and offering the software solution for free to other institutions with compatible management systems

“This honor is a real testament to a community ethic that’s part of Vermont and the university,” says Dot Brauer, director of UVM’s LGBTQA Center. “It’s a core value. Once people here understand how they can improve the experience of others they get excited to make it happen. It doesn’t just come from my office. People are willing to sit down at the table and put in the effort and I think that distinguishes this from other places. I have yet to run into a situation where people are unwilling to make a change because they don’t want to be inclusive. I am very proud of UVM.”

Read the full story on Advocate.com.

This profile is part of the story "The Newest Americans" in the summer issue of Vermont Quarterly magazine. Read the full article.

The conference, sponsored by UVM’s Center on Disability and Community Inclusion and UVM Think College Program, along with Vermont APSE, an organization that provides labor solutions for businesses and employment opportunities for people with disabilities, will explore possibilities for individuals with intellectual disabilities to participate in post-secondary education and customized employment and self-employment opportunities. Topic sessions will cover currently successful programs in Vermont with comments from students and employees on panels.

Sister Janice Ryan, a pioneer in Vermont special education and recipient of an honorary doctoral degree from UVM, will be the keynote speaker. Sister Ryan developed cutting edge curriculum in the field and eventually organized support for the successful passage of pioneering legislation in 1972. She later served for 17 years as president of Trinity College, where she helped start Enhance, one of the nation's first post-secondary education programs for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She also worked on projects to ban land mines and eliminate the death penalty, lobbied for mainstreaming special needs children and served as Vermont’s deputy commissioner of corrections.

Online registration closes at midnight on May 6, with regular registration continuing at the conference. Learn more and register on the conference website.

Monday, April 9
Lose Yourself in India – Music and Film (Cultural Anthropology Perspective) Livak Ballroom, Davis Center. 6:30 p.m.

Tuesday, April 10
Oral Tradition of Learning Music in India (Historical and Religious Perspectives)
John Dewey Lounge, Old Mill. 4 p.m.

Wednesday, April 11
Hand Drumming in India (A Linguistic Perspective)
206 Southwick Hall. 3 p.m.

Thursday, April 12
Beatles Discover India – Rise of AR Rahman
Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building. 6 p.m.

Friday, April 13
Evolution of Indian Cinema and Bollywood (South Asian Perspective)
Livak Ballroom, Davis Center. 3 p.m.

The goal of the University of Vermont James Marsh Professors-at-Large Program is to bring to the University outstanding individuals of international distinction in the arts and humanities, sciences, social sciences, and applied fields. Professors-at-Large are non-resident faculty with six-year terms of office who come to the campus three or four times during that period, each time for residencies of one to two weeks.

To request accommodations such as seating, interpreting, etc. for these events, contact conferences@uvm.edu, (802) 656-5665.

Information: (802) 656-3186 www. uvm.edu/president/marsh

The University of Vermont will host a conference on Saturday, March 31 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Waterman Building designed to explore issues raised by the growing empowerment of women. The conference is titled “The New Feminist Agenda: The Next Revolution for Women, Work and Family; Balancing a Career and Family.” Registration is required, and a $10 donation is suggested. To register, visit the conference’s website.

 “The issue of how to combine a family and a career remains one of the major challenges for working families,” said former Vermont Gov. Madeleine Kunin, a visiting professor in UVM’s James Marsh Professor-at-Large program and the conference’s sponsor.

“Eighty percent of families are two-wage earning families, many of whom are in middle and lower income brackets. All families need affordable, quality child care, flexible work schedules and sensible family leave policies. We need to face these issues squarely as a society, because they affect a family’s earning power and wellbeing, especially that of their children.”

The conference will address several broad themes, via keynote speakers, concurrent panel discussions and a culminating roundtable discussion: how to increase access to quality, affordable childcare; what we can learn from other countries; what government can do to help accommodate the needs of working families; and what the private sector can do.

Conference presenters include a mix of nationally known speakers, UVM scholars who specialize in family and children’s issues, Vermont community and state social service providers, state business leaders, and Vermont politicians and policy-makers. 

Blades and Kunin, Wall to Keynote

The morning will be highlighted by a keynote conversation between Kunin and Joan Blades, co-founder of the website MoveOn.org and of the organization MomsRising, a networked community with over one million members dedicated to bringing important motherhood and family issues to the forefront of the country's awareness. 

“MomsRising is the newest and most prominent in a loose coalition of (feminist and family-oriented) advocacy groups … that are sharing information, joining together at rallies and signing one another’s petitions,” writes the New York Times. The site frames “its concerns as family and economic issues, which resonate for a younger generation of women,” the Times continues.

