Plenary Speakers
LUCIUS TURNER OUTLAW
"Educating for Ignorance: Race and Social Ordering"
Friday, September 15, 2006
11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Lucius Turner Outlaw (Jr.), formerly T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College (Haverford, Pennsylvania), is Professor of Philosophy and of African American and Diaspora Studies, and Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education, at Vanderbilt University. (Outlaw has also been a member of the faculties of Fisk University and Morgan State University; a visiting professor at Spelman College, Howard University, and Hamilton College. For the 1996-98 academic years Outlaw was the David S. Nelson Professor of Boston College.) He teaches, researches, and writes about African Philosophy, African American Philosophy, Marx, Critical Social Theory, Social and Political Philosophy, and the history of Philosophy in the “West.” Born in Starkville, Mississippi, he is a graduate of Fisk University (B.A., Philosophy, 1967, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Boston College (Ph.D., Philosophy, 1972). His essays have been published in Philosophical Forum, Journal of Social Philosophy, Man and World, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, The Journal of Ethics, and a number of anthologies. A collection of several of his essays, On Race and Philosophy, was published by Routledge (1996). Another book, Critical Social Theory in the Interests of Black Folk, was published by Roman & Littlefield (2005).
BEVERLY DANIEL TATUM
"Connecting the Dots: Race, Expectations, and Achievement"
Friday, September 15, 2006
4 - 5:15 p.m.
Scholar, teacher, author, administrator and race relations expert, Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum is the ninth president of Spelman College. Prior to her appointment to the Spelman presidency in 2002, she spent 13 years at Mount Holyoke College, serving in various roles during her tenure there as professor of psychology, department chair, dean of the College and acting president.
Dr. Tatum is a clinical psychologist whose areas of research interest include black families in white communities, racial identity in teens, and the role of race in the classroom. For over 20 years, Dr. Tatum has taught a course on the psychology of racism. She has also toured extensively, leading workshops on racial identity development and its impact in the classroom.
In her critically acclaimed 1997 book, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” and Other Conversations about Race, she applies her expertise on race to argue that straight talk about racial identity is essential to the nation. Going beyond the usual black-white paradigm, the book, which uses real life examples and the latest research, not only dispels race as taboo, but gives readers a new lens for understanding the emergence of racial identity as a developmental process experienced by everyone.
Dr. Tatum is also the author of Assimilation Blues: Black Families in a White Community (1987). In addition, she has published numerous articles, including her classic 1992 Harvard Educational Review article, “Talking about Race, Learning about Racism: An Application of Racial Identity Development Theory in the Classroom.”
Dr. Tatum was raised in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. She earned a B.A. in psychology from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and a M.A. and PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan. She also holds a M.A. degree in religious studies from Hartford Seminary.
Prior to joining the Mount Holyoke faculty in 1989, Dr. Tatum was an associate professor and assistant professor of psychology at Westfield State College in Westfield, Massachusetts, and a lecturer in Black Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
She is married to Dr. Travis Tatum, a former professor of education at Westfield State College in Massachusetts, and the mother of two sons.
ROBERT (BOB) P. MOSES
"Quality Public Education as a Civil Right"
Saturday, September 16, 2006
10:45 a.m. - Noon
In his young adult life, Mr. Moses was a pivotal organizer for the civil rights movement as a field secretary for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and was director of SNCC’s Mississippi Project. He was a driving force behind the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964 in organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which challenged the Mississippi regulars at the 1964 Democratic Convention. From 1969-1976, he worked for the Ministry of Education in Tanzania, East Africa, where he was chairperson of the math department at the Samé school. Mr. Moses returned to the USA in 1976 to continue to pursue doctoral studies in Philosophy at Harvard. A MacArthur Foundation Fellow from 1982-87, Mr. Moses used his fellowship to develop the concept for the Algebra Project, wherein mathematics literacy in today’s information age is as important to educational access and citizenship for inner city and rural poor middle and high school students as the right to vote was to political access and citizenship for sharecroppers and day laborers in Mississippi in the 1960s As founder and president of the Algebra Project Inc., Mr. Moses also serves as director of the project’s materials development program. See more at www.algebra.org Together with Algebra Project Inc. board member Danny Glover, Moses and others recently launched a national discussion calling for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution for Quality Public School Education as a Civil Right; see more at www.qecr.org. Mr. Moses has received several college and university honorary degrees and honors, including the Heinz Award for the Human Condition, the Nation/Puffin Prize for Creative Citizenship.
Sample Publications of Interest: Moses, Robert P. & Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Radical Equations—Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project. Beacon Press, 2001.
