The IDEA Initiative, under the sponsorship of the Office of the President, continued to align resources, programs, and events to advance inclusion, diversity, equity, and access in partnership with members of the Scripps Community.
Fall 2017
Workshops
Intergroup Dialogue Workshop for Faculty
Dr. Anna Yeakley facilitated a workshop for Scripps faculty on using the tools of intergroup dialogue to frame discussions and support diverse identities, experiences, and perspectives in the classroom.
Intergroup Dialogue Workshop for Students
Dr. Anna Yeakley offered Scripps students the opportunity to learn the difference between dialogue and debate and practice communicating with each other using dialogue skills of active listening, cognitive empathy, and reflective inquiry. An interactive activity supported the practice of dialogue skills around issues of social identity.
Three-Part Program
Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in the Age of Trump
The three-part program, co-sponsored by Scripps Public Events, included a moderated conversation, a panel discussion, and a ConverAction.
Nasty Women: A Tuesday Noon Conversation with Carina Chocano
The first event of the series featured Join Chocano and Scripps’s Dorothy Cruickshank Backstrand Chair of Gender and Women’s Studies Piya Chatterjee. In the spirit of Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, and Susan Sontag, Carina Chocano’s You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Trainwrecks, & Other Mixed Messages examines the dramatic and often damaging ways that pop culture influences female identity. Cultural touchstones—from Bugs Bunny to Playboy Bunnies, from Flashdance to Frozen —serve as entry points to Chocano’s personal reflections and surface some familiar truths about the challenges of locating oneself in the face of an often-abstract ideal of womanhood.
Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in the Age of Trump – Panel Discussion
The second event was a panel discussion that featured Chocano in conversation with Nasty Women anthology editors Kate Harding, Samhita Mukhopadhyay, and Scripps’ Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Writing Kimberly Drake. The focus was on the Trump administration’s policy priorities, which have ushered in undulating waves of panic, frustration, and outrage. For the feminist contributors to Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding’s anthology Nasty Women, putting pen to page was cited as one of the most important ways to mobilize. The editors, along with Carina Chocano, one of their Los Angeles¬â€“based authors, visited to talk about writing as activism with Scripps Writing Program Director and Associate Professor Kimberly Drake.
Nasty Women: A ConverAction
The series concluded with a ConverAction facilitated by Scripps’s Dorothy Cruickshank Backstrand Chair of Gender and Women’s Studies Piya Chatterjee, Estefania Gallo ‘18, and Sahana Prakash Mehta ’20.
Spring 2018
Workshops
Critical Conversations: A 2-Part Workshop
The workshop built on previous workshops offered for staff on Power, Privilege, and Oppression, Deep Listening, Connected Speaking, Genuine Inquiry, and What’s the “T?” The two-day session focused on understanding and practicing inclusive language, having critical conversations, and listening to understand.
Organizational development consultant and trainer, dr. becky martinez, facilitated the 2-day, 6-hr sessions. Dr. Martinez focuses on social justice, leadership, and organizational change. Her work focuses on dismantling systems of oppression through critical dialogue and reflection intertwined with theoretical foundations. She works with organizations seeking to meet shifting demands, resources, and leadership to develop goals, vision, and purpose. She believes that while organizations may have a depth of diversity, there is a great deal of work to do to create an inclusive environment, and it is our responsibility as community members to create such space.
Two-Part Program
Heidi Gruenbaum, Senior Researcher, University of the Western Cape, Centre for Humanities Research, was a visiting scholar in the spring and two programs centered on her work.
Conversation on Healing: Truth, Reconciliation, and Restorative Justice
Cosponsored by Scripps, Public Events, The Intercollegiate Feminist Center and the IDEA Initiative
Heidi Gruenbaum, Senior Researcher, University of the Western Cape, Centre for Humanities Research will join Jenny Escobar, Restorative Justice Trainer & Researcher, The California Conference for Equality and Justice (CCEJ) in a conversation about truth, reconciliation, and restorative justice.
Dr. Grunebaum holds the position of Senior Researcher at the Center for Humanities Research (CHR), University of the Western Cape, South Africa and is a public scholar, activist, and poet. Her work focuses on social and aesthetic responses to the afterlives of genocide, war and mass violence, specifically the Jewish Holocaust, apartheid and the Nakba in Israel-Palestine. She has worked and written extensively on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa. Her writing appears in international academic, activist and creative publications.
Dr. Escobar is a highly regarded facilitator in creating experiences for individuals to come together to heal, and create transformative changes in their lives and community. She offers individuals and communities a path to healing in order to live a full and happy life. Her practice includes approaches to creating cultural-shift based on restorative justice practices, such as community building circles, restorative dialogue, and one-to-one restorative teaching practices.
Community Healing: Truth, Reconciliation, and Restorative Justice: A ConverAction
This ConverAction was facilitated by Scripps Assistant Dean and Director of SCORE and was a follow-up to the conversation between Drs. Heidi Gruenbaum and Jenny Escobar on healing after traumatic events such as Apartheid, the Jewish Holocaust, and war and mass violence. The ConverAction explored possible healing and restorative justice practices for the Scripps community.
ConverActions are moderated noontime discussions where students, faculty, and staff explore the national climate on race, community, and change through the lens of selected Scripps Presents programs. Open to the entire Scripps community, these events offer a forum to address topics and themes raised by prominent thought leaders, hear perspectives from a panel of faculty, students, and staff, and participate in a conversation about the implications and opportunities for change—on and off campus.
Information Sourcing
The IDEA website continued to serve as a resource tool for information on campus messages, events, programs, and resources related to inclusion, diversity, equity, and access. Examples include the 7C Diversity Committee programs and news, the President’s Updates on Diversity and Inclusion, and links to the College’s harassment policy, administrative departments, and student organizations.