March 24 speaker to address Katrina response and race

Michael Eric Dyson, author of “Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster,” will keynote the second annual “Creating Institutional Change” (CIC) conference March 23-25, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

He will speak at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 24 in the Agriculture Hall Auditorium. His lecture will be followed by a question and answer session.

Dyson, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, is also a regular commentator on National Public Radio, CNN, and the HBO program “Real Time with Bill Maher.” He argues that the nation’s failure to offer timely aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina indicates deeper problems in race and class relations.

This conference is free to UW–Madison students.

In addition to Dyson, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, granddaughter of Cesar Chavez, will speak at 7:45 p.m. on Friday, March 23, also in Agriculture Hall Auditorium. She is programs director for the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation, and spearheaded the National Youth Leadership Initiative to address academic and civic disengagement among today’s youth.

The conference, coordinated by UW–Madison’s Diversity Education Program (DEP), is composed of sessions and activities focusing on future initiatives regarding diversity on college campuses; the idea of institutional change and how people contribute; and developing and encouraging leadership to improve campus climate for underrepresented populations.

University faculty, administrators, staff, high school personnel, area youth, and community partners to UW–Madison will also be present. Registration information is available online for non-UW-Madison students; interested parties may also contact Bill Hebert at (608) 261-1579, cic@bascom.wisc.edu.

The Diversity Education Program (DEP), a unit of the Dean of Students Office, helps guide and facilitate the work of UW–Madison students, faculty, staff, and community allies as they take active and leadership roles to improve their quality of education through increasing diversity education awareness.