Correction appended.

On Saturday, the Student Union, Dean’s Suite and the Intercultural Center sponsored the University’s first ever diversity conference. The event, which was held in locations across campus, featured workshops and artistic performances.

In an interview with the Justice, Student Union President Nyah Macklin ’16 — who also served as the event’s director of logistics and finance — stated that a “goal of mine for the attendees is that they both challenge and they … be challenged.” Coco Tirambulo ’16, one of three conference directors, said in an interview with the Justice that she hoped that participants would form “a network of people … to work together and [learn] what their vision of change is.”

The conference, which organizers said they hope to make an annual event, brought approximately 120 people to the Shapiro Campus Center and other locations on campus.

The conference was organized around three themes: recognize, empower and change. Throughout the day, participants could choose from a variety of workshops about topics ranging from housing policy to salary negotiation. The conference also featured a networking lunch, several artistic performances and a keynote speech by Justin Kang ’09, alumnus and executive director of City Awake.

An example of a typical workshop was Prof. Irina Dubinina’s (RUS) workshop titled, “Moving Borders/Moving Across Borders,” which drew about twenty participants and discussed linguistic identity and linguistic diversity. As was the case for all workshops, the workshop was interactive and heavily involved audience participation.

Dubinina began the workshop by asking participants to work in groups and formulate answers to questions such as, “What is linguistic identity?” Throughout this process, participants were encouraged to talk to and learn from each other. After hearing from attendees, Dubinina then used examples from current events to explain how the languages people speak form a crucial part of their identity.

A key feature of the conference was that attendance was not limited to just Brandeis students; participants ranged from alumni, to students at other universities, to industry experts, to scholars and professors.

The Brandeis administration was also well represented at the conference: participants included Interim University President Lisa Lynch, Vice President of Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel, Dean of Students Jamele Adams and Assistant Dean of Students/Director of Student Activities Stephanie Grimes.

For Ron Glover ’73, vice president of diversity and workforce programs at IBM, the variety of perspectives was one of the reasons that he came to the conference. “Institutions have this propensity to listen to themselves,” he told the Justice in an interview. “So if you put a group of people in industry together, they’ll … miss all the other perspectives that are necessary to get to the right solution, and academia is not different. So I try to mix it up because then I learn things. I learn a point of view that I wouldn’t come to on my own because I’m not living the experience.”

Glover’s observation falls in line with the conference organizers’ primary goals: “One of the ways this conference [is] unique to campus is that it’s not just a student event, or an administrator event, it’s an event that everyone can participate and different voices could be heard. … So it’s a very conscious decision to incorporate those different [perspectives],” conference director Eric Lin ’16 said in an interview with the Justice.

According to Lin, the conference was intentionally designed to give participants as much time to learn from each other as possible. “Each workshop is designed as a discussion piece,” he said. The conference is a place where participants can “learn from each other, could empower each other, could support each other, and [become] the change they want to see,” he added.

Grimes, a member of the administration, said that she found the opportunity to learn from different perspectives useful. “I hoped to [learn] about diversity concepts from a theoretical and cognitive approach, but also to look more in depth and have communication with members of our community [with whom] I wouldn’t … interact on a normal basis,” she said. “And I think both of those occurred today.”

Despite the presence of the administration, conference organizers said they were cautious about the role the administration plays both within the conference and in promoting diversity at Brandeis. “There’s always going to be this issue that diversity is marketable, that diversity is something that can make this university money,” Macklin said. “This conference, and we’re all fully aware, is something that is perfect for admissions, for Brandeis University. Which is also why … we are very careful to maintain our authority over the conference. Because all too easily it can become something that it is not. It could become disingenuous.”

The conference also appears to have fulfilled its purpose in inspiring students to change the world; “I wanted to [share] my story and actually empower people. I want to go from not being a leader to … being a leader and trying to help people understand what’s really important. I want to speak for those who don’t have a voice,” Kenneth Hong ’19 said in an interview with the Justice. “This is definitely personal for me.”

An earlier version of this article stated that Ron Glover was the former Chief Diversity Officer at IBM. He is actually the Vice President of Diversity and Workforce Programs.