Every year, the University organizes the Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns, an event aiming to explore global issues in a niche seminar environment for alumni, parents, and members of the community. The event, which began in 2002, ranges from broad topics such as food, sports, and music to ideas such as the political economy of oil, mass incarcerations, and artificial intelligence. The seminar is endowed by James Shasha ’50, P’82.
This year, the seminar will be focused on “Dialogue for Change: From Conflict to Action,” and will be held Friday, Nov. 14, and Saturday, Nov. 15. The event will be curated by Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Nicole Stanton, Executive Director of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life Khalilah Brown-Dean, and Assistant Professor of Government Hari Ramesh.
This comes as part of the University’s broader program entitled “Renewing Democracy’s Promise,” which was announced by University President Michael Roth ’78 in an all-campus email sent on Sept. 7.
Renewing Democracy’s Promise is a three-year-long initiative aimed at cultivating democratic culture by tackling increased political polarization in the United States through dialogue, community building, civic engagement, and coalition building. This year’s Shasha Seminar is one of the first campus events under this initiative, looking to equip students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community partners with skills and practices to, in Roth’s words, “strengthen civil society.”
“Dialogue for Change” will emphasize the nation’s urgent need for collaboration and connection from different perspectives.
“Dialogue for change is an opportunity to bring the Wesleyan community, the Middletown community, our broader alumni groups, together to practice the skill of having conversations with people who have different experiences than you,” Stanton said. “To actually have an opportunity to learn one-on-one with a faculty member in a seminar environment.”
The event will include interactive sessions, panels, and dialogue-based training with various community stakeholders. Keynote speakers include established leaders from various sectors.
“[The keynote speakers] are government officials,” Stanton said. “They are prominent business people. They are artists. They are educators and organizers and scholars. We have Eboo Patel, who is a champion of the idea of interfaith learning and literacy. We have Anna Deavere Smith, who is a noted performance artist and theater practitioner, and Sheila Heen, who is a professor at Harvard University and one of the directors of the Harvard Negotiation Project. This is going to be just a terrific bringing together of people who care about this really important topic.”
The event will also feature a workshop facilitated by Joseph Bubman and Phillipe Cunningham of Urban Rural Action, a group dedicated to increasing civic engagement and community problem-solving, a group panel on “Communicating Across Difference,” moderated by Associate Professor of the Practice in Human Rights Advocacy and Conflict Resolution Stephan Sonnenberg, and three seminars: “Considering Authority,” “Storytelling for Change,” and “Sharing a Problem: Norms for Interpretation and Translation in Charged Encounters.”
The Shasha Seminar is free for the University’s faculty, staff, and students and costs $25 for non-University guests. Individuals hoping to attend can register through the University’s website.
Raiza Goel can be reached at rgoel@wesleyan.edu
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