Dr. Deborah Black holds a doctorate in Cultural Diversity and Curriculum Reform from the University of Massachusetts. She is Associate Professor of Education at Keene State College, where she provided leadership in the development of World Educational Links: Working Toward a Global Community, a one-year certification and master's degree program in teacher education. She has taught in the US and abroad in diverse school settings including private, public and refugees' schools. She is an advocate for the families and students who are marginalized by public school policies and practices and she works to promote equity and social justice in education.

Dr. Eloise Briere is Professor of French at the State University of New York at Albany. She taught in Senegal for two years before earning her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. She returned to Africa with a Fulbright grant to research the connection between the Cameroonian oral tradition and contemporary Cameroonian literature written in French. She has continued to study francophone cultures and literature in Quebec and Haiti, as well as the United States.

Valerie Cunningham is Principal of the African American Resource Center in Portsmouth and curator of the New Hampshire Library of Traditional Jazz at the University of New Hampshire. She has written and published on Portsmouth's black history and is co-author of the Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail Resource Book. Her manuscript in progress, Black Capital: African Americans in a New Hampshire Seaport, 1645-2000, (with co-author Mark Sammons) will be published by the University Press of New England.

Dr. Sanjukta Ghosh, Professor of Communication and Coordinator of Women's Studies at Castleton State College in Vermont, holds a doctorate in Communication from Ohio State University and an undergraduate degree from the University of Delhi in India. Her forthcoming book, Producing Subalterity: Representing Indians in U.S. Popular Culture will be published by Bowling Green State University.

Dr. Donald Andrew Grinde, Jr. (a member of the Yamasee Nation) is Professor of American Studies at the Center for the Americas (State University of New York at Buffalo). He holds a doctorate from the University of Delaware, and is the author of Debating Democracy: Native American Legacy of Freedom, the Encyclopedia of Native American Biography, and most recently A Political History of American Indians, a book commissioned by the US Congress.

Dr. Gladys Johnsen, Professor of Music and Women's Studies at Keene State College, has led a support group devoted to eliminating racism, based on Harvey Jackin's model for the elimination of all forms of social conditioning. She is the alto soloist for Keene's United Church of Christ and founder and former conductor of the Youth Chorus at Keene State College, now housed at the Keene Institute of Music and Related Arts. She has traveled and sung at the Vatican with the Rome Pilgrimage Tour: 2001, and in Europe and Scandinavia with the Keene Singers.

Dr. Sally Joyce, Associate Professor of English and American Studies, teaches Native American culture and literature at Keene State College. She holds a doctorate from Miami University and originally focused on medieval English literature. She did post-graduate work at Sinte Gleske University in South Dakota and specializes in Lakota Sioux culture and literature. She is past co-chair of the Campus Commission on the Status of Diversity and Multiculturalism.

Dr. Randall Kennedy (Harvard Law School) is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, and was a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of Race, Crime and the Law, winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. His book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word appeared in January 2002. His new book looks at the explosive issue of inter-racial intimacy. Mr. Kennedy writes for a wide range of scholarly and general interest publications, and sits on the editorial boards of The Nation, Dissent, and The American Prospect.

Mary Mayshark-Stavely is Acting Director of the Keene State College Child Development Center, where she has been a Facilitating Teacher since 1985. She is founder and coordinator of the New England Conference on Storytelling for Children, an annual event which began in 1995 at Keene State College. She has researched social literacy and multicultural education in Sydney, Australia.

Monica Monyo-Tetteh is the Multicultural Student Coordinator at Keene State College. She has a master's degree from the University of Buffalo in student affairs administration. In Buffalo and Keene she has advocated for diversity and worked in student governance. A native of New York City, she frequently visits Ghana, her parents' homeland, and she speaks Ewe.

Cesar Monzon serves as the Information Services Specialist with the Boston Census Bureau and lectures at colleges and universities about the statistical uses and methodologies of Census Products and Programs. Fully bi-lingual in Spanish and English, Monzon serves in various local and national boards such as the Metro West Latin American Center, and was past National Vice-President of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) for the Northeast region.

Dr. Dottie Morris is Director of Student Affairs and core faculty in the Counseling Psychology Program at Antioch College in Keene. She also teaches at Keene State College and serves as consultant to its Campus Commission on the Status of Diversity and Multiculturalism. She holds a Ph. D. from Washington State University and has worked in diversity issues with a number of educational institutions.

Dr. David Payson is Associate Professor of Journalism at Keene State College. He holds a doctorate from Northwestern University.

Patricia Pedroza is a Lecturer in Multicultural Studies who teaches Spanish and Women's Studies. She has a master's degree from the School for International Training in Vermont and has worked as a feminist activist and performance artist in Mexico and the United States.

