2022 National Conference

Thirty-second Annual National Conference

Implicit Racial Bias and the Academy

Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN

October 28-30, 2022

In his 2020 book, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and its Urgent Lessons for our Own, Princeton professor Eddie Glaude writes extensively about what he calls “the lie” regarding race in the United States. “The lie,” he argues, “is a broad and powerful architecture of false assumptions . . . that support the everyday order of American life, which means we breathe them like air. We count them as truths. We absorb them into our character.”

In light of Glaude’s argument, this conference asked about implicit racial bias in the academy—how we organize the academy, how we think about knowledge, how we structure a curriculum, how we frame our disciplines, how we recruit and admit our students, how we do our scholarship, and how we teach.

Further, the academy is devoted to critical thinking, but to what extent is our ability to think critically about race also hampered by implicit racial bias?

Finally, the Christian gospel rejects racial bias, both explicit and implicit. How might church-related colleges and universities employ the gospel narrative to expose and undermine implicit racial bias on our campuses?

These are the questions that framed the 2022 Lilly Fellows Program national conference.

 

Noteworthy News

May LFP Update

The Current LFP Update for May 2023 is now available. Click here.


Registration is now open for the 2023 National Conference

Registration is now open for the 2023 National Conference, "Contemplating Integral Ecology for the Common Good," on October 20-22 at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. Click here for more information and to register. 


Registration is now open for the 2023 Administrators Workshop

Registration is now open for the 2023 Workshop for Senior Administrators on the topic, "Fostering Hope in a Polarized Age," October 19-20, at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. Click here for more information and to register.


Announcing the winner of the 2022 Arlin G. Meyer Prize

We are pleased to announce Gordon Johnston, Professor of Creative Writing at Mercer University, as the winner of the 2022 Arlin G. Meyer Prize in Imaginative Writing for his book of poetry, Scaring the Bears. For more information and to see the finalist for this prize, click here.


Lilly Network of Church- Related Colleges and Universities

If you are interested in learning more about membership in the Lilly Network of Church-Related Colleges and Universities, please contact us here.


New edition of Leading Lives that Matter released

In their second edition of Leading Lives That Matter, editors Mark Schwehn and Dorothy Bass compile a wide range of texts—from ancient and contemporary literature, social commentary, and philosophy—related to questions of vital interest for those who are trying to decide what to do with their lives and what kind of human beings they hope to become. Leading Lives that Matter has been an important text in many of our fellowship and grant programs, and it contains excellent resources. Click here for more information and an excerpt.