Services for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing People Provided
#400YearsofInequality
Cohosted with the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, the Museum of African American History, and the Activist Lab
EVENT HIGHLIGHTS
A History of Resistance
Who’s at the Table?
Moral Architects
Bold Ideas to Close Wealth Gaps
This day is a part of a national movement by schools of public health to engage in the observance of “400 Years of Inequality,” marking 400 years since a group of 20 Africans were first sold in bondage in Jamestown, Virginia. This Dean’s Symposium aims to use this anniversary to discuss how we can disrupt systemic racism, with forward-looking and solution-driven discussions.
Associate Dean for Public Health Practice and Associate Professor of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health
8:35 a.m. – 8:45 a.m.
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Marita Rivero
Executive Director, Museum of African American History
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Marita Rivero joined the Museum in January, 2016 as its new CEO. She had been involved earlier in different capacities as a supporter, member, volunteer and board member, including nine years as its chair in the early 2000s. Rivero contributed experience as a prolific public broadcasting executive, and member of a number of local and national non-profit boards in the areas of social service, arts, education and historic preservation.
Rivero has brought energy to the Museum’s work to expand the American story. Its scholarship, storytelling and collection are helping organizations and people bridge difference to see their common contributions to developing the American democracy we recognize today. The Musem of African American History has created a well-received public program series under her direction, Race in the Public Dialogue to focus on current issues. The Museum mounted a critically noted exhibit Frederick Douglass: The Most Photographed American of the Nineteenth Century, and has seen visitation rise. In September, 2018 the Museum launched a national Book Award with a $25,000 prize to bring notice to scholars working in the field of African American history. The Nantucket site overcame racial vandalism in March, 2018 to emerge this year in the final stages of a major restoration project that will make this important piece of Massachusetts’ abolition history more widely known. Working with partners, the Museum is creating programs to support corporations and organizations interested in bridging difference, and continues its strong educational work with teachers and faculty.
Rivero began her career in public broadcasting in 1970 at WGBH, where she produced public affairs television programming for the next five years. She returned to Boston in 1989 to head WGBH Radio and later as VP and General Manager for WGBH Radio and Television, she oversaw programming, digital, marketing, and administration. Among notable work, Rivero brought new radio stations online for Boston, Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, launched the national daily radio news program The World, re-established the national television cable service WORLD, developed the digital online service Forum Network and created a significant set of community partnerships including expanding the Celtic Soujourn radio franchise to a larger live stage audience.
Marita Rivero is a recipient of the Pinnacle Award from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, The MWPC Abigail Adams Tribute Award, the YWCA Women Achievers Award among other noteworthy community and professional awards. She has numerous production awards including Peabody and Emmy Awards for her project Africans in America, a History of Slavery. She served on the NPR Board, as Board Chair of Bunker Hill Community College, and is now serving on the Bunker Hill Community College Foundation Board. Rivero recently stepped down as Board Chair of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She joined the Board of the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau in 2019.
8:45 a.m. – 9:15 a.m.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Cornell William Brooks
Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice, Harvard Kennedy School
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Cornell William Brooks is Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also Director of The William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice at the School’s Center for Public Leadership, and a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School. Brooks is the former president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights attorney, and an ordained minister.
Brooks was most recently visiting professor of social ethics, law, and justice movements at Boston University’s School of Law and School of Theology. He was a visiting fellow and director of the Campaign and Advocacy Program at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics in 2017. Brooks served as the 18th president of the NAACP from 2014 to 2017. Under his leadership, the NAACP secured 12 significant legal victories, including laying the groundwork for the first statewide legal challenge to prison-based gerrymandering. He also reinvigorated the activist social justice heritage of the NAACP, dramatically increasing membership, particularly online and among millennials. Among the many demonstrations from Ferguson to Flint during his tenure, he conceived and led “America’s Journey for Justice” march from Selma, Alabama to Washington, D.C., over 40 days and 1000 miles.
