Dismantling Systemic Racism: Transforming Higher Education

Arguably, the systemic racism under which we live is at least 400 years old. This system with a global reach pervades society, and higher education is no exception. As Toni Morrison stated in The House That Race Built, "The overweening, defining event of the modern world is the mass movement of raced populations, beginning with the largest forced transfer of people in the history of the world: slavery.  The consequences of which transfer have determined all the wars following it as well as the current ones being waged on every continent."  (Morrison, 1999)

Indeed, 2020 has more completely exposed the ways in which systemic racism not only produces, propagates and amplifies racial inequities, but nearly every other social inequity that intersects with race—from public health, to race/gender wage gaps, to recruitment/retention/promotion gaps, to invisible labor rendered by BIPOC administrators, faculty, staff and students. In a year that has exposed disparate racial outcomes for COVID-19 and widespread national unrest in the wake of the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, diversity professionals in higher education have been called on more than ever to provide leadership.

NADOHE’s 15^th annual conference will focus on the work that needs to be done to transform higher education and ensure that we support inclusive and equitable practices, policies and cultures. NADOHE invites proposals that address both theory and praxis from every space in higher education. Submissions from 4-year colleges and universities, community colleges, Tribal Colleges, HBCUs, HSIs, MSIs are encouraged.