For the past two years I have been writing a series of columns about the complicated intersection of inclusive diversity and robust speech. Although my last column appeared just two months ago, in some respects it seems like ancient history. Maybe it is.
Because on Memorial Day, May 25, 2020, a Minneapolis Police Officer named Derek Chauvin jammed his knee against the neck of George Floyd, an African American man, for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, until Floyd was dead. Those 526 excruciating seconds, recorded and widely disseminated, may have changed the course of U.S. history. That incident has certainly changed the way that we are currently talking about race in particular and about diversity in general.
Continue reading Diversity & Speech Part 12: Systemic Racism – by Carlos E. Cortés
I was excited to return to Cincinnati where my father had been the CFO of the American Jewish Archives. I was on the road, speaking on Religious Diversity in our Schools and at Work at the invitation of a Women of Faith event sponsored by American Jewish Committee, Xavier University & the Brueggeman Center for Dialogue, Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati, and the Jewish Community Relations Council.
As an undergraduate student at Morehouse College, Kevin Womack double majored in mathematics and computer science. To study two such demanding fields was doubly difficult, he says. But, crediting his mother (an engineer) and his father (a computer scientist), Womack says that quantitative reasoning came naturally to him and he was undaunted by the workload. Now a student in the master’s degree program at the Data Science Institute at Columbia University, Womack excels in his coursework and is an advocate for increased diversity in data science. Here, he discusses his background, his career goals, and his commitment to diversity.