Prior to leading the NAACP, Brooks was president and CEO of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, where he led the passage of pioneering criminal justice reform and housing legislation, six bills in less than five years. He also served as senior counsel and acting director of the Office of Communications Business Opportunities at the Federal Communications Commission, executive director of the Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington, and a trial attorney at both the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the U.S. Department of Justice. Brooks served as judicial clerk for the Chief Judge Sam J. Ervin, III, on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Brooks holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and member of the Yale Law and Policy Review, and a Master of Divinity from Boston University’s School of Theology, where he was a Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholar. Brooks has a B.A. from Jackson State University. He is the recipient of several honorary doctorates including: Boston University, Drexel University, Saint Peter’s University and Payne Theological Seminary as well as the highest alumni awards from Boston University and Boston University School of Theology. Brooks is a fourth-generation ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
9:15 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
TOPIC ONE: HOUSING
Naa Oyo A. Kwate
Associate Professor of Africana Studies, Associate Professor of Human Ecology, Rutgers University
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Naa Oyo A. Kwate, Ph.D. is Associate Professor at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, jointly appointed in the Department of Africana Studies and the Department of Human Ecology. A psychologist by training, she is an interdisciplinary social scientist with wide ranging interests in racial inequality and African American health. Her research has centered primarily on the ways in which urban built environments reflect and create racial inequalities in the United States, and how racism directly and indirectly affects African American health. Much of her work has been in New York City, where she has studied topics including the disproportionate density of fast food in Black neighborhoods, the prevalence and effects of outdoor alcohol advertising, and the perpetuation of segregation in real estate markets. Kwate’s research has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and by fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Aix-Marseille Université, France. In the summer of 2019, she published Burgers in Blackface: Anti-Black Restaurants Then and Now at the University of Minnesota Press. This short monograph interrogates racist logos, themes, and architecture in restaurant branding, and is derived from a larger forthcoming book project on the racial and spatial transformation of fast food from the early twentieth century to the present.
sade adeeyo
Senior Case Manager, So Others Might Eat (SOME)
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sade adeeyo is a mental health clinician dedicated to the wellbeing, care coordination, and recovery of vulnerable communities. Formerly a researcher of the social determinants of health, housing and youth development at the Urban Institute, she focused on building multigenerational, place-based interventions in public housing communities. Before joining the Urban Institute, she worked at the Black Women’s Health Imperative and has consistently held positions that advocate for equitable public health and the housing stability of women and communities of color. Currently, she works at a supportive housing agency called So Others Might Eat (SOME, Inc.) in service to underhoused families.
She holds a BA in comparative women’s studies with a minor in public health from her beloved alma mater Spelman College, an MA in public policy with a concentration in women’s studies from the George Washington University, and is completing her second master’s degree in mental health counseling. In all she is working towards a vision of more equitable, inclusive cities—particularly in DC.
Beth Shinn
Professor, Vanderbilt, Peabody College
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Marybeth Shinn is a Cornelius Vanderbilt professor at Vanderbilt University. Beth studies how to prevent and end homelessness and create opportunities for groups that face social exclusion. She views historical and current discrimination in housing, employment, imprisonment, and opportunities to accumulate wealth as key drivers of disproportionately high rates of homelessness for African Americans and Native Americans.
In the 12-site Family Options study, she and colleagues showed that offering long-term rental subsidies to families in homeless shelters not only ends homelessness for most but has radiating benefits for parents and children and reduces problems like substance abuse, domestic violence, and psychological distress that can sometimes cause homelessness. Earlier studies showed that a housing first strategy of offering housing without preconditions and with voluntary services ends homelessness for individuals with serious mental illnesses.
With her students, Beth has helped New York City develop tools to direct homeless prevention services available through the HomeBase program away from the “worthy poor” and to the people most likely to become homeless without them.
Beth is a past president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and the Society for Community Research and Action and won the award for distinguished contributions to theory and research from the latter group. She serves on the Research Council for the National Alliance to End Homelessness and Nashville’s Homeless Planning Council and co-authored a National Academies report on Housing, Health, and Homelessness. Her book with Jill Khadduri, In the Midst of Plenty: How to Prevent and End Homelessness, is forthcoming.
Sheila Savannah
Managing Director, Prevention Institute
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Sheila Savannah, Managing Director at Prevention Institute, provides leadership on health equity, mental health, safety, and violence prevention areas. She focuses on mental health’s intersection with community resilience, and the social determinants of health; with projects aimed at addressing community trauma and improving outcomes for boys and men (particularly men and boys of color and service members and veterans). Her team’s work addresses the connection of multiple forms of violence and self-harm, including technical assistance with five California collaboratives who are building community-wide solutions prevent partner violence and training support to rural counties in Ohio who are constructing prevention plans to address some of the root causes of their region’s opioid-misuse epidemic.
Previously, Sheila was a division manager with the Houston Public Health Department, responsible for strategic partnerships and the Office of Adolescent Health and Injury Prevention, including Houston’s CDC-funded youth violence prevention initiative. With over 30 years of experience in policy analysis, community-level assessment, mobilization and development; as a national trainer; and a CDC Grand Rounds panelist, she has expertise in multi-sector collaboration and youth/family engagement in addressing complex system issues. Sheila holds a BJ in Journalism from the University of Texas and a Master’s Degree in Psychology from the University of Houston at Clear Lake.
