Comparative Civil Rights panel on people of color during DPN

What were people of color doing during DPN? What are their perspectives and stories? This is an area that has not been extensively explored. Their stories can help shed light and add another layer to our understanding of DPN. Professor Elsa Barkley Brown of the University of Maryland-College Park will examine the issue of diversity within social movements.

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Tuesday, March 12

12:30 – 1:50 p.m.

Foster Auditorium

Panelists

Isaac Agboola

Elsa Barkley Brown

Angel Ramos

Ruth Reed

Dr. Isaac O. Agboola is the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Sciences, & Technologies at Gallaudet University, a position he has held since July 2007. He earned his undergraduate degree from Gallaudet University, completing the full degree requirements from new freshman to graduation in three academic years. He also earned his MBA degree from Gallaudet and completed his formal education with a Ph.D. in information systems from the University of Maryland at College Park.

He has 28 years of teaching, research, grant-writing, and service experience in higher education, with progressive responsibilities in higher education administration at the program, department, and school levels spanning over 19 years, including ten years as the coordinator of the Computer Information Systems program and four years as the chair of the Department of Business at Gallaudet University.

He keeps current with trends in higher education including: the persistent push for wider understanding and embrace of the fundamental principles of liberal education as the best approach to achieving student learning outcomes; the increasing demand for accountability in higher education; and the importance of establishing and maintaining a culture of continuous improvement through ongoing and systematic outcomes assessment.

Professor Elsa Barkley Brown joined the Department in 1997 from the University of Michigan. She holds a joint appointment with history and women’s studies and is an affiliate faculty in African American Studies and American Studies. Professor Barkley Brown is co-editor of the two-volume Major Problems in African-American History (2000) and the two-volume Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (1993). Her articles have appeared in Signs, Feminist Studies, History Workshop, Sage, Public Culture, and The Journal of Urban History.

She has twice been awarded the Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Publication Award for the best article in African-American Women’s History. She has also won the A. Elizabeth Taylor Prize for best article in southern women’s history, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Prize for best article in African-American history, and the Anna Julia Cooper Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Black Women’s Studies.

Barkley Brown has held fellowships from the W.E.B. DuBois Institute, Harvard University, and The American Philosophical Society. A past president of the Southern Association for Women Historians, Professor Barkley Brown currently serves on the Editorial Board of Women and U.S. Social Movements, 1600-2000.

Dr. Angel M. Ramos was chairperson of the Deaf President Now Fund. During the DPN movement, his first-hand experience gave him unique insights and led him to write a book about the DPN movement, Deaf President Now: Triumph of the Spirit. Dr. Ramos is a Fulbright Scholar and the only Deaf Latino to receive a doctorate degree from Gallaudet University. An international presenter on the education of Deaf and hard of hearing students with over 40 years in the field of Deaf education, Dr. Ramos is currently superintendent of the Marie Katzenbach New Jersey School for the Deaf.

Ms. Ruth Reed was born in Chicago, Illinois, and she attended Illinois School for the Deaf for 13 years and graduated in 1974. At Illinois School for the Deaf, she was the first black Deaf homecoming queen. She graduated from Gallaudet University in 1980 with a B.A. in Sociology. She worked started as Resident Assistant at Model Secondary School for the Deaf and held several positions over the years, including Multicultural Specialist, American Sign Language (ASL) Specialist, Performance Arts Specialist, and now works as a teacher aide at Kendall Demonstration Elementary School for the Deaf for the past 33 years.

She teaches ASL classes to hearing families of Deaf children at the Laurent Clerc Center (FASL). She is a long-time member of DCABDA (District of Columbia Area Black Deaf Advocates, Inc). As part of her current job, she works at SRD (Shared Reading Projects) to tutoring parents of Deaf or Hard of Hearing infants or children. Photography, music and dance are her hobbies.