African American

Source: Long Beach Press-Telegram

The two-day event – titled “By Any Means Necessary: Synthesizing the Voices of Our Ancestors and Everyday People” – aims to engage and support Black students in their pursuit of college success, prosperity and self-fulfillment, Cal State officials said.

CARSON – Discussion focusing on higher education in the Black community, the meaning of celebrating Juneteenth and the importance of amplifying diverse voices on Cal State University campuses are some of the key points being discussed during the Inaugural Juneteenth Symposium, hosted by Cal State Dominguez Hills and livecast throughout the CSU system.

The two-day event – titled “By Any Means Necessary: Synthesizing the Voices of Our Ancestors and Everyday People” – aims to engage and support Black students in their pursuit of college success, prosperity and self-fulfillment, Cal State officials said.

“This event was a long time coming,” said, the CSU system’s interim chancellor, during the first of the event’s two days.

“Many of the CSU campuses have celebrated Juneteenth for years with performances, displays, lectures, symposiums that recognized the rich history and achievements of our Black and African American students, faculty and staff,” Koester said. “But this is the first time that we have linked arms at the system level to evoke systemic change.”

The panels on Wednesday and Thursday feature a lineup of national figures and scholars. Also on the agenda: performances by CSU students and other special guests.

On the first day of the symposium, more than 600 attendees attended in-person and at least another 1,300 were online watching the livestream.

William Franklin, vice president of student affairs at CSU Dominguez Hills, opened the first session to describe the “voyage” of the event, which would include discussions on how to serve, celebrate but also interrupt and instigate the community.

Opening remarks were also delivered by Obioha Ogbonna, president of CSUDH Associated Students Inc. Ogbonna described how his views changed about celebrating Juneteenth since he arrived from Nigeria to study cyber security.

“What does Juneteenth mean to me now? It’s an opportunity to meet and connect with my brothers [and] sisters here in the present and look back at the past at what separated us,” Ogbonna said. “I hope we learn a lot from this symposium and we get closer to reconnecting the link that was broken.”

Juneteenth is celebrated on or around June 19 each year to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved people in the U.S. The holiday was first marked in Texas, where in the aftermath of the Civil War, slaves were declared free under the terms of the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation.

Earlier this year, President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, giving federal employees the day off to celebrate the new holiday. As celebrations have blossomed in popularity in recent years, some cities and other local entities have also decided to make the day an official paid holiday.

Framing the discussion during Wednesday’s symposium was Thomas Parham, president of CSU Dominguez Hills. Parham emphasized that true societal change will not be possible until Black voices are not heard and become enmeshed in the processes of government.

“If Juneteenth is to have real meaning and not simply represent another programmatic initiative that we can feel good about because we put it on and check the box, then our efforts over these next two days must integrate the biases and assumptions that we bring with us into the academic spaces we occupy,” Parham said.

“Our efforts must develop new and substantial programs that address the true needs of African descent students, staff and faculty and senior administrators that we claim to care about,” he added.

Keynote speakers include: Tyrone Howard, professor of education in the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA; Shaun Harper, a professor at USC; and Cornel West, author and professor emeritus at Princeton University.

West described how Black excellence comes with learning history, and working on finding a voice today to forge changes in the community.

“When you get deep enough into Blackness you have a human connection that makes you international, global and universal rooted in the local,” West said in his speech. “And you can’t do that if you don’t find your voice.”

To virtually attend the concluding day of the CSU Inaugural Juneteenth Symposium on Thursday, visit www.calstate.edu.

Source: EdSource

In Cal State’s first biennial Juneteenth symposium, the nation’s largest public university confronts the need for societal change that uplifts Black students, faculty and staff. 

The symposium, which was hosted in person and virtually by CSU Dominguez Hills on Wednesday and Thursday, featured Princeton University professor and author Cornel West, Grammy Award-nominated singer and actress Angie Stone, University of Southern California professor Shaun Harper, UC Irvine professor Michele Goodwin, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and other academics and student advocates from across the state.

The symposium went beyond higher education and covered reproductive health, medical disparities and voting rights. 

“We want to set the standard for what all of higher education in this nation ought to be thinking about in celebrating this Juneteenth holiday,” said Thomas Parham, president of the Dominguez Hills campus, located south of Los Angeles. “I want us to start with the fact that there is a lot of folk who look at diversity, equity and inclusion in the context of demographics … we kind of check the boxes and say we’re making diversity progress.” 

But that’s a “very basic” way of measuring progress, Parham said. 

“The question we want people to interrogate is, given these demographics, how have the policies and practices of our institutions and agencies changed?” he said. 

People who spend time on campuses are seeing more people from different ethnic, racial or religious backgrounds, but policies and practices remain the same, Harper said. 

“Until we do right by Black people, everything that we do in the name of racial justice will fail.  It will be incomplete,” Harper said. 

Ed Bush, president of Consumes River College – one of the 116 California community colleges – said part of the problem is that making more racially equitable changes doesn’t always benefit the status quo. 

“Even when we get Black people in the system, you don’t feel like you are able to be Black, so you don’t lean into your authentic self that will allow you to have the greatest benefit for Black students,” Bush said, adding that the California Master Plan for Higher Education needs to be redesigned to more closely improve education for Black people. 

During the symposium, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who started her career as a professor at San Diego State University, said as a college graduate, she never thought she would be fighting the same battles for education and voting rights that her grandfather did. 

“Juneteenth never stood as a celebration but rather as a stark reminder of our country’s continual struggle to have its civil rights laws and edicts align with the action of providing the freedom, the opportunity and social justice mandated,” she said, adding that educators must better prepare citizens of their role in understanding our democracy. 

“It is not OK when only 37% of the population votes over the last two years,” Weber said. 

Weber, who pushed for ethnic studies requirements across the state’s higher education sectors, and was an advocate of eliminating standardized testing, said she told Gov. Gavin Newsom that if he wants to fight institutional racism the first place to start is the “ivory tower” of academia. 

Other than the state’s community college system, the CSU reaches nearly every student in the state, Weber said. And with that power, the system has a “unique opportunity to push forward, not with the same old rules and regulations that we’ve had for years to produce the same old folks, but for so many who are left behind and left out.” 

The system also has a responsibility to the K-12 system, as the largest trainer of future teachers and educators, Weber said, adding that California has the fifth-largest economy in the world but routinely ranks in the 40s and 50s for K-12 education and funding. 

“That is embarrassing,” she said. “I deal with members in the Assembly that won’t put their own children in public schools. Why? Because they want them to be successful. That is a reality we have to face.” 

Parham said there’s no one solution to solve the issues or problems the symposium addressed, but he hopes people across the CSU will really examine their own campuses and policies and make intentional improvements. 

“How can the system, the largest system of public higher education in all of America … develop programs that massively assert the dignity, worth and humanity of African-descent people, staff, faculty, students?” he asked.