The community assembly will include brief remarks from campus leadership, including President Mark Schlissel, Provost Susan Collins, and Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer Robert Sellers.

This year’s featured keynote speaker is Journalist, Entrepreneur and Television Host, Soledad O’Brien.

Following the keynote address, a roundtable conversation will include panelist Valarie Kaur, with additional panelists to be announced soon.
This year’s summit provides a time and space for the campus community to come together to discuss structural racism within the academy and beyond, and ways we might address and dismantle those structures.

The past five years have yielded experience and data that allows us to sharpen our approach and act with increased precision and skill. The parallel pandemics of COVID-19 and structural racism have also synergized to create a moment in our nation’s history where we must decide if our corresponding actions will be transformative or repetitive of the past. Now more than ever, we must simultaneously challenge our current reality and innovate to create what our future will be.