Kunin was governor of Vermont from 1985 to 1991. She served as deputy secretary of education and ambassador to Switzerland in the Clinton administration. She is founder of the Institute for Sustainable Communities, a non-governmental organization that focuses on global climate change and civil society.    

Kunin has also written a new book with the same title as the conference. The book, published by Vermont-based Chelsea Green Publishing, has received advance praise from Ellen Malcolm, the founder of EMILY’s List, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and President Bill Clinton. It will be available to pre-order at the conference.

The lunch keynote will be delivered by Jim Wall, former human resources director and chief diversity officer at Deloitte. During Wall’s tenure, Deloitte was ranked one of the “100 Best Companies to Work for in America” by Fortune magazine for seven years and one of the “100 Best Companies for Working Mothers” by Working Mother magazine for ten consecutive years. His insights on human resources issues have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Fortune and other publications. In 2002, Human Resources Executive magazine named him its Human Resources Executive of the Year.  

The event is open to the community. For more information, call (802) 656-5665.

Oliver C. Cox, Charles S. Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier, the individuals for whom the award is named, were African Americans who put their scholarship in the service of social justice with an eye toward advancing the status of disadvantaged populations, broadening the views of society and improving global conditions.

In recognition of their lifetime efforts, the ASA annually names an individual or institution that has performed outstanding work to forward human rights and social justice issues with an emphasis on African Americans or populations who have experienced similar historical racial discrimination.

In his lifelong commitment to racial justice, Loewen has brought his rigorous work as a scholar into the public sphere where he has made a broad and powerful impact. His work dates back to 1963 when, as an undergraduate at Mississippi State University, he became interested in the immigrant Chinese American population in the Mississippi Delta, a topic he pursued as a Harvard dissertation and eventually turned into his first book, The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White.

Returning to the state in 1968 as an assistant professor of sociology at the historically black Tougaloo College, Loewen put together a team of students and professors to write a new history for high school students, Mississippi: Conflict and Change. When the state found the book too frank in its treatment of race, Loewen became lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit which he won in 1980, one of nine cases establishing the “Right to Read Freely” according to the American Library Association.

In 1976 Loewen joined the University of Vermont faculty where, during his twenty-year tenure, he taught innovative courses on the sociology of race relations.

“He was one of those interesting characters, deeply formed by the civil rights movement in the ‘60s,” says Thomas Streeter, professor and chair of sociology. “He inspired several generations of sociology students to care about the underprivileged in society and often to go out and do something about it.”

After retiring from UVM Loewen authored the award-winning Lies My Teacher Told Me, a critique of the ways that high school history texts distort facts about racial discrimination and inequality, a book that’s sold over one million copies since it was published in 1995. 

In 2005 Loewen wrote Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism about the places all across this country where African Americans were – in some cases still are – plainly not welcome. A review in The Washington Post says that, “for its meticulous research and passionate chronicling of the complex and often shocking history of whites-only communities, Sundown Towns deserves to become an instant classic in the fields of American race relations, urban studies and cultural geography.”

The ASA, in its award citation, credits Loewen with forty years of service exposing the causes and costs of racial discrimination.

Initiatives such as this are imperative in our increasingly multicultural communities, according to Wanda Heading-Grant, chief diversity officer and lead organizer of the event. “We need to help people navigate the difficult conversations that sometimes come up, along with the range of emotions they can bring out,” she says. “We don’t have to be experts on everything to have the conversations. What we have to do is be smart about being inclusive, inviting voices but at the same time protecting people.”

With the exception of Donna Brazile’s talk on Thursday, which is free and open to the public, advance registration for the Friday symposium is required. The fee is $20 for UVM affiliates, $30 for all others and includes breakfast with keynote speech by David Gibson; workshops; luncheon with keynote by Patricia Hill Collins; and a reception featuring professor of music Ray Vega & the Senior Jazz Quartet. On site check-in services will be available 7:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

The opening talk by veteran Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile – also in celebration of women’s history month – will be 4 to 5 p.m. in Ira Allen Chapel. Brazile is the author of the best-selling memoir Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics, she is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, a syndicated newspaper columnist for United Media, a columnist for Ms. Magazine, and an on-air contributor to CNN, NPR and ABC, where she regularly appears on This Week.  

Register, view the full schedule of events and learn more about the speakers.

For more information call 802- 656-8426. To request a disability-related accommodation, please contact UVM Conference & Event Services at (802) 656-5665.

