MLK Convocation 2024

Dear colleagues,

Every year, the Fairfield University community gathers to celebrate the life, message, and legacy of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This year’s theme – Dreaming and Doing: Transforming Education - invites the Fairfield University community to consider the past, present and future of education as it relates to the long Black freedom struggle and our present predicament of imagining and fighting for a just future.

The 2024 MLK Convocation will take place at 5:30pm on February 6, 2024 at the Quick Center. Please mark your calendars and add this date to your syllabi for the Spring semester! Our speaker this year is Dr. Bettina Love. Her address - Punished For Dreaming: The Case for Abolitionist Teaching & Educational Reparations – will tell a story of generational educational harm and offer a road map for transforming education for all children. The Convocation is a calling of community, a chance to gather together in order to reaffirm our “common commitment to truth and justice” as enunciated in our University Mission Statement.

Dr. Love will also be giving workshops for students (3:00-4:00pm) and faculty/staff (4:15-5:15pm) on February 6^th in the DSB Event Hall (B). You can register for the workshop here: https://events.fairfield.edu/event/respect_the_process_examining_our_social_justice_perspectives_workshop_with_dr_bettina_love

Please visit our website, which we will be updated shortly with a link to reserve Convocation tickets and a full calendar of MLK events for the week of February 5-9^th: https://www.fairfield.edu/mlk/

Please also add the Convocation to your syllabi and encourage and incentivize (extra credit!) your students to attend. Copies of Dr. Love’s book, Punished for Dreaming, are available for all members of the Fairfield community at the Student Diversity and Multicultural Affairs office in the lower level BCC. Please contact Nate at ndymond@fairfield.edu for questions about getting a copy of the book.

We hope you and your students will join us for an exciting week of events!

In solidarity,

Sunil and Yolehema (co-chairs, MLK committee