SYMPOSIUMS

Fall 2025 Symposium | Growing Our Souls: The praxis of emergence

Emergent Strategy Workshop/Presentation with guest facilitators Kavitha Rao, Luis Alejandro Tapia, and Kelly McGowan

10 AM - 1 PM | Location TBD

Student-led Workshops and Discussions on connections between the Learning Collaborative Urgent Questions, the Common Read/Grace Lee Boggs, and Emergent Strategy/adrienne maree brown

2 PM - 4 PM | FPH classrooms 101-108

Documentary Screening of American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs

6 PM - 8 PM | Location TBD

Guest Presenter Bios:

Kavitha Rao (she/her) is a mother, facilitator, mediator, consultant, and practitioner. As a daughter of immigrants to the US, she has always been curious about difference and how we make meaning through connection to land, community, and place. Kavitha brings over 20 years experience in the non-profit sector focused on transformational leadership and facilitation, building community and authentic partnerships across difference, and using creativity and collective visioning to work towards reparations and healing. Her understanding of the possibility of change and healing is deeply influenced by her training in yoga therapy, cranio-sacral therapy, ayurveda, and mindfulness. She brings these tools to her leadership and facilitation work recognizing how important knowing ourselves and personal healing is in our efforts to heal our planet and build community. She has worked with CWC since 2006 as a facilitator, trainer and consultant and is excited to bring more embodied practice to our offerings and our understanding of the many ways to support change. Prior to that she co-founded Common Fire, a nonprofit that created intentional communities centered in justice, accessibility, and sustainability. Kavitha is a member of the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute team of facilitators, mediators and coaches; serves on the board for Soul Fire Farm; and is a core consultant to the Wildseed Community Farm and Healing Village. She offers deep gratitude for her many influences – the grassroots groups around the world that she has had the privilege to work with, her mentor Lillie Allen of Be Present Inc., and her many colleagues, mutual-mentors, and teachers along the way.

Luis Alejandro Tapia is an Equity Coach + Consultant for the Center for Strategic Solutions. The son of Dominican immigrants, he brings almost two decades of experience in community and youth development. Mr. Tapia has facilitated unique programs for a range of NYC agencies and is also the founder of BlackBoyRise. Mr. Tapia's journey from participant to director to consultant aids him in engaging authentically with youth and their communities. He specializes in harnessing the enthusiasm and skills of those he serves, promoting love, power, and connection through experiential team learning and coaching. Mr. Tapia is committed to transforming leadership and learning into spaces of justice, equity and freedom. He serves as a social impact and equity consultant, a racial and restorative justice coach and trainer, circle keeper, social justice educator, and facilitator at the intersections of spirituality, justice, healing and liberation.

Kelly McGowan partners with community, organization and movement builders who are working for equity and justice through personal practice, emergent strategy, participatory decision making and collective action. She is a founding member of What's Next Now, a collaboration of equity consultants dedicated to building individual and collective capacity to have impactful conversations about race in equity and justice work, and a facilitator with Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute. Since being a student leader in the US Anti-Apartheid and Divestment Movement, Kelly has worked for racial and economic justice at the intersection of social crisis and political will (ACT-UP, harm reduction). She earned a degree in Human Development and Family Studies from Cornell University and a master’s degree with a focus in health policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Spring 2025 Symposium Series | In These Times: movements, media and science

Screening: TikTok Boom followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Shalini Kantayya (94F)

Tuesday, April 1st at 6 pm | Adele Simmons Hall Auditorium

Dissecting one of the most influential platforms of the contemporary social media landscape, TIKTOK, BOOM., directed by CODED BIAS filmmaker Shalini Kantayya, examines the algorithmic, socio-political, economic, and cultural influences and impact of the history-making app. This rigorous exploration balances a genuine interest in the TikTok community and its innovative mechanics with a healthy skepticism around the security issues, global political challenges, and racial biases behind the platform. A cast of Gen Z subjects, helmed by influencer Feroza Aziz, remains at its center, making this one of the most needed and empathetic films exploring what it means to be a digital native.

