Written by Hannah Guanti
Roanoke College is hosting its third Virginia Conference on Race on April 4-5.
The event begins with a keynote speech by Renée Cummings on Thursday beginning at 6 p.m. in the Wortmann Ballroom on campus.
This year’s theme is FOREWORD. The theme is focused on the relationship between the past and the future and how our actions in the present can influence the future.
Cummings is an AI ethicist from the University of Virginia, where she is a professor on the ethics of modern technology. Cummings contributes to the AI Equity Lab at the Brookings Institute and a senior fellow at All Tech is Human.
Cummings specifically looks at how modern technology including AI, interacts with social and power structures in American society.
The conference continues the next day with seminars surrounding modernity and the implications on race. It includes panels and student research focusing on themes of Race and Health and Community Building. The panels are a new inclusion this year and is designed to provide communication between the public and experts.
The goal of the conference is to amplify the discipline of racial studies and create constructive discourse in the community.
The conference is founded and organized by assistant communications professor Dr. Carrie Murawski and the Center for Studying Structures of Race, where Murawski is a faculty affiliate.
