Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Celebration: A New Sense of Direction
Join us in honoring the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, January 16, 2023, at 12 pm EST. The event will be held at the GSU Metcalf Hall, 775 Commonwealth Ave, Boston MA 02215.
Hosted by Boston University’s Dean of Students office, Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, and the Senior Diversity Officer. We are grateful for the support and sponsorship of our co-hosts, the City of Boston and the New England Conservatory.
If you are not able to attend this event in-person, it will also be live streamed here below on Monday, January 16, at 12 pm EST.
Program
Event Welcome
Jason Campbell-Foster, EdD, interim Associate Provost & Dean of Students
Musical Selection #1
New England Conservatory
Remarks
Andrea Taylor, Senior Diversity Officer, Office of the Senior Diversity Officer
Reading
Porsha Olayiwola, Poet Laureate, City of Boston
MLK Program Introduction
Nick Bates, Interim Director of the Howard Thurman Center
Reading
Kiara Limontas
(CAS ’23), member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.
Introduction of Mayor
Andrea Taylor, Senior Diversity Officer, Office of the Senior Diversity Officer
Remarks by Mayor
Mayor Michelle Wu, City of Boston
Musical Selection #2
New England Conservatory
Introduction of Dr. Andrea Kalyn
Jason Campbell-Foster, EdD, interim Associate Provost & Dean of Students
Remarks from New England Conservatory
Dr. Andrea Kalyn, President, New England Conservatory
Introduction to the Conversation
Gloria Ampadu-Darko
(CAS’24), HTC Student Ambassador
Featured Conversation
Dr. Derrick L. Williams, Professor of Communication Studies AKA Blue Collar Scholar
Nick Bates, Interim Director of the Howard Thurman Center
Musical Selection #3
New England Conservatory
Remarks
Victoria Sahani, Associate Provost for Community & Inclusion and Professor of Law, Boston University
Closing
Nick Bates, Interim Director of the Howard Thurman Center
Sing-A-Long
with lead vocal by Rozime Lindsey, CFA ’23, Boston University and melody by the New England Conservatory
Amazing Grace
This Little Light of Mine
Lift Every Voice and Sing
*End of Program*
Overview
Open to the public
Boston University
Monday, January 16, 2023, at 12 pm EST
George Sherman Union
Metcalf Hall, second floor
775 Commonwealth Ave, Boston MA 02215
In-Person and Virtual
Join us in-person for this event at the George Sherman Union. This event will also be live streamed on this page, above.
Occasion
This year’s theme is based on a speech titled A New Sense of Direction delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. a few months prior to his assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968. This speech was delivered to the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and it was one of King’s last thorough explanations of the non-violent strategy. King grapples with the state of the movement, the question of “where we are” and “where do we go from here.” Additionally, King offers commentary on urban poverty, economic justice, and the emergence of new movements.
Featured Conversation
Dr. Derrick L. Williams, PhD aka “Prof D” and “the Blue Collar Scholar” is an activist-academic, communication specialist, and experienced college student-program developer. Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while growing up in the small coal-mining town of Graysville, just outside of his birthplace of Birmingham, Alabama, he has been speaking before audiences since the age of four. Derrick comes from a humble working-class family as the great-grandson of Alabama-Black-Belt sharecroppers, grandson of a coal miner, and son of an ironworker and daycare child educator. Fostering a personal connection with students to facilitate lifelong learning stands at the center of his zeal for teaching. His educational philosophy can be summed up in a quote by Dr. King: “The purpose of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.”
Nick Bates is the Interim Director of the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground. Nick is an interpreter of Howard Thurman using the life, work, and philosophy of Howard Thurman as a framework to engage initiatives on equity and inclusion. He has committed himself thoroughly to researching Thurman and finding ways to assist other people in developing a relationship with the work of Howard and Sue Bailey Thurman. Nick is a career educator working at colleges and universities as an instructor and administrator in diversity, equity, and inclusion roles.
Speakers
Gloria Ampadu-Darko (CAS’24), HTC Student Ambassador
Nick Bates, Interim Director of the Howard Thurman Center, Boston University
Jason Campbell-Foster EdD., interim Associate Provost & Dean of Students, Boston University
Dr. Andrea Kalyn, President, New England Conservatory
Kiara Limontas (CAS ’23), President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.