Ruby Mendenhall
Associate Professor in Sociology, African American Studies, Urban and Regional Planning, and Social Work, University of Illinois
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Ruby Mendenhall is an Associate Professor of Sociology, African American Studies, Urban and Regional Planning, Gender and Women’s Studies and Social Work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is an affiliate of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology; Women and Gender in Global Perspectives; the Cline Center for Advance Social Research;Epstein Health Law and Policy Program; Family Law and Policy Program and the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Mendenhall is the Assistant Dean for Diversity and Democratization of Health Innovation at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. Mendenhall’s research examines how living in racially segregated neighborhoods with high levels of violence affects Black mothers’ mental and physical health using surveys, interviews, crime statistics, police records, data from 911 calls, wearable sensors and genomic analysis. She examines the role of the Earned Income Tax Credits in social mobility and health outcomes and the medicalization of poverty. She studies the effects of racial microaggressions on students of color health and sense of belonging on predominantly white campuses. She also employs big data to recover Black women’s lost history using topic modeling and data visualization to examine over 800,000 documents from 1740 to 2014.
Associate Dean for Public Health Practice and Associate Professor of Community Health Sciences
10:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.
BREAK
10:45 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Neera Tanden
President and CEO, Center for American Progress
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Neera Tanden is the President and CEO of the Center for American Progress and the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Before joining CAP and CAP Action, she worked as a key member of the health reform team of former President Barack Obama, where she helped to develop and pass the Affordable Care Act. She also managed all domestic policy initiatives during Obama’s first presidential campaign and has served in several leadership roles for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. At CAP and CAP Action, Tanden is focused on building the grassroots opposition to Donald Trump’s agenda, and on developing an alternative agenda that will expand opportunity for all Americans.
11:15 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
TOPIC TWO: EDUCATION
Sherman James
Professor Emeritus, Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy
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Sherman James, a social epidemiologist, is the Susan B. King Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at Duke University. Prior to Duke (2003-14), he was a professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (1973-89) and the University of Michigan (1989-03). At Michigan, he was the John P. Kirscht Collegiate Professor of Public Health; the Founding Director of the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health (CRECH); Chair of the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education; and a Senior Research Scientist in the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research.
Dr. James received the AB degree (Psychology and Philosophy) from Talladega College (AL) in 1964, and the PhD degree in Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis, in 1973.
Dr. James was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, of the National Academy of Sciences, in 2000, and to the American Academy of Political and Social Science, in 2016. He has received the following additional awards and honors: the 2001 Abraham Lilienfeld Award from the Epidemiology section of the American Public Health Association (APHA) for career excellence in the teaching of epidemiology; a 2008 Health Policy Investigator Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the 2013 John Cassel Lecture and Award from the Society for Epidemiologic Research (SER); the 2016 Wade Hampton Frost Lecture and Award from the Epidemiology Section of APHA for career contributions to the field of epidemiology; the 2019 Kenneth Rothman Career Accomplishment Award from SER; and a 2018-2019 fellowship at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
Dr. James served as an Associate Editor of Ethnicity & Disease (1989-1995) and the American Journal of Public Health (2003-2007). In 2007-08, he served as president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research (SER), the largest professional organization of epidemiologists in North America. In 2008, he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of Washington University in St. Louis.
Elmira Mangum
CEO, EMPLUS LLC; Former President, Florida A&M University
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Elmira is now serving as the CEO of EM Plus 3, LLC, a group focused on organizational redesign, leadership, budgeting, and planning in higher education. She is also a professional coach and mentor to aspiring leaders. Having recently completed a sabbatical year with Washington University in St. Louis as a distinguished scholar in residence and several months with University of Pennsylvania Center for Minority Serving Institutions she remains committed to the principle of education as a human right. As the eleventh university CEO, she made history as the first permanent female president of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU). Dr. Mangum, as a change agent, planner, and leader, has served at the executive level of nationally recognized organizations of higher learning for more than 35 years. Prior to her appointment at FAMU, Dr. Mangum served as vice president for planning and budget at Cornell University, as senior associate provost at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, vice provost at the University at Buffalo, and operations specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Extension Geological and Natural History Survey. She also held faculty appointments at Cornell’s Johnson School of Management, the UNC Chapel Hill School of Government, and the UB Graduate School of Education. Among the many honors and recognitions Dr. Mangum was named to EBONY magazine’s “Power 100” list. She received the Trailblazer Award presented by the Oasis Center for Women & Girls, and received the Women of Distinction Global Leadership Award in Education from the organization Celebrating Women International.
