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The College of Media, Communication and Information will feature the new during its first One College Colloquium event of the semester.

• What: CMCI One College Colloquium: Introducing CU's New Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS)
• Who:CAAAS Founding Director Reiland Rabaka in conversation with Media Studies Associate Professor Nabil Echchaibi
• When: From 5 to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 28
• Where: 

The �鶹ӰԺ approved the center, or the CAAAS (pronounced “the cause”), in May in response to student activism, faculty support and years of effort spearheaded by Professor Reiland Rabaka to create a central space for Black culture and community on campus. It is the first center of its kind at the university.

“We took Black Lives Matter very seriously. We transformed this institution that we love so much,” said Rabaka, CAAAS founding director and professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies. “If I criticize CU �鶹ӰԺ, it’s only because I love it. . . .We could be better. They talk about ‘Be Bolder.’ Be better.”

The upcoming colloquium will focus on the vision, aspirations and plans of the new center through an in-depth conversation between Rabaka and Nabil Echchaibi, associate chair for graduate studies in Media Studies.

will take place from 5 to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 28. 

CAAAS promises to be a hub of research, teaching, performance, consciousness-raising and community-building dedicated to Black history, Black culture and Black struggle on the �鶹ӰԺ campus and beyond. The multipurpose space, which aims to open in the Macky Auditorium building in 2022, welcomes scholars, students, artists, activists and allies.

In a pre-filmed interview, Echchaibi and Rabaka discuss race in �鶹ӰԺ, the responsibility for improving race-related experiences, the historical evolution of race in the city and current events, including the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota in 2020.

“He (Rabaka) was saying, if you’re putting a sign on your yard that says ‘Black Lives Matter,’ that’s fine, that’s wonderful. But what are you going to do about it? This sentiment you have has to be translated into action. The center provides that platform,” Echchaibi said. “I think his plea was an invitation to anyone who shares in that sentiment to come into the center and do their part.”

Audience members will be invited to further these discussions during the event’s virtual question and answer session.

The CMCI One College Colloquium series is one of several ways in which the college seeks to foster and support interdisciplinary engagement and a vibrant intellectual community of artists, humanities scholars, social scientists and designers within the college, across the campus and beyond the university.

Past colloquia have focused on environmental communication and immigration. This year’s colloquia will bring an interdisciplinary focus on the many ways that media, communication and information relate to racial justice.

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Featuring Lisa Flores (Communication)

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Featuring Lisa Flores (Communication, CMCI DEI) 

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Featuring Dave Martinez (CMCI DEI Team)

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Perhaps we should no longer be surprised by the constancy of racist violence. Still, each new moment hits hard. The weight of the violence and the loss grows. The most recent moment, the deaths of eight people in Atlanta, six of whom were Asian women, is one more marker of the relentless racist attacks across our nation, aggravated by the quick tendency in much public conversation to deny the racial tenor of the murders.

Today, the CMCI leadership asks that all of us, regardless of our identities, pause and acknowledge the violence and its often-crushing impact. We know that for many of you, these incidents are not just there, in Atlanta, they are here, too. Many of us are targets of discursive and material violence. Others of us, pulled in too many different directions and no longer afforded easy opportunities to casually bump into a friend or neighbor, fail to ask, “How are you doing?” or to check in on ourselves and ask, “How am I doing?” 

Though these moments can aggravate our sense of isolation, already heightened by the pandemic, we want to remind you that you, and we, are not alone. In his statement, Chancellor DiStefano reminded us that as a campus, we stand together in our condemnation of violence and xenophobia. In CMCI, we also stand together as a community.

As you move through the days and weeks ahead, remember to reach out in support of each other and of yourself.  Perhaps take a few minutes to read and learn about racial trauma. This clarifies just how real racial trauma is. And we don’t just experience it when we are victims of direct assault. Everyday exposure to social media or news reports creates or amplifies trauma. Or turn to the short piece, “,” that Jennifer Ho, professor of Ethnic Studies and director of the CU �鶹ӰԺ Center for Humanities and the Arts, wrote for CNN yesterday.

Campus has numerous resources, including these:

• "," from 1 to 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 25, hosted by the CU �鶹ӰԺ Volunteer Resource Center
• "How to Talk about What Matters: Anti-Asian Racism in the Time of COVID-19," from 5 to 6:15 p.m. on Wednesday, April 7, hosted by the Center for Inclusion and Social Change 
• The Center for Inclusion and Social Change is continuing its program on The Power of Community and April events will soon be announced. In the meantime, take a few minutes with this playlist they compiled: , or take a look at their various resources.
• The Office of Diversity, Equity & Community Engagement invites your feedback and concern: We Are Listening

For faculty/staff

• Reach out to the Faculty and Staff Assistance Program or more locally to Lisa Flores, our associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion.

For students

• ��Ѱ��’s DEI team is available to chat and to listen.
• Reach out to the many campus offices that focus on health and wellness.

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Now is the time to stop and reflect. To ask ourselves, what does it mean to recognize Black History Month? We should all, of course, pause daily, regardless of the month, to ask what it means that the U.S. needs such a month? How have so many of us lived our lives with so little attention to the histories and presence of African Americans? As a member of the CMCI community, I hope you will pause with us today, for the rest of the month and in the future to specifically consider the significance Black history has in higher education. 

Just one of the many questions we, the CMCI community, should ask is, what does it mean that in 2021, African American students comprise just 2.2% of ��Ѱ��’s student population and only 2.7% of the university’s total student body? While that campus number is up a full percentage point since 2000 and is now at its highest recorded number to date, only 942 students out of the 34,975 enrolled students on campus today identify as African American. We could and should recognize the growth that has occurred in the last 20 years––and we must also ask how we, as a college and a campus, are failing at a critical part of our mission? There is no denying that both CMCI and CU �鶹ӰԺ must not only continue, but dramatically improve in our recruitment of African American students.

Just as we cannot mark Black History Month without naming these needs, we also must name the intellectual, social, political and cultural contributions of Black students, faculty, staff and alumni––all of whom play a key role in advancing our university’s strategic imperatives to shape tomorrow’s leaders, be the top university for innovation and positively impact humanity. In CMCI, Black scholars, activists and educators are working to rethink education in ways that empower Black youth, reshape disciplinary fields in equitable and inclusive ways, and produce stories that reframe and broaden representations of Black identities. 

In her 2018 book, Remembering Lucile, Media Studies Associate Professor Polly Bugros McLean illuminated the history and career of Lucile Berkeley Buchanan, the first African American woman to graduate from CU �鶹ӰԺ. Last week, the regents unanimously approved renaming the education building the Lucile Berkeley Buchanan Building, a fitting tribute for a woman who dedicated her life to the courageous task of educating others during the time of Jim Crow laws. Barred by the university from participation in her graduation ceremony, Berkeley Buchanan demonstrated the kind of radical insistence on presence that defines what it means to celebrate Black History Month.   

Participation in Black History Month must also turn on local and national recognition of the historical and contemporary radical presence of African Americans, whether manifest in the everyday acts of the 942 African American students at �鶹ӰԺ today who insist, as did Berkeley Buchanan, that they belong on our campus, or in more dramatic public moments—the poetic brilliance, for instance, of youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman.  

In his 1894 speech given at the Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth, Frederick Douglass, whose chosen birthday was 203 years ago this month, made clear the status of education to racial equity: “To deny education to any people is one of the greatest crimes against human nature.” Those of us who are neither Black nor African American cannot forget these words nor ignore the ways in which we are implicated. Our participation in Black History Month begins with our sustained commitment to educating ourselves––learning Black histories and insisting that Black history be redefined as U.S. history––but does not end there. 

Our ongoing work lies in asking ourselves and each other how we might stand in solidarity with Black and African American communities, finding our own paths toward the kinds of radical presence that will create an inclusive college and campus climate comprised of thousands of African American students, staff and faculty. 

We, among ��Ѱ��’s leadership, have charged ourselves with this critical work, knowing that meaningful change requires time, commitment and persistence. This summer, we will launch a high school pipeline program aimed at increasing access to a CMCI education for Colorado’s African American youth. In addition, we are assessing college practices to ensure that we identify––and then dismantle––barriers as we are also putting in place regular conversations among ourselves around race, racism and anti-racism. 

On behalf of the CMCI leadership, I’m grateful for the opportunity to share these thoughts with you. 

Lisa Flores, PhD
Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Co-Chair, CU �鶹ӰԺ IDEA Council

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