Name: In Conversation: Black Disability Politics
Start: 2022-10-26T11:00:00-04:00
End: 2022-10-26T12:30:00-04:00
Location: Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice

Wednesday,

October

26,

2022

11:00 - 12:30 PM EDT

HYBRID EVENT

In Conversation: Black Disability Politics

Join us for a conversation with Sami Schalk on Black Disability Politics.

RSVPs Closed

Ford Foundation

In Conversation: Black Disability Politics

Join us for a candid conversation on the role of corporations in the post-COVID-19 world, and the levers and limitations boards have to create change across the business landscape.

Closed

In-Person Venue

Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice

320 E. 43rd Street

New York, New York 10017

Please see our Visitor Health and Safety Practices During COVID-19 below.

Virtual Venue

A joining link will be emailed to you 24 hours prior to the event.

Please indicate "virtual attendance" on your registration form.

About the event

From the 1970s to the present, issues of disability have been and continue to be central to Black activism. Black people have long engaged with disability as a political issue deeply tied to race and racism. Join us in a conversation with Sami Schalk, several of her interview subjects and some special guests about the need to prioritize an understanding of disability within the context of white supremacy, to demonstrate that the work of Black disability politics not only exists but is essential to the future of Black liberation movements.

About the speaker

Dr. Sami Schalk is an associate professor in the Department of Gender & Women's Studies at UW-Madison. Her research focuses on disability, race, and gender in contemporary American literature and culture, especially African American and women's texts. She is also the author of Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction. Duke University Press, 2018.

About the book

In this no-holds-barred memoir, Devaki Jain begins with her childhood in south India, a life of comfort and ease with a father who served as dewan in the Princely States of Mysore and Gwalior. But there were restrictions too, that come with growing up in an orthodox Tamil Brahmin family, as well as the rarely spoken about dangers of predatory male relatives. Ruskin College, Oxford, gave her her first taste of freedom in 1955, at the age of 22. Oxford brought her a degree in philosophy and economics—as well as hardship, as she washed dishes in a cafe to pay her fees. It was here, too, that she had her early encounters with the sensual life. With rare candour, she writes of her romantic liaisons in Oxford and Harvard, and falling in love with her ‘unsuitable boy’—her husband, Lakshmi Jain, whom she married against her beloved father’s wishes. Devaki’s professional life saw her becoming deeply involved with the cause of ‘poor’ women—workers in the informal economy, for whom she strove to get a better deal. In the international arena, she joined cause with the concerns of the colonized nations of the south, as they fought to make their voices heard against the rich and powerful nations of the former colonizers. Her work brought her into contact with world leaders and thinkers, amongst them, Vinoba Bhave, Nelson Mandela, Henry Kissinger, and Iris Murdoch.

About the book

System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot is a forward-thinking manifesto from Stanford professors Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami, and Jeremy M. Weinstein—a philosopher working at the intersection of tech and ethics, a political scientist who served under Obama, and the director of the undergraduate Computer Science program at Stanford (also an early Google engineer). System Error exposes the root of our current predicament: how big tech’s relentless focus on optimization is driving a future that reinforces discrimination, erodes privacy, displaces workers, and pollutes the information we get. Reich, Sahami and Weinstein share their provocative insights and concrete solutions to help everyone understand what is happening, what is at stake, and what can be done.

Speakers

Jyoti Thottam

Jyoti Thottam is a senior opinion editor at The New York Times, and was previously a reporter, editor, and foreign correspondent. From 2008 to 2012, she was Time’s South Asia Bureau Chief in New Delhi, where she wrote numerous cover stories, including award-winning stories about the Ganges River and the Mumbai terrorist attacks. Born in India, she grew up in Texas and graduated from Yale and Columbia. She lives with her family in Brooklyn.

Darren Walker

Darren Walker is president of the Ford Foundation, a $16 billion international social justice philanthropy. Under his leadership, the Ford Foundation became the first non-profit in US history to issue a $1 billion designated social bond to stabilize non-profit organizations in the wake of COVID-19. Before joining Ford, Darren was vice president at Rockefeller Foundation. Previously, he was COO of Harlem’s Abyssinian Development Corporation. Darren co-founded both the US Impact Investing Alliance and the Presidents’ Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy. He serves on many boards, including the National Gallery of Art, Carnegie Hall, the High Line, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, and Committee to Protect Journalists.

Speakers

Devaki Jain

Devaki Jain is an economist and a writer. A graduate from Oxford University, she received a Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award from the Government of India in 2006 for her contribution to social justice and the empowerment of women. She has been a visiting fellow at Harvard University, Boston University, University of Sussex, SIAS and Oxford University. She is the recipient of the Bradford Morse Memorial Award (1995) from the UNDP at the Beijing World Conference for outstanding achievements through professional and voluntary activities in promoting the advancement of women and gender equality for 20 years. Her academic research and advocacy, influenced largely by Gandhian Philosophy, has focussed on issues of economic justice and human rights. She has been actively involved in the women's movement from local to global. With a career spanning over 4 decades, she has been an advisor and member of many policy and programme design committees and task forces of the Government of India, as well as UN agencies.

Darren Walker

Darren Walker is president of the Ford Foundation, a $16 billion international social justice philanthropy. Under his leadership, the Ford Foundation became the first non-profit in US history to issue a $1 billion designated social bond to stabilize non-profit organizations in the wake of COVID-19. Before joining Ford, Darren was vice president at Rockefeller Foundation. Previously, he was COO of Harlem’s Abyssinian Development Corporation. Darren co-founded both the US Impact Investing Alliance and the Presidents’ Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy. He serves on many boards, including the National Gallery of Art, Carnegie Hall, the High Line, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, and Committee to Protect Journalists.

Speakers

Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander is a prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author, renowned poet, educator, scholar, and cultural advocate. Her most recent book, The Trayvon Generation, is a galvanizing meditation on the power of art and culture to illuminate America’s unresolved problem with race and the challenges facing young Black America. Among the fifteen books she has authored or co-authored, her memoir, The Light of the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2015 and her poetry collection American Sublime was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2006. Notably, Dr. Alexander composed and recited “Praise Song for the Day” for President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration. Over the course of an esteemed career in education, she has held distinguished professorships at Smith College, Columbia University, and Yale University, where she taught for fifteen years and chaired the African American Studies Department. Dr. Alexander is currently president of the Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder in the arts, culture, and humanities.

Blair Doster

Darren Walker is president of the Ford Foundation, a $16 billion international social justice philanthropy. Under his leadership, the Ford Foundation became the first non-profit in US history to issue a $1 billion designated social bond to stabilize non-profit organizations in the wake of COVID-19. Before joining Ford, Darren was vice president at Rockefeller Foundation. Previously, he was COO of Harlem’s Abyssinian Development Corporation. Darren co-founded both the US Impact Investing Alliance and the Presidents’ Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy. He serves on many boards, including the National Gallery of Art, Carnegie Hall, the High Line, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, and Committee to Protect Journalists.

Program

10:30 AM - Doors Open and Registration

11:00 AM - Conversation: Hillary Thomas-Lake, Keith Thomas, and more.

1:00 PM - Reception

2:00 PM - End

RSVPs Closed

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Visitor Health and Safety Practices during COVID-19

Mask Recommendation

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Event Information

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