The fifth annual Yale Bouchet Conference on Diversity in Graduate Education at Yale University will be held March 28 and 29, with most events taking place in the Hall of Graduate Studies, 320 York St.
The title of this year’s conference is “Public Intellectuals and Scholar Activists: Negotiating the Boundaries of Academia, Identity and Civic Responsibility.” The conference is free and open to the public.
Kurt Schmoke, former mayor of the city of Baltimore, Maryland, and current dean of the Howard University School of Law, will be the keynote speaker. He will speak on “A New Hundred Years War? The Compelling Need to Reform National Drug Control Policy” at 11:30 a.m. on March 29 in the Yale Law School’s Levinson Auditorium, 127 Wall St.
After graduating from Yale College in 1971, Schmoke was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and then earned a law degree from Harvard University. During his 12 years as mayor of Baltimore, he initiated ambitious programs to improve housing, education, public health and economic development in the city. For his efforts in promoting adult literacy, President George H. W. Bush awarded him the National Literacy Award in 1992. President Bill Clinton named Baltimore one of six cities to receive Empowerment Zone designation in 1994, in recognition of Schmoke’s initiatives. Schmoke served as a member of the Yale Corporation (the University’s board of trustees), 1989–2002. A trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a former trustee of Tuskegee University, Loyola College (Baltimore) and other educational institutions, he has received a dozen honorary doctoral degrees.
Approximately 150 scholars and students from Yale and other universities will attend the Bouchet Conference. Organizers are Yale graduate students Kenise Lyons (Italian), Amina El-Annan (American studies), Shanta Whitaker (microbiology) and Anjelica Bernal (political science), as well as Curtis Patton, professor emeritus of epidemiology; and Pat Cabral, senior administrative assistant for the Graduate School’s Office Diversity and Equal Opportunity (ODEO).
Named for Edward A. Bouchet, the first African American to earn a Ph.D. degree in the United States (in physics in 1876, from Yale), the conference will include several concurrent sessions divided by academic discipline. Faculty, administrators and students from Yale and other universities will give scholarly talks, run workshops, present posters and participate in panel discussions that explore the theme from both scholarly and practical approaches.
Visit the Bouchet Conference web site for more information.
