\u201cWe observed very well during the pandemic how the world came together,\u201d UConn Neag School of Education<\/a> Director of Global Education, UConn Hartford<\/a> Director of Academic Affairs, and summit co-organizer Saran Stewart says. \u201cIt hit as a pandemic across the world, and we saw how nations came together to really look at this crisis. But we\u2019ve been dealing with anti-racism and anti-Blackness for much longer than the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n She says she and UConn Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer Franklin A. Tuitt conceived the summit as a way \u201cto bring together critical thought leaders who have been doing this work and try to figure out a framework for our higher education institutions to look at better systemic approaches to essentially eradicate racism and multiple intersecting levels of oppression.\u201d<\/p>\n To that end, Stewart and Tuitt partnered with the Office of Global Affairs<\/a> and tapped their international connections at the other three universities and the Dutch nonprofit ECHO, which works in diversity policy, to build a summit series that started in the Netherlands, will move to UConn next spring, and reconvene a third time in the United Kingdom in 2024.<\/p>\n Taking a Global View of Justice and Equity<\/strong><\/p>\n The group recently received funding for the UConn leg of the summit that\u2019s expected to coincide with the annual anti-racism conference at UConn Hartford.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving international partners question why we do things in a certain way opens up our minds and allows us to think differently about some of the things we\u2019ve been trying to address for quite some time,\u201d Tuitt says. \u201cWe can get situated in our own context that in a way puts up blinders. There\u2019s something about getting out of that context that is freeing and helps to unleash our emancipatory imagination to create opportunities for us to think about things we wouldn\u2019t normally think about because we\u2019ve been in this routineness.\u201d<\/p>\n The group is expected to publish a policy brief imminently and will put out a series of podcasts that were recorded during the summer summit. The podcasts will be available on UConn\u2019s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice<\/a> website alongside its HEART podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n In addition to UConn\u2019s grant that will support next spring\u2019s summit, the University of Nottingham is seeking a roughly $5.7 million grant for continued work. Further, presentations were made at this month\u2019s International Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Higher Education Conference at Coventry University in the United Kingdom. There also will be a presentation at November\u2019s Association for the Study of Higher Education conference in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n But how will the international work affect students, faculty, and staff at UConn?<\/p>\n \u201cBecause we had such a broad array of participants from nursing, from philosophy, from education \u2013 we just had people from all different parts of our system engaged \u2013 you\u2019ll start to see the reflection of those individual experiences in the work that they do and I believe that will have a ripple effect,\u201d Tuitt says.<\/p>\n![\"From](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/DSC_5513-300x200.jpg\")
![\"Participants](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Group-2-300x200.jpg\")