2008 Woodie Awards
Speaker visits Guilford to discuss diversity
Atreese Watkins
Issue date: 3/23/07 Section: Features
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"You'll have to excuse me, I don't think linearly - but give me some time and I'll get there," Dr. Denise Henning interrupts herself to answer a question from the audience.
The title of her speech, "Rethinking Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education," coincides with an article she was asked to write by the same name. Henning, a member of the Cherokee and Choctaw nations, became the first American Indian woman to be president of an American university when she became president of the University of the North, the youngest institution of higher learning in the Americas.
"She came up without favor of institutions, which gave her a deeper understanding of what institutional racism is," said Marshall Jeffries, vice president of the Native Club, which co-sponsored the event with the Africana Community. "Along the same lines, that gave her a particular advantage at realizing all of the other problems that come with working in the academy as an institution."
Beginning her speech, she relates how she was told that her status as a minority along with achieving such a high status in the academic world would allow her to "write her own ticket" in the academic arena. "It's a bunch of hooey," she says, recalling what her biography calls "her experiences in the academe, not only as a faculty/administrator, but also more importantly as a student beginning at the University of Nebraska at Omaha."
She says that this experience "instilled in her what constitutes effective inclusive academic leadership and in the development of a life-long, living-learning environment."
Her response to the question posed to her in writing the article on which her speech was based was, "So much work, so little progress."
She reasserts the mission as a possible one, however, saying, "The challenge is to be more inclusive, more accessible. We have colleges and universities creating women's and ethnic studies programs to say they celebrate diversity, yet here we are, 40 years later, still having the same debate. The once blatant racism has given way to a much softer one, and we must realize when it comes to a truly multicultural environment, one is either on the path or in the way."
The title of her speech, "Rethinking Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education," coincides with an article she was asked to write by the same name. Henning, a member of the Cherokee and Choctaw nations, became the first American Indian woman to be president of an American university when she became president of the University of the North, the youngest institution of higher learning in the Americas.
"She came up without favor of institutions, which gave her a deeper understanding of what institutional racism is," said Marshall Jeffries, vice president of the Native Club, which co-sponsored the event with the Africana Community. "Along the same lines, that gave her a particular advantage at realizing all of the other problems that come with working in the academy as an institution."
Beginning her speech, she relates how she was told that her status as a minority along with achieving such a high status in the academic world would allow her to "write her own ticket" in the academic arena. "It's a bunch of hooey," she says, recalling what her biography calls "her experiences in the academe, not only as a faculty/administrator, but also more importantly as a student beginning at the University of Nebraska at Omaha."
She says that this experience "instilled in her what constitutes effective inclusive academic leadership and in the development of a life-long, living-learning environment."
Her response to the question posed to her in writing the article on which her speech was based was, "So much work, so little progress."
She reasserts the mission as a possible one, however, saying, "The challenge is to be more inclusive, more accessible. We have colleges and universities creating women's and ethnic studies programs to say they celebrate diversity, yet here we are, 40 years later, still having the same debate. The once blatant racism has given way to a much softer one, and we must realize when it comes to a truly multicultural environment, one is either on the path or in the way."
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