Rozime Lindsey, CFA ’23, Boston University
Porsha Olayiwola, Poet Laureate, City of Boston
Victoria Sahani, Associate Provost for Community & Inclusion and Professor of Law, Boston University
Andrea Taylor, Senior Diversity Officer, Office of the Senior Diversity Officer, Boston University
Michelle Wu, Mayor, City of Boston
Dr. Derrick L. Williams, Professor of Communication Studies at Cuyahoga Community College – Metropolitan Campus
Music
Performed by student ensembles from New England Conservatory
Speaker Bios
Nick Bates, Interim Director of the Howard Thurman Center, Boston University
Nick Bates is the Interim Director of the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground. Nick is an interpreter of Howard Thurman using the life, work, and philosophy of Howard Thurman as a framework to engage initiatives on equity and inclusion. He has committed himself thoroughly to researching Thurman and finding ways to assist other people in developing a relationship with the work of Howard and Sue Bailey Thurman. Nick is a career educator working at colleges and universities as an instructor and administrator in diversity, equity, and inclusion roles.
Jason Campbell-Foster, EdD. interim Associate Provost & Dean of Students, Boston University
Dr. Jason Campbell-Foster is the interim Associate Provost and Dean of Students. Jason has served as the Senior Associate Dean of Students since 2019. Prior to working at Boston University, Dean Campbell-Foster held a variety of leadership roles at Northeastern University. As the deputy to the Associate Provost and Dean of Students, Dean Campbell-Foster works closely with the leadership in the division to deliver a world-class experience for students where they are able to thrive and reach their full potential. A native of Buffalo, New York, Dean Campbell-Foster earned his BA in English from SUNY Fredonia, a Masters in College Student Personnel Administration from Canisius College, and his Doctor of Education from Northeastern University. As a doctoral student, Dean Campbell-Foster focused his dissertation research on LGBT student participation in digital collective action communities. When he is not on campus, he can be found gardening at home in Framingham, reading or spending time with his family.
Dr. Andrea Kalyn, President, New England Conservatory
Andrea Kalyn, New England Conservatory’s 17th and first female President, began her tenure in January 2019. Dr. Kalyn’s deep commitment to musical excellence, her strong relationship with faculty, and her profound sense of responsibility for music education are hallmarks of her exemplary leadership. Dr. Kalyn is fundamentally committed to advancing the place of music in the world and to strengthening connections among composers, performers, and audiences.
Under Dr. Kalyn’s leadership, NEC launched its first-ever Collaboration Challenge—an open invitation to the entire NEC community to submit ideas that would build on the Conservatory’s tradition of educational excellence and innovation. From this challenge, three new collaborative academic and student life programs emerged—Theory Reimagined, Song Lab, and the First-Year Experience. Major funding from a new Catalyst Fund supports current and future initiatives including new curricular opportunities, tech-enabled spaces, and technology-empowered platforms.
Due to her collaborative leadership and nimble planning, NEC emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic as a stronger community dedicated to serving Greater Boston neighborhoods and partner programs through music. With new staff and faculty appointments and the undertaking of an ambitious strategic plan, Dr. Kalyn is securing the future of NEC for the next generation of exceptional artists and music educators.
A trained musicologist and pianist, Dr. Kalyn holds a PhD in musicology from the Eastman School of Music, where her research centered on 20th century American music. She serves on the Board of Trustees of WGBH, the Board of Directors of the League of American Orchestras, and chairs the ProArts Consortium.
Prior to her arrival at NEC, Dr. Kalyn served as Dean of Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she also was a professor of music. During her tenure, Dr. Kalyn secured major capital funding, significant donations of musical instruments, and a major gift from jazz legend Sonny Rollins. Entrepreneurship and collaboration was evident throughout her curricular work, which included founding Oberlin’s entrepreneurship programs, accelerator and pitch competitions; founding the Oberlin-Como Piano Academy in partnership with the Lake Como International Academy; creating the department of Pedagogy, Advocacy, and Community Engagement; the creation of a new major in jazz voice; extending the American Roots residency; overseeing the launch of the Artist Diploma in Piano Technology; developing new partnerships with Steinway & Sons and the Shanghai Conservatory; and designing the Center for Convergence. Under her leadership, Oberlin opened the William and Helen Birenbaum Innovation and Performance Space, an underground performance club; restructured its composition department; commissioned new works; and relaunched the Oberlin Music recording label distributed by Naxos.
