We’re beyond race. Racial diversity is killing us. Everyone’s a little bit racist. It’s just identity politics. Variety is the spice of life. It’s a Black thing – you wouldn’t understand. I’m ___ and I’m proud. Race is in our DNA. Markus and Moya, co-editors of Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, W. W. Norton, 2010, consider eight common conversations that people in the United States have with one another as they make sense of daily events in which race and ethnicity figure prominently. Co-sponsors: Future of Minority Studies at Syracuse University, Women’s and Gender Studies Department.

Angela Y Davis is Professor Emerita, at University of California, Santa Cruz; and Distinguished Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and African American Studies at Syracuse University.

Lisa Kahaleole Hall has a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley, is Chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Wells College, and has a lengthy career in grassroots cultural production as a poet, performer, editor, event organizer, and small press promoter including for the small presses aunt lute books and Third Woman Press. Co-sponsors: OUTLaw, SU College of Law, Office of Multicultural Affairs, School of Education, LGBT Resource Center, University College, Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics Department, Program on Latin America and the Caribbean (PLACA), Native American Studies, Latino/a-Latin American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and African American Studies.

Marcela Olivera is a Visiting Associate at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Rutgers University and the Latin American coordinator for the Water for All Campaign from Food and Water Watch. Olivera developed an inter-American citizens’ network on water rights: Red Vida which she coordinates from Cochabamba, Bolivia. Co-sponsors: African American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Office of the Dean – College of Arts & Sciences, Cultural Foundations of Education, Humanities Center, Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC), Latino/Latin American Studies Program, Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics and the Lino Novas Calvo Speaker Series.

Dean Spade is Associate Professor of Law at Seattle University and the founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex ad gender non-conforming people who are low income and/or people of color. Spade is the author of ‘Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law’ and is currently co-teaching a new course on “Occupation: Law, Politics, Morality” at Columbia Law School. Co-sponsors: LGBT Resource Center.

Dana Olwan is Assistant Professor of Women’s & Gender Studies where she is currently preparing her book ‘Dishonorable Crimes: Murder, Rescue, and the Politics of Canadian Multiculturalism’. Farhana Sultana is an Associate Professor of geography whose work includes the edited volume ‘The Right to Water: Politics, Governance and Social Struggles’. Co-sponsor: Women’s and Gender Studies.

Sean Arce, former director of Arizona’s Tucson Unified School District’s outlawed Mexican American Studies (MAS) Program. Co-sponsors: Latino/a-Latin American Studies, University College, Humanities Center, College of Arts & Sciences, Cultural Foundations of Education, and La Casita Cultural Center.