The conference supports the university’s diversity mission and helps bring issues of race and sexuality to the forefront, notes Gregory Ramos, associate professor of theatre and director of ALANA U.S. Ethnic Studies, which is co-sponsoring the event along with Women’s and Gender Studies. “The Burlington community is interested in the intersection of race and gender and this supports that,” Ramos says. “It’s a great reflection of how our students are viewing these issues.”

Following the panels and reception will be a performance by spoken word artist Beau Sia, who has appeared in “Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry” on HBO and he has been featured on Hardball with Chris Matthews, Last Call with Carson Daley, Showtime at the Apollo, The Today Show and the Tony Awards.

Sia was chosen, in part, because conference organizers wanted to feature an Asian American to steer away from the purely “black and white” thinking that often happens in discussions of race. He’s also highly entertaining. “Sia’s performance is really smart and really funny in terms of how he deals with Asian American identity issues in America,” Ramos says. “He’s very provocative and humorous about dismantling stereotypes that have existed and continue to exist.”

The conference is supported by the offices of the president, provost, chief diversity officer, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the departments of student life, theatre, history and sociology.

One thing is certain, Carl Van Vechten, the controversial white figure consuming much of Bernard’s scholarly interest, beginning with her senior thesis at Yale, said all that and a lot more, reveling in blackness and insinuating himself in the thick of the Harlem Renaissance.

Van Vechten was a multidimensional character – arts critic for the New York Times, journalist, photographer, married and gay, among the cultured elite who gave the best parties. But in her new book, Carl Van Vechten & The Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black & White, Bernard focuses on “his black life,” one that surprisingly begins with his childhood in Iowa. Born in 1880, his progressive parents insisted he use “Mr.” and “Mrs.” with the last names of their black household help, impressing on the young Van Vechten their essential humanity – and position as his elders.

His nightclub days in Harlem took him a long way from Cedar Rapids, but something, a template, Bernard allows, was instilled that gave Van Vechten a unique perspective on blacks. First learning to see them, he started seeking their company, launching their careers. He was a forward-thinking force, insisting in the pages of Vanity Fair that “black music” – spirituals, ragtime, blues, and jazz – was the only authentic American music.

He also authored the “audaciously titled” novel Nigger Heaven, a large and lingering smoking gun in his enduring career as a figure of controversy. His fifth novel, it was a bestseller that “made a mint,” and had major supporters, white and black, among them, his longtime friend, Langston Hughes, who argued for artistic freedom. But the book also sparked inevitable outrage from the likes of W. E. B. Du Bois and Van Vechten’s father, who begged him not to use the title.

“He was very troubled with the reception of Nigger Heaven,” says Bernard, “and that was part of his own naïveté and stubbornness.” With the book he was trying, it seems, to both establish his bona fides with blacks and demonstrate to his throngs of white readers that artistic, literary blacks exist.

However one spins it, Van Vechten made an indelible mark on the Harlem Renaissance. According to Bernard, as a scholar, wherever you come down, you can’t teach the time without confronting the man. UVM Today talked with her about her long relationship with Van Vechten, her motivations for the book and what makes, as she’s termed it, the riddle of race so ineffable.

UVM Today: You wanted to write “a tale about the messy realities of race, and the complicated tangle of black and white” and that you did. What do you want us to learn from this?

Emily Bernard: There was so much excitement in many of these characters, set against this stern, serious, forbidding camp (embodied by Du Bois, who felt black artists should focus their work on uplifting the race) and they were right in some very important ways. I don’t mean to be dismissive at all. I mean to straddle the line and to raise questions. But I feel most aligned with people like (novelist) Nella Larsen and (musician) Nora Holt, the women in the book, (acclaimed performer) Ethel Waters – they just really enjoyed Van Vechten and the complexities and the antipathy that he occasioned among the conservative, literary, cultural set.

So that’s where I naturally fell in the way I approached the book. I didn’t want to make a yes or no argument. I was fascinated and intrigued by all the layers of disturbance that Van Vechten can cause. He was a passionate lover of blackness. There’s a joyful aspect to this difference and I think that’s missing from the sterile way we talk about race today. It’s not the only way we should talk about it because there are serious things to contend with – racism. But black culture is amazing. It’s rich and powerful and he appreciated that. I find it very refreshing, very inspiring, a real refuge in thinking about the culture.

In the book you write that Van Vechten “believed that black and white people were different. He also believed they were alike. Essential contradiction describes him and may be implicit in enduring debates of black art.” Can you talk about those debates?

When we talk about black art I’m trying to distinguish it from something else, it’s its own thing. But when we try to define blackness we lean over into dangerous territory, limiting what blackness is, saying it’s only that thing. And that I think is a really fragile line we travel. When do we give black artists permission to become something else – (to write about topics that aren’t black and not be shelved with African American literature)? I have to compromise in some ways my personal feelings about this because we want to celebrate black artists and what they’re doing, but again what is black art and what makes it different? There’s integrity to black art, to celebrating race and distinguishing it from whiteness.