Porsha Olayiwola, Poet Laureate, City of Boston
A Jamaica Plain resident, Porsha Olayiwola is the Artistic Director at MassLEAP, a literary nonprofit organization in Massachusetts serving youth artists. She also co-founded The House Slam, a poetry slam venue at the Haley House Bakery Café in Roxbury that offers a free poetry slam and open mic events twice a month. Porsha is the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and 2015 National Poetry Slam Champion. In 2018, she was named by GK100 as one of Boston’s Most Influential People of Color. She is the founder of the Roxbury Poetry Festival and the author of i shimmer sometimes, too. Olayiwola earned her MFA from Emerson College and was named Brandeis University’s Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence starting in Fall 2022.
Rooted in Afro-futurism, magical realism, and sci-fi, Porsha’s work is a spell in response to the world around us that carves out the future, reimagines the past, and outlives the present on her own terms. Often times, those intersectionally-marginalized are not given a voice nor resources to dictate their circumstances. Porsha’s writing uses a dangerous imagination that allows folks of the queer, woman, and black diaspora to dream up their best selves, outlive their oppressors, and dictate their joy. As an educator and organizer Porsha seeks to cultivate spaces for emerging artists that allow them to deepen their understanding of craft and community. She has served youth artists in the City of Boston for the last several years and continues to grow spaces for artists and audience of the art. In applying to the Boston Poet Laureate position, Porsha sought to revolutionize how the City of Boston interacts with poetry. She is interested in meeting with and exploring organizations and artists in the local area as well as representing them in the national sphere. Her commitment lies in youth artists, emerging artists, and building community spaces that grow.
Victoria Sahani, Associate Provost for Community & Inclusion and Professor of Law, Boston University
Victoria Sahani was appointed Associate Provost for Community & Inclusion and professor of law in the School of Law in October 2022. In this role, Victoria helps guide BU’s efforts to ensure inclusive excellence of faculty and academic appointees, nurture a positive campus climate, and enhance diversity and inclusion within the academic program. She also provides leadership in implementing two essential pillars of BU’s 2030 Strategic Plan – “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion” and “Community – Big Yet Small” – as the University works to enhance the environment and opportunities it affords all members of the community. This includes a growing portfolio of programs, among them the Target of Opportunity Hiring Program, BU D&I STARS Program, University Scholars Program, and Faculty & Staff Community Networks, as well as the BU Arts Initiative, the Newbury Center, and the LGBTQIA+ Center for Faculty & Staff.
Victoria arrived at BU from the Sandra Day O’Connor Law School at Arizona State University (ASU), where she was a professor of law, associate dean of special projects, and director of the Faculty Inclusion for Research System Transformation (FIRST) university-wide initiative. Victoria began her law teaching career at Washington and Lee University School of Law (W&L) before joining ASU in 2017. Victoria is a productive, internationally recognized legal scholar in the fields of arbitration law and litigation finance law and an award-winning teacher. She worked extensively at ASU and W&L to develop policies, procedures, programs, and initiatives targeted at faculty recruitment, retention, and professional development to ensure inclusive excellence and attention to diversity among academic appointees. She likewise worked to nurture a campus-wide culture of inclusion and positivity at both schools with programs designed to foster awareness and commitment to issues of racial and ethnic difference, diversity, and inclusion.
Prior to teaching law, Victoria was deputy director of arbitration and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in North America for the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) International Court of Arbitration and deputy director of the Arbitration and ADR Committee of the US Council for International Business (USCIB). Before joining the ICC and USCIB, she practiced law and worked on affordable housing and community development real estate transactions, housing discrimination claims in New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina, and matters involving American Indian law. She continues to hold several leadership positions in the international arbitration community, including chair of the Academic Council of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration, and published the first book in the world about her field, Third-Party Funding in International Arbitration (2nd ed., 2017), along with numerous book chapters and articles in top law reviews. She received her law degree from Harvard Law School and her undergraduate degree in psychology from Harvard College and remains an active member of the bar in New York and the District of Columbia.