With this new work, Kantayya, a Sundance Fellow, continues her engagement in the space where technology meets, amplifies, and opposes our humanity. Her incisive, current look at the power and complexity of tech continues to advance a conversation that is bettered by her careful stewardship.

About Shalini Kantayya

Two-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker Shalini Kantayya (F94) directs fiction and nonfiction films that artfully marry the future of science with the future of story. TikTok, Boom, was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and was an official selection at SXSW. Her critically-acclaimed 2020 Sundance film, Coded Bias, was broadcast nationally on PBS’s Independent Lens and globally on Netflix in April 2021. The film has been nominated for a Critics’ Choice, and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary. The film won Best Director at the Social Impact Media Awards, and the Visionary Filmmaker Award at GlobeDocs. Both TikTok, Boom and Coded Bias received Emmy nominations. Shalini’s debut feature, Catching the Sun, released globally on Netflix on Earth Day 2016 with Executive Producer Leonardo DiCaprio and was named a New York Times Critics’ Pick. Shalini is a TED Fellow, a William J. Fulbright Scholar, and Concordia Studios Artist Fellow.

Movements are Ecosystems: Grounding in the Moment

Wednesday, April 2nd at 4 pm | Franklin Patterson Hall

A talk with Michelle Martinez, Director of the Tishman Center for Social Justice and the Environment at the University of Michigan.

Amidst the turmoil of the slow walk to authoritarianism, activists and organizers are strategizing their next best move whilst responding to multiple urgent political and ecological crises. There are key lessons learned through the last twenty years of uprising from the Bush era Anti-War Movement to Occupy Wall Street, and from the Climate Movement to Abolition, to more recent Movement for Black Lives, MeToo and Palestinian Liberation actions. Our movements are ecosystems that support simultaneous complimentary, and at times contradictory, moments that reveal our collective power; and different theories of social change nourish the ecosystem and build resilience. Michelle's talk asks, How do we move from the individualized, 'What can I do' to the collective, 'what have we been doing', positioning ourselves to learn from a continuous set of relations and responsibilities, reflective of a theory of change that aligns with our worldview?

Movements are Ecosystems Workshop

Wednesday, April 2nd from 12:00 - 2:00, lunch will be provided

This workshop explores social, political and ecological landscaping and how to begin to measure the best next step for resilient social change. Fill out this form to register by 3/28.

About Michelle Martinez

Michelle Martinez was born in and raised by the Latine diaspora of Southwest Detroit. She is a climate justice organizer fighting for the survival of humans and more than humans on traditional Anishnaabe territories. Currently Martinez is the Director of the Tishman Center for Social Justice and the Environment at the University of Michigan and a lecturer in its School of Environment and Sustainability where she trains students studying environmental justice in social change theory and practice. She is a founding member of the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition and served as its Statewide coordinator and Executive Director from 2017 to 2022.

Fall 2024 Symposium Events

Wednesday, October 30th at 4pm in FPH Main Lecture Hall

Y(our) Piece of the Puzzle: Student Movements Past, Present, and Future

with guest presenters by Storm Ervin, Ayanna Poole and Andrea Thurston

moderated by Gaurav Jashnani, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Africana Studies and Social Transformation

University of Missouri alumni and organizers of Concerned Student 1950 (CS1950) will engage participants in discussions around the impact of student movements through critical analysis of the impact of activism at Missouri’s flagship and beyond. In understanding the historical lens of CS1950 and how organizers’ work shaped the trajectory of personal and professional development, attendees are encouraged to recognize how their fight against injustices fits into the larger struggle for liberation.

Tuesday, October 29th at 1pm | FPH West Lecture Hall

Film Screening: Concerned Student 1950

directed by Adam Dietrich Varun Bajaj Kellan Marvin

Followed by a discussion facilitated by Professor Gaurav Jashnani

A series of racist acts prompts three University of Missouri students to pick up cameras and take us inside Concerned Student 1950, the student movement whose peaceful protest brought down the college president. Filmed in real-time, this documentary enables viewers to observe how and why these students were galvanized to action, and to understand on both an intellectual and visceral level the rationale that drove them.

