I Am a LEADer Conference 2023

Learning Outcomes include:

-Awareness of history
-Offering respect
-Understanding intersectional struggles
-Building community

Still processing from workshops this week? Do you have more questions than answers after participating in this week’s conference? Join this micro-chat round table, facilitated by DEI Assistant Dean of Shass, Tracie Jones, to chat more about your experiences.

More information coming soon!

Learn about the defining experiences, characteristics, and values of 5 different generations: Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z. In this session, you will gain strategies for effectively engaging with individuals of each of these generations in various leadership contexts.

Are these the right clothes? Should my hair look a certain way? Am I allowed to say I’m non-binary? What if I’m not enough? Can I still use gendered pronouns? If you’ve had some of these questions and more then come chat with us and other non-binary students about what it means to be non-binary in an affirming and relaxed group discussion.⁠

In recognition of Stalking Awareness Month, join us for a virtual screening of the Netflix series "I Am a Stalker" on Thursday, February 2nd, at 9pm. The event will include a screening of an episode followed by a discussion about stalking and how it is presented in the episode. All students welcome to attend. Grubhub vouchers will be provided for those in attendance.

Jewish students, as a minority group, are encountering much of the same discomfort that other minorities face on campus and in the world, in that they don’t feel heard or acknowledged. This training is designed to help MIT students better understand the history of Judaism, the diversity of Jewish students/the Jewish community and how the rising climate of antisemitism, anti-Zionism and anti-Israel activity are impacting their peers and their feeling of being included in/excluded from campus life. The training covers the following topics: Understanding the diversity of the Jewish community (world-wide and on campus), Introduction to antisemitism and historic antisemitic tropes, Understanding when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism, Strategies for student leaders to build communities that are inclusive of Jewish students, Strategies to identify and respond to campus antisemitism.

Explore curiosity as a signature trait of inclusive leadership. In this session, you will learn the elements of curiosity, what inclusive leaders think about, and what inclusive leaders do.

Focus on making your digital communications accessible to the broadest audience, including people with disabilities.

More information coming soon!

The Power & Stress workshop is a discussion-based training about how power dynamics affect daily life. This 60 minute interactive workshop led by PEP leaders will engage participants to think more deeply about “power” and reflect on various situations that may come up at MIT. It will also help students reflect on how power intersects with identity and how these two factors engage with systems in our society and contribute to stress.

Media channels like news, radio, music and more are constantly discussing DEI current events but what does it all mean back at MIT? How does what’s happening ‘out there’ impact me ‘in here’? Let’s think through the impact in this micro-chat lead by DEI Assistant Dean of SHASS, Tracie Jones.

While wellbeing is for everyone, commonly used language can be loaded and exclusionary, and myths about wellbeing have created a world of wellness that is only welcome to a select few. Join us for a session to dive into the myths and deconstruct the language that is commonly used to influence health and wellbeing in harmful ways. We will discuss common jargon in wellness spaces, oppressive structures, and discrimination to challenge assumptions about what “healthy” looks like.

Still processing from workshops this week? Do you have more questions than answers after participating in this week’s conference? Join this micro-chat round table, facilitated by DEI Assistant Dean of Sloan, Bryan Thomas, Jr., to chat more about your experiences.

The "Creating an Anti-Racist LBGTQ+ Community" workshop is a collaboration between LBGTQ+ Services and Intercultural Engagement (i.e.) curated to provide participants with tips and tools on how to build an intersectional anti-racist LBGTQ+ Community ⁠at MIT.

Identity 101 is a 90 minute interactive workshop led by PEP leaders to introduce concepts of identity. Within this three part workshop, PEP leaders will engage participants to think about their identities more deeply, how systems in our society contribute to their lived experience with their identities, and introduce an engaging activity to learn more about DEI terminology.

More information coming soon!

We all face an identity or identities outside of the mainstream, yet being part of the mainstream is often a requirement to participate in social life. How do we show up as our authentic selves and how do we support a community in which we recognize the diversity that exists within the human experience?

Identifying and overcoming racially discriminatory processes in US society asks for a research approach that incorporates a variety of perspectives. In this micro-chat, Chris Hays and Erin Walk discuss how the MIT Initiative on Combatting Systemic Racism (ICSR) combines data science with the extensive social science literature on systemic racism to develop and harness computational tools that can help effect structural and normative change towards racial equity. We will talk about the role that algorithms play in the proliferation of extremism online – be it white nationalism or other toxic social phenomena - and how it affects online and offline behavior.

Gender is complex and fluid, so how does your gendered men or women’s group change with it to be more inclusive. What does that look like? What does it mean? All are welcome of all levels of gender identity knowledge to this group discussion to better understand gender inclusive spaces and how you might create them.

Learn about implicit bias and microaggressions' impact on how we interact with our peers, friends and strangers. Take a deep dive to learn how to combat our internal biases and how to confront microaggressions when we see them.