Andrea Taylor, Senior Diversity Officer, Office of the Senior Diversity Officer, Boston University
In her role as BU’s first Senior Diversity Officer, Andrea L. Taylor (COM’68) ties together two long-running strands of her life: her commitment to Boston University and her dedication to social justice.
As Senior Diversity Officer, Taylor chairs the University’s Antiracism Working Group and its Community Safety Advisory Group. She also connects and supports a range of diversity, equity, and inclusion activities across BU’s campuses, including those being undertaken by the Board of Trustees Committee on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion; the University’s individual schools and colleges; the Dean of Students office; Enrollment & Student Administration; and the Office of Diversity & Inclusion in the Provost’s Office.
Taylor’s activism began when she accompanied her uncle, NAACP attorney Willard L. Brown (LAW’35,’36), to demonstrations and protests. In the wake of King’s assassination in 1968, Taylor joined fellow members of Umoja, BU’s Black student union, demanding—and winning—increased recruitment of and support for, Black students on campus.
After a journalism career that included posts at the Boston Globe, WGBH, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Taylor joined the Ford Foundation. There she helped establish the Media Fund and supported social justice film projects, including the award-winning series Eyes on the Prize, which tells the stories of the ordinary men and women who pushed for change during the civil rights era.
Taylor is one of nine family members to attend BU, including her parents, Della Brown Taylor Hardman (CFA’45) and Francis Taylor Sr. (CFA’56). She established the Andrea L. Taylor Family Scholarship Fund and supports the BU community by providing need-based scholarships to undergraduate students at the College of Communication and the College of Fine Arts.
Dr. Derrick L. Williams, Professor of Communication Studies at Cuyahoga Community College – Metropolitan Campus
Dr. Derrick L. Williams, PhD aka “Prof D” and “the Blue Collar Scholar” is an activist-academic, communication specialist, and experienced college student-program developer. Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while growing up in the small coal-mining town of Graysville, just outside of his birthplace of Birmingham, Alabama, he has been speaking before audiences since the age of four. Derrick comes from a humble working-class family as the great-grandson of Alabama-Black-Belt sharecroppers, grandson of a coal miner, and son of an ironworker and daycare child educator. Fostering a personal connection with students to facilitate lifelong learning stands at the center of his zeal for teaching. His educational philosophy can be summed up in a quote by Dr. King: “The purpose of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.”
Michelle Wu, Mayor, City of Boston
Michelle Wu is the Mayor of Boston. She is a daughter of immigrants, Boston Public Schools mom to two boys, MBTA commuter, and fierce believer that we can solve our deepest challenges through building community. As Mayor, Michelle is working in coalition to deliver bold, systemic change and make Boston a city for everyone.
Mayor Wu has been a voice for accessibility, transparency, and community engagement in city leadership. First elected to the Boston City Council in November 2013 at the age of 28, Wu is the first Asian-American woman to serve on the Council. In January 2016, she was elected President of the City Council by her colleagues in a unanimous vote, becoming the first woman of color to serve as Council President.
As a Councilor, Mayor Wu was the lead sponsor of Boston’s Paid Parental Leave ordinance and Healthcare Equity ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity — both of which passed unanimously through the Council and were signed into law by former Mayor Martin J. Walsh. She also authored Boston’s Communications Access ordinance, which guarantees translation, interpretation and assistive technology for access to City services regardless of English language proficiency or communications disability.
Wu got her start in City Hall working for Mayor Thomas M. Menino as a Rappaport Fellow in Law and Public Policy, where she created the city’s first guide to the restaurant permitting process from start to finish, and was also a driving force to launch Boston’s food truck program. She later served as statewide Constituency Director in the U.S. Senate campaign of her former law professor, Elizabeth Warren.
As a former restaurant owner, legal services attorney, and legal guardian of her younger sister, Wu understands firsthand the barriers that families and communities face. She has a background in community advocacy, having worked at the WilmerHale Legal Services Center in Jamaica Plain, providing legal advice to low-income small business owners, as well as at the Medical-Legal Partnership at Boston Medical Center on immigration law cases for survivors of domestic violence.
In 2016, Councilor Wu was honored as one of Ten Outstanding Young Leaders by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and as part of Marie Claire magazine’s New Guard: The 50 Most Influential Women in America.
Mayor Wu graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. She is fluent in Mandarin and Spanish, and lives in Roslindale with her husband Conor and her sons Blaise and Cass.