Linda Greene
Evjue-Bascom Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Linda Sheryl Greene, who graduated from UC Berkeley Law School, is the Evjue-Bascom Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her teaching and academic scholarship are concentrated in the areas of Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure, Legislation, Civil Rights, and Sports Law. She is a member of the California Bar and and a Life Member of the American Law Institute. Professor Greene was an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York City, a visiting professor at Harvard and Georgetown and a Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee where she specialized in the confirmation of federal court judges, federal court jurisdiction, constitutional issues, and civil rights legislation. She has long been involved in sports policymaking including 12 years with the United States Olympic Committee, seven years as a member of the University of Wisconsin Athletic Board, and as co-founder of the Black Women in Sports Foundation. From 2013 to 2019, she was a member of the National Institutes of Health National Advisory Committee on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Her recent scholarship reflects the breadth of her experience: “The Battle for Brown v. Board” (2015); “African American Women on the World Stage: The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing China, 1995” (2015); “Before and After Michael Brown: Towards an End to Structural and Actual Violence”(2015); “Mirror Mirror on the Wall: Gender, Olympic Competition, and the Persistence of the Feminine Ideal,” (2016); and “A Tale of Two Justices: Brandeis, Marshall, and Federal Court Diversity” (2017). Her works in progress include Thurgood Marshall: Towards An Inclusive Constitutional Democracy (2020 Carolina Press with Wendy Scott), “Back to the Future: Race, the Roberts Court, and Majoritarian Hegemony”, and a play about a Black Supreme Court justice reckoning with his legacy. She has been a media, political, and legal analyst for twenty-five years for Wisconsin Public Television and Radio, National Public Radio, and The New York Times which has published her opinion pieces since 1992. In her spare time, she enjoys the visual arts, jazz, and biking.
Alana Anderson
Director of Programs, Diversity and Inclusion, Boston University
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Alana Anderson is Boston University’s inaugural Director of Programs in the Office of the Associate Provost for Diversity and Inclusion. In her role, Alana works to develop a broad slate of programs that address issues related to gender, race, social class, sexual orientation, nationality, political ideology, disability, and justice among others for faculty, staff, and students. She works collaboratively with key stakeholders across BU and the city to develop creative, expansive programs in accordance with BU’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. Alana has over ten years of experience working in the field of higher education and has previously held leadership roles in student life and diversity and inclusion at Babson College, Bentley University, and MIT. She holds a Doctorate in Higher Education from the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, a Masters of Science in Higher Education from Indiana University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Politics from Brandeis University. Her research examines how black college women perform their race and gender on social media.
Assistant Dean for Diversity and Inclusion, Boston University School of Public Health
12:30 p.m. – 12:45 p.m.
400 YEARS: THE MOVEMENT
Bob Fullilove
Associate Dean, Community and Minority Affairs, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health
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Robert E. Fullilove, EdD is the Associate Dean for Community and Minority Affairs, Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences and the co-director of the Cities Research Group. Dr. Fullilove has authored numerous articles in the area of minority health. From 1995 to 2001, he served on the Board of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) at the National Academy of Sciences. Since 1996, he has served on five IOM study committees that have produced reports on a variety of topics including substance abuse and addiction, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and damp indoor spaces and health. In 2003 he was designated a National Associate of the National Academies of Science. In 1998 he was appointed to the Advisory Committee on HIV and STD Prevention (ACHSP) at the Centers for Disease Control, and in July, 2000, he became the committee’s co-chair. Finally, between 2004-2007, he served on the National Advisory Council for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health [NIH]. Since 2010, he has been teaching public health courses in six New York State prisons that are part of the Bard College Prison Initiative (BPI) and serves as the Senior Advisor to BPI’s public health program. Dr. Fullilove serves on the editorial boards of the journals Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and the Journal of Public Health Policy. He has been awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award at the Mailman School of Public Health three times (in 1995, 2001, and 2013), and in May, 2002, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Bank Street College of Education.
12:45 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.
LUNCH
1:15 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
ACTIVIST LAB ARTIST IN RESIDENCE: PERFORMANCE AND DIALOGUE
Rhodessa Jones
Co-Artistic Director, Cultural Odyssey/Director, THE MEDEA PROJECT/Artist in Residence, Boston University School of Public Health Activist Lab
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Rhodessa Jones is Co-Artistic Director of the San Francisco performance company Cultural Odyssey. She is an actress, teacher, director, and writer. Ms. Jones is also the Director of THE MEDEA PROJECT: Theater for Incarcerated Women and HIV Circle, which is a performance workshop designed to achieve personal and social transformation with incarcerated women and women living with HIV.
The capstone of her residency, Rhodessa Jones will perform several vignettes from her repertoire to explore and expand on the themes discussed throughout the day and guide an interactive discussion with the audience.