Speaking Truth to Power: A Homecoming Event with Johnnetta Betsch Cole

UMass Amherst will host noted anthropologist and former President of Spellman and Bennet College Johnnetta Betsch Cole on Wednesday, Feb. 16 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. In addition to being a UMass Amherst professor of anthropology from 1970-83, Cole served as Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education from 1981-83. While at UMass, she played a pivotal role in the development of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies. Registration is required.

The event will feature introductions from Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy and Esther Terry, former chair of the W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies. In this homecoming event, Cole will reflect on the legacy of her foundational and groundbreaking work at UMass in the context of her life as a public intellectual along with Whitney Battle-Baptiste, anthropology, Amanda Walker-Johnson, anthropology, and A Yemisi Jimoh, W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies.

Image

“Dr. Cole is such an inspiring model – a pathbreaking public intellectual and scholar-activist who has made so many contributions,” says Julie Hemment, chair and professor of UMass anthropology. “The legacy of her engaged public scholarship around race and difference lives on in the Anthropology department, as it does within the discipline as a whole.”

Inviting Cole to campus was proposed during an Anthropology Racial Justice Collective meeting last fall, as faculty and graduate students came together to learn from each other and consider ways to advance antiracist goals in our teaching and departmental work. The event is co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the Office of Equity and Inclusion, the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies. This event is presented as part of the Black Presence Initiative speaker series.