Social Justice Summits
Adler University’s mission for community engagement, social justice, and socially responsible practice requires intentional space and time to reflect, plan, and act.
Our annual Social Justice Summits allow all staff, students, and faculty to engage in this process to uphold and enact our mission.
These summits allow us to engage in a University-wide reflection on socially responsible practice, gain knowledge and skills to expand our activism, and engage in social justice movements.
This year we will:
IGNITE our dialogue this Fall term by taking a take a deeper dive into the root cause of the symptoms we explored last year, learn how it shows up in our health, and take collective actions with our community partners to confront, reverse and remedy health inequity.
CONNECT in Concurrent Sessions in the Spring term to gain more knowledge, skills, and perspectives on social justice, civic engagement, and activism.
and PUSH ourselves into action during the spring and summer months by enacting Adler Action Days!
Together we IGNITE, CONNECT, and PUSH for a more just society!
Last year we explored how COVID-19, structural racism, police brutality, and economic inequality are intersectional symptoms of historical oppression that we must use in-depth analysis to understand and dismantle. This year we will take a deeper dive into the root cause of these symptoms, learn how it shows up in our health, and take collective actions with our community partners to confront, reverse and remedy health inequity.
The links below are either freely available or should be accessible to anyone with Adler login credentials through the library’s resource.
Please click here to view the recording of the October Social Justice Summit: Ignite Panel
David Ansell, MD, MPH is the Michael E Kelly Presidential Professor of Internal Medicine and Senior Vice President/Associate Provost for Community Health Equity at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. He is a 1978 graduate of SUNY Upstate Medical College. He did his medical training at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. He spent 13 years at Cook County as an attending physician and ultimately was appointed Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at Cook County Hospital. From 1995 to 2005 he was Chairman of Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Chicago. He was recruited to Rush University Medical Center as its inaugural Chief Medical Officer in 2005, a position he held until 2015. His research and advocacy has been focused on eliminating health inequities. In 2011 he published a memoir of his times at County Hospital, County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago’s Public Hospital. His latest book is The Death Gap: How Inequality Kills was published in 2017.
Participation guidelines:
We encourage you to share your thoughts on how we can continue to push ourselves as socially responsible practitioners on social media using #AdlerForSocialJustice.
Please see below for the Social Justice Summit schedule and presentation topics. Clicking each session title will take you to the registration link. Registration is encouraged to ensure you will have a space reserved in the sessions of your choice. Times listed below are in U.S. Central and Pacific time.
Presented by: Dr. Marieke Van Puymbroeck
Land acknowledgements; Learning objectives; Center, breathe, focus; Acknowledgement of change and loss; Affirmations to move throughout the day with purpose
Presented by Dr. Raymond E. Crossman and Camille Williamson
Presented by: Dr. Katrina Plamondon
In this keynote address, Dr. Katrina Plamondon calls the helping and healing professions to act meaningfully on common commitments to justice. Rejecting the legitimacy and neutrality of apathy and overwhelm, she frames nice-sounding rhetoric and good intentions as risky acts of reinforcing coloniality and its accompanying inequities. She invites shifting practices of thinking and doing, inviting the helping professions to see ourselves as capable and equipped to be part of the kinds of transformations needed to collectively walk pathways to equity. In a complementary follow-up workshop, she extends the conversation to critically reflect on equity-centered tools for supporting this transformation.
Please click the session you would like to attend and complete the registration page. “A Block” sessions are for faculty only; “B Block” sessions are open for everyone.
Presented by: CivicLab (Tom Tresser)
The public sector and the very notion of the “common good” or the Commons is under threat across the planet. Participants will be given a foundational understanding of public stuff – assets and services and be encouraged to discuss and assign value to their own experience of “public.” Participants will gain an appreciation of “Public” and its significance in relation to the expanding health inequities and to the Quality of Life.
Presented by Dr. Linda Murray, M.D., MPH, F.A.C.P.
This session will focus on how faculty can inculcate students with a public health perspective to promote global health equity.
Presented by: Dr. Katrina Plamondon
This session will continue the theme from the opening keynote address and focus on steps we can all take towards global health equity.
Presented by: Marina Bluvshtein
This session will explore how individual health is connected to community and global health; and seeks to answer what Alfred Adler would say about creating health equity.
Presented by: Todd Belcore
This session is a fireside chat with Todd Belcore, the Executive Director of Social Change. Todd will talk about Social Change’s efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic in struggling communities.
Please click the session you would like to attend and complete the registration page. “A Block” sessions are for faculty only; “B Block” sessions are open for everyone.
Presented by: Andrea Reimer
Teaching students to be more civically engaged to promote health equity
Presented by: Dr. James Makokis
Faculty will learn how to teach students to be more civically engaged to promote health equity. Dr. Makokis will draw upon history and policy issues to integrate into their courses to review the state of public health in North America.
Presented by: CivicLab (Jonathan Peck)
Chicago is the home for modern community organizing and is the launching pad for many robust civic efforts across the landscape -such as, a push for elective school board, aggressive work around police accountability, vigorous neighborhood organizing, long-lived block clubs, etc. Participants will gain a thorough understanding of what community organizing is, the role of the organizer and the best and evolving practices in use today that can be applied to the ever-increasing challenges that people and communities face in today’s society.
Presented by: CivicLab (Tom Tresser)
Social Justice Practitioners and public champions from the community should be standing for office and taking leadership roles in developing new civic and community-based policies and programs. It is imperative that cornerstone institutions model and preach and prepare their constituents to stand for local elective office and help others to run. Toward that end this session will introduce the concept of how to run or help someone run for local office as a champion of justice and service and the basic approaches and framework of any grassroots and electoral campaign being implemented in today’s society.
Presented by: Anthony Johnson
This session will provide participants with an overview of the importance of and how to engage in community building and coalition-based movements. The session will conclude with open dialogue and Q&A.
We’ll hear what some of our alumni are doing to promote health equity and socially responsible practice Featuring Rebecca Johnson (Chicago campus), Jennifer Van Wyck (Vancouver campus), and Jess Thompson (Online campus).
Presented by CivicLab (Tom Tresser and Jonathan Peck)
In order to be fully effective at enacting social and political change, Social Justice Summit participants must gain advanced knowledge, skills and attributes in how to design, build and sustain civic and community engagement in a way that aligns with their personal, interpersonal and collective style of people and institutional engagement. This session will start the preparation process for participants to become accomplished and ethical leaders in the larger community, be more prepared to enter the workplace, school space and larger community with the tools needed to successfully engage and manage diverse environments with the ability to think critically about problems and solutions and how to impact people and communities differently based on identity, privilege and oppression.
Additional Resources: