Provided

Cornell students host a booth at the 25th Anniversary National Conference on Race and Ethnicity, May 29-June 2, in New York City.

Cornell was the institutional host of the 25th Anniversary National Conference on Race and Ethnicity (NCORE), May 29-June 2, in New York City.

The university formally hosted an opening reception May 30 at the conference hotel, the Marriott Times Square, as well as a special reception for Cornell-affiliated delegates and alumni at the Schomburg Library in Harlem, May 31. Cornell had a sponsored delegation of 15 students at the conference, special displays, as well as a number of faculty and staff attending the conference and special events.

NCORE is one of the nation's leading conferences on issues of race and ethnicity, social justice challenges and access in America to higher education. It seeks to help higher education institutions create more inclusive environments, programs and curriculum. About 3,000 people from community colleges and research universities across the nation attended this year's conference.

One of the special featured workshops, "We Make the Road by Walking It: Diversity as the Process to Institutional Diversity Change and Development," focused on explaining Cornell's new diversity initiative, Toward New Destinations. The panel of speakers included members of Cornell's Diversity Council: Renee Alexander, associate dean of students and director of intercultural programs; A.T. Miller, associate vice provost for academic diversity initiatives for undergraduate education; Sheri Notaro, associate dean for inclusion and professional development in the Graduate School; and Yael Levitte, associate vice provost for faculty diversity and development.

"About 60 conference participants attended with a very lively discussion of institutional issues faced across the nation," Miller said.

On June 1, Patricia Nguyen, director of Cornell's Asian and Asian- American Center and co-chair of APINCORE, the Asian and Pacific Islander caucus at NCORE, hosted, with Cornell sponsorship, an evening event that was open to the public; the event included a poetry slam, book signing, music and comedy.

Cornell also helped lead a preconference institute May 29-30 for undergraduate students entitled "Racial Aikido: Equipping Students of Color 
at Predominantly White Institutions," a program that empowers students of color at predominantly white institutions to recognize, respond and replenish after encountering stressful incidents of ignorance, insensitivity or aggression in daily life.

"Coming from a predominately African-American and Latino private school in the Bronx, I was not aware of the privileges available to my white counterparts," said Cornell student Luis Tomas Graveley Jr. '15. "Attending this year's NCORE has really made me sit and meditate on my family's position and how different our lives would be if we had benefited from white privilege."

A preconference meeting of Native American educators was also hosted by Cornell and Cornell's American Indian Program at the National Museum of the American Indian in downtown Manhattan, May 29. This meeting was open to people involved in Native American education, some from the New York area who would not be attending the whole conference.

"Cornell has always had a number of people attending NCORE as individuals. This year, [with the conference] in the New York area, we thought of being a more organized presence at the conference and in presenting what we gained at the conference back on the Ithaca campus," said Miller, organizer of the Cornell delegation.