This year’s Diversity Summit hosted by DU took place on Thursday, Jan. 19 to Friday, Jan. 20 to promote and talk about diversity on campus and throughout the nation. Since 2001, the Diversity Summit at DU has been an event in which the DU community can come together to talk about diversity. This year’s Diversity Summit was themed “Many Stories, Many Truths: Overcoming Challenges in Building Community.” The summit hosted many keynote speakers, workshops and classes to offer spaces to talk about the complex issue of diversity.

Dr. Julianne Malveaux, labor economist and author, spoke at DU’s 2017 Diversity Summit on Thursday, Jan. 19. Her “master class” was on media, gender and the economy. The room was packed—many students and community members had to crowd in the back of the room in order to attend.

Dr. Malveaux began by telling the story of how she was almost lynched in Mississippi, the place where she lived most of her childhood, when she was a young teenager. She managed to describe the story in a light and funny manner, despite the severity of the topic. In fact, she got the crowd laughing throughout the duration of the speech.

Besides her humor, Dr. Malveaux was honest. She spoke of her views toward President Donald Trump, who she continuously referred to as, “that man.” The author told the room that she is uncertain what the economy will look like under Trump’s administration, but that she can only hope that President Trump’s constituency will keep him honest. She gave the class a space to express their emotions, yet still managed to have the crowd leave feeling hopeful.

There were many other classes and workshops that gave students and the community a space to have difficult conversations about diversity at not only the university, but also the across nation as a whole.

On Friday, Jan. 20, Kristy Kumar, a graduate student in the International Human Rights program, held a workshop on decolonizing the classroom, both as a teacher and as a student. Again, many people crowded into the small room to attend. In the class, she stressed that those who are seeking to work in social justice must know that they aren’t going to abolish injustice, but that they are capable of working towards reducing the harm done because of injustice.
For the seventeenth year in a row, the Diversity Summit provided the DU community with resources to help reduce the harm caused by injustice, as well as inform and give a space to have difficult conversations surrounding diversity.