Judith Reed is Lecturer in Education, Special Education, and Early Childhood at Keene State College, where she is currently on the faculty of the World Educational Links (WEL) program, a one-year certification and master's degree program. A former teacher of grades four through eight and elementary school administrator, she has considerable experience with integrated curriculum development. She has a special interest in equity issues and has conducted in-service training on topics such as teaching conflict resolution, building community in schools and classrooms, teaching social responsibility, multicultural education, and addressing bullying in school.

Dr. Therese Seibert is Associate Professor of Sociology at Keene State College, where she teaches about issues such as ethnicity, gender, and genocide. She has a doctorate from the University of Texas and is the author of Long Time Coming: Trends in Racial Inequality in the Nonmetropolitan South, 1940-1990.

Sabrina Sojourner was the first open lesbian to be elected to Congress, representing the District of Columbia. She works actively on behalf of gay, lesbian, African-American, and women's interests. As Director of Diversity Programs and Women of Color Programs for the National Organization for Women, she became a nationally recognized educator on diversity and multiculturalism. Her latest work, a collection of poems and narratives, is entitled Psychic Scars and Other Mad Thoughts.

Dr. Mariella Squire is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Maine, Fort Kent, and formerly on the faculty of Keene State College. She is co-author of The Abenakis of Vermont (2002) and author of People of the Good River (2002), a teacher's text on native people of northern Maine.

Patrice Strifert is Associate Director of the Student Center at Keene State College and co-chair of the Campus Commission on the Status of Diversity and Multiculturalism. She has a master's degree from Appalachian State University in North Carolina and has worked in student affairs, leadership, and diversity at several institutions in New Hampshire and North Carolina.

Dr. Ronald Takaki is Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Son of Japanese immigrant farmers, he received his Ph. D. in American history from Berkeley. At UCLA he founded centers for African-American, Asian-American, Mexican-American, and Native American studies. He is the author of eleven books, including A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb, and Debating Diversity: Clashing Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America. His Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II is the only major study of the war from the perspectives of diverse racial and ethnic minorities.

Andrew Tarsy holds a J.D. degree from George Washington University. He serves as Eastern States Counsel and Civil Rights Director with the Boston office of the Anti-Defamation League, which has been dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism and bigotry in all forms since 1913. Mr. Tarsy regularly testifies before legislative and municipal bodies, and is a frequent commentator on civil rights and related topics for regional and national media. In Massachusetts he is a member of the Governor's Task Force on Hate Crimes, and also sits on the Steering Committee of the Greater Boston Civil Rights Coalition, and on the Race and Ethnic Access and Fairness Advisory Board of the Trial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Dr. Susan Theberge is Associate Professor of Education, Special Education, and Early Childhood Education at Keene State College, and co-chair of the Campus Commission on the Status of Diversity and Multiculturalism. She has wide experience as a school counselor and in working for social justice.

Dr. Janaki Natarajan Tschannerl has an Ed.D. in Sociology from Harvard University. She is Co-Director of the WEL Teacher Training Program and Senior Lecturer in Teacher Education/Multicultural Studies at Keene State College, where she also serves as co-chair of the Campus Commission on the Status of Diversity and Multiculturalism. She is on the graduate faculty of the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont and Director of the Bapagrama Educational Center in Bangalore, India. She has worked and taught in the social sciences and teacher education in India, China, Senegal, and Tanzania.

Angela Yang is the current interim Director of Keene State College's National and International Exchange Center. She is a steering committee member of the Campus Commission on the Status of Diversity and Multiculturalism, and in past semesters has worked as the chair of the minority recruitment and retention workgroup and the Multicultural Student Coordinator. She has worked both in the US and the Philippines on social and economic justice projects, and brings this perspective to the work she does with students and the larger community.

Shay Banks Young, a great-great-great-great granddaughter of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, grew up in a segregated black community. She became a preventive health trainer and a poet, and has hosted her own public affairs talk show. Julia Jefferson Westerinen, a descendant of Eston Jefferson (son of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson) is a former educator turned businesswoman. She was raised as white, but learned of her African-American ancestry in the 1970s. The two women established the Sally Hemings Foundation to provide information and education to help people trace their family trees.

Dr. James Zogby is founder and President of the Arab American Institute in Washington, DC., which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community and leads efforts to secure political empowerment for Arab Americans. He hosts a weekly call-in program, Viewpoint, on Abu Dhabi Television and writes a weekly column, "Washington Watch," published in fourteen Arab countries. He is the author of What Arabs Think: Values, Beliefs and Concerns. He serves on the Human Rights Watch Middle East Advisory Committee and on national advisory boards of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Forum.

For more information, please contact Symposium coordinator, Helen Frink, Professor of Modern Languages and Women's Studies, by phone at 603-358-2956 or by e-mail at hfrink@keene.edu.