But Du Bois said there is no distinction and to insist on one is to lean over into racism. This is what we’ve been fighting for since the era of slavery. If you think about there being any kind of scientific, cultural difference between black and white people that’s part of a dangerous way of thinking in terms of history, it sort of justifies slavery – black and white people are different so they don’t belong together, the three-fifths human thing. So it’s important politically to people like Du Bois. Van Vechten, too, in some of his critical essays, says in essence: there’s no difference between black and white people, I get that, but I love black culture and there’s a true black way of performing and entertaining that I love. It’s hard to traffic in this whole thing without contradicting yourself. But as I tell my students, this is an African American studies class, if you don’t believe in race why are you here?

Van Vechten is a complicated character. He was appropriating black culture in a way that many find offensive, yet he was unlike the whites who came to Harlem for entertainment, indulging their boredom and desire for the exotic, while keeping Jim Crow intact – the audience at The Cotton Club was white only, right? How does he differ in his patronage?

There’s one essay that inspired me called, “Did Van Vechten Make or Take Hughes' Blues?” Which I thought was great – as either/or, which I don’t believe in but many people do. And so did he make or take? Black culture has been thriving since there were black people in this country, so it would have happened anyway. It may have taken different form. I think it’s impossible for us to imagine that somebody like Lanston Hughes wouldn’t have found an audience, right?

The economic underpinnings of the Harlem renaissance was from white money, we have to remember that, and to have a thriving black scene uptown which made money for black clubs, which kept greasing the wheels of the Harlem Renaissance, you needed white money and that meant you had to make concessions to Jim Crow. There were so few clubs where you could just go and be yourself (if you were black) – and Van Vechten liked to go to the black spots, the little hidden, dusky juke joints. He was exceptional. It’s not important what I think, but look at the black artists. We respect Hurston, Hughes, Ethel Waters, Nora Holt, James Weldon Johnson as this kind of elite. They saw him as exceptional. It doesn’t mean that they didn’t have critiques of him behind closed doors, but they saw him as exceptional. On what grounds? Personally, they just liked him. Nora Holt and he were just simpatico. They were friends. And in a subtle way, black writers put Van Vechten in a secondary position. 

A lot of people say blacks were manipulated by him. Well then you take away their agency and you decide they’re just puppets. That’s really offensive to me. They had complicated reasons for affiliating themselves with him. So let’s hear from them. They saw that what he was doing was useful and funny and they used him as a platform to make their own arguments about race. I love the mystery of human connections, and that’s also there and those are the stories I wanted to paint.

I tell my students, racism is not a state of being, it’s a set of behaviors. It’s about action. In some ways, does it matter how you feel? Well how you feel doesn’t necessarily translate into action. If I had a choice to make, I would rather see antiracist action than passive antiracist sentiment. Whether or not he was racist is not a meaningful question to me. If you are Carl Van Vechten you have an imprimatur. You understand that to associate your name with a black artist is to inspire crossover appeal and help her make a living, and that’s what you want wherever it comes from. I’m not trying to excuse him from any of the complicated ways that we think about racism. (The book) is not trying to be an apologia for him, but it’s trying to keep the complexities alive.

You can write political tracts about what people should do to uplift blacks and treat them fairly, but I think what he did was more meaningful. He used his social clout to introduce black artists to moneyed white people. He had these parties where you could make connections. A few cocktails, and suddenly bonds are formed. Your career could be changed. You suddenly went from being a porter to somebody who could actually make art.

At a time when black and white social interactions were determined by Jim Crow, for Van Vechten to have parties that were interracial was a tiny bit short of revolutionary. He would invite his black friends to these hoity-toity white restaurants and say, ‘I dare you.’ He was very aggressive in his personality, he didn’t back down, he would confront anybody about it. He understood his social power and used it in public to make white people uncomfortable. So that was meaningful for me to write about. Was it for his personal pleasure? Yes. Does the intention matter? There are results. And I think that’s just as important as intention if not more so.

You love Van Vechten.

I’m passionate about him. I think he’s hilarious – those raunchy moments in the third chapter when he said to Walter White, ‘Do I have to get lynched to get your attention?’ I just crack up!

He gloried in difference. He is a relief to me because he was unafraid to bring these issues up that are so tender in our culture and even more than glorifying – celebrating difference. Again, we talk about blackness, about whiteness. This is how we live our lives. We have to be honest about that. And I wanted to do something new, to come up with a different way to talk about this.