Let's Talk About Race

Dr. Mishuana Goeman,  Tonawanda Band of Seneca, is a 2020-2021 Distinguished Visiting Scholar with the Center for Diversity Innovation at the University at Buffalo located in her home Seneca territories. Dr. Goeman is also Professor of Gender Studies, Chair of American Indian Studies, and affiliated faculty of Critical Race Studies in the Law School at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is also the inaugural Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs. Along with several journal and book chapters, she is the author of Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) and a Co-PI on two community based digital projects: Mapping Indigenous L.A (2015) and Carrying Our Ancestors Home (2019).

Dr. Theresa McCarthy is an Onondaga nation, Beaver clan citizen of Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ontario. Dr. McCarthy is also an Associate Professor of Native American Studies and Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence for the College of Arts and Sciences. For over 20 years, Dr. McCarthy has worked on addressing the campus climate and retention-based concerns of Indigenous students in higher education. She has also been instrumental in launching the new Department of Indigenous Studies at UB.

Candice Hopkins is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her writing and curatorial practice explores the intersections of history, contemporary art, and indigeneity. She has served as senior curator for the 2019 and 2021 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art and was part of the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale, featuring the work of the media art collective Isuma. She is co-curator of notable exhibitions including Art for New Understanding: Native Voices 1950s to Now; the 2018 SITE Santa Fe biennial, Casa Tomada; documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany; Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada and Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her recent essays and presentations include “The Gilded Gaze: Wealth and Economies on the Colonial Frontier,” for the documenta 14 Reader, and “Outlawed Social Life” for South as a State of Mind.

Yesomi Umolu is recently appointed Director of Curatorial Affairs and Public Practice at the Serpentine Galleries, London. She was previously Director and Curator, Logan Center Exhibitions at the University of Chicago where she also taught courses in visual art and spatial practices as a lecturer in the humanities division. Prior to joining the Logan, Umolu held curatorial positions at the MSU Broad Museum, East Lansing, Michigan; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Manifesta 8, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art. As Artistic Director of the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial, Umolu oversaw a critically acclaimed curatorial program featuring new commissions, off-site installations and a host of performances, talks, workshops and community engagements with over 80 international contributors. Umolu is a 2016 recipient of the prestigious Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts Curatorial Fellowship. She served on the curatorial advisory board for the United States Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale. She is a trustee of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago.

Liz Park is Curator of Exhibitions at the University at Buffalo Art Galleries, the State University of New York. She was most recently the associate curator of the 2018 Carnegie International at Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. She has curated exhibitions at a wide range of institutions including the Western Front, Vancouver; the Kitchen, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh; and Seoul Art Space Geumcheon, South Korea. Her writing has been published by Afterall Online, Afterimage, ArtAsiaPacific, Performa Magazine, Fillip, Yishu: A Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Pluto Press, and Ryerson University Press, among others. She was a Helena Rubinstein Fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2011–12 and Whitney-Lauder Curatorial Fellow at ICA Philadelphia in 2013–15. Her research interests have revolved around mobility and migration as well as representations of violence in the colonial present.

Gail Wells is a UB Alum and former Director of Student Life at SUNY Buffalo State College. For over twenty years, she has been involved with diversity training, including her role as Director of Buffalo State's NCBI (National Coalition Building Institute) Coalition Building Team. After retiring from a 29-year career in higher education, Gail Wells has continued her social justice efforts. This includes her work with the Buffalo Freedom Gardens project, a coalition of Black-led organizations and allies that have established over 50 home gardens to enhance food sovereignty in areas that lack access to healthy foods.

Dr. Amy L. Reynolds is Professor of Counseling, School and Educational Psychology in the Graduate School of Education. Dr. Reynolds research centers on: expanding the multicultural knowledge base through scholarship on race, racial identity, and racism-related stress, queer and trans identity, acculturation, and other multicultural issues; exploring training and curricular applications in counseling psychology; and increasing understanding of multicultural change efforts in higher education.

Lillian S. Williams (Panelist) is Associate Professor and former chair of the Department of African American Studies. For more than 40 years, Williams has worked to retrace and commemorate Mary Talbert’s life and social justice efforts. She is the author of Strangers in the Land of Paradise and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites and the Michigan Street African American History and Culture Commission.

Lillie Wiley-Upshaw (Panelist) is chair of the Buffalo Niagara Freedom Station Coalition and Co-Chair of the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor Commission, and focuses on the significant impact African American struggles for individual liberties have had on Buffalo and the broader region. 

Carole Emberton (Moderator) is Associate Professor in the Department of History. Through her research on the Civil War era, Emberton examines how violence shapes our social, political, and cultural worlds both past and present.  She is currently completing a book on the testimonies of ex-slaves collected by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s.

Rev. Dr. Jamie Washington is the President and Founder of the Washington Consulting Group, named by the Economist as one of the Top 10 Global Diversity Consultants in the world. Dr. Washington has served as an educator, administrator, and consultant in higher education for over 36 years. He serves as an invited instructor in the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Lancaster Theological Seminary. He is the President and Co-Founder of the Social Justice Training Institute and a Past President of the American College Personnel Association (ACPA). Dr. Washington also serves as the Pastor of Unity Fellowship Church of Baltimore and is an Elder in the Unity Fellowship Church Movement. He currently chairs the board for Many Voices, a Black church movement for gay and transgender justice.

Dr. Washington earned his Ph.D. in College Student Development from the University of Maryland College Park, and a Master of Divinity from Howard University. He has received many awards and honors, including the University of Maryland Baltimore County’s Legends of Excellence Award for his contribution to the lives and education of Black and LatinX faculty, staff and students.

In addition to his work in higher education, Dr. Washington has an extensive list of corporate, non-profit, government, and faith organization clients. Some of his clients include Starbucks, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, Shell Oil, Boston Bank, Green Peace, Human Rights Campaign, The Taskforce, The Peace Corps, the Government Office of Accountability, The Presbyterian Church International, Metropolitan Community Church, and the Baptist Church Convention.