Wednesday, October 30th from 12-1:30pm |FPH Faculty / Staff Lounge

Symposium Workshop: Y(our) Piece of the Puzzle

facilitated by Storm Ervin and Ayanna Poole

space is limited to 30 participants, register here by 10/24.

The workshop is designed to build the capacity of student leaders by identifying their strengths and using them to organize around a specific/student-selected cause. Through this workshop, Hampshire College scholars will gain hands-on experience and explore how their piece of the puzzle contributes to the livelihood of marginalized groups around them and across the nation.

Symposium Presenters

Storm Ervin is a national violence and victimization researcher and technical assistance provider. Her work focuses on community violence. gun violence, and domestic violence interventions. She works with national and local government and organizations to strengthen the evidence base around these topical areas. At Mizzou, she was a founding member of Concerned Student 1-9-5-0 and involved in student activism movements. She draws on her experience as an organizer to endeavor toward safer and free communities.

Ayanna Poole, founding member of Concerned Student 1950, received her BA from the University of Missouri in 2015, majoring in English Literature and minoring in both Sociology and African American Studies. She now serves the great state of Texas as an educator, instructional coach, author and publisher. Her contributions to the world of activism continue through secondary education as she trains teachers of Dallas, TX how to develop culturally competent classrooms to build leadership, inclusivity and academic excellence in inner city schools. She looks to further her education by attending law school in the Fall of 2027.

Andrea Thurston, founding member of Concerned Student 1950, has worked toward educational equity as an educator, analyst, and consultant. Her platform comes from her endeavors at the University of Missouri post-Ferguson to encourage the institution to confront its inequities, using past shortcomings as a framework to create an equitable and intersectional learning environment for the future. Thurston earned a B.A. in Psychology and Sociology from the University of Missouri and a Master of Science in Education and Education Policy from Johns Hopkins University. Her journey navigating inequitable systems fuels her passion for closing achievement, attainment, and opportunity gaps. She seeks to continue to yield successful policy change on the local and state level while keeping the voices of historically excluded communities at the center.

Gaurav Jashnani is a scholar, educator, and organizer working at the nexus of psychology, Black studies, and critical university studies. They hold a master's in counseling from Columbia University and a doctorate in psychology from the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, with certificates in Africana studies and American studies. Prior to working at Hampshire, they were a postdoctoral fellow at CUNY's Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean.

Spring 2024: Speculative Praxis

with JD Stokely 07F, Lily Xie, & Reuben Telushkin 08F

moderated by Sarah Jenkins, Assistant Professor of Animation, Creative Arts, and Visual Culture

Wednesday, March 13, 2024 at 4pm, FPH Main Lecture Hall

Speculation is the act of imagining beyond the confines of our current material reality. Praxis is an iterative, reflective approach to taking action that involves moving between practice and theory to create more just and liberatory worlds (Freire, 1985). Through Speculative Praxis, we invite artists (who are also scholars and organizers) to reflect on the future of art making and what artistic practice and process can offer us as we imagine futures that are humanizing, life affirming, and emancipatory. How are artists drawing on historical legacies to imagine beyond what currently exists in the social and natural world? How are they engaging these legacies to enact more liberatory futures? How can artistic practices use past, present, and future technologies to democratize who has the power to make art? What power is unleashed when we center the creative process — not just the end product? How are artists navigating and transforming the pressures and confines placed on their practice by capitalism and automation?

Fall 2023: Decolonize & Decarbonize

Wednesday, October 25, 2023 at 4pm, FPH Main Lecture Hall

a conversation at the intersection of (de)colonization and climate change with

Jean-Luc Pierite (Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana), Indigenous leader, activist, & designer
Eric Toensmeire 90F, author and educator on regenerative agriculture and carbon farming
Rowen White (Mohawk) 97F, Seed Keeper/farmer and Indigenous seed & food sovereignty activist

Moderated by Andrew Yang, Lash Professor of Environmental Education and Sustainability

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