Event Sponsors

With gratitude to event partners:
Juneteenth Santa Barbara
Healing Justice Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara City College

About Pacifica Graduate Institute
Pacifica Graduate Institute is an accredited graduate school offering masters and doctoral degree programs in the traditions of depth psychology. Our educational environment nourishes respect for cultural diversity and individual differences, and our students have access to an impressive array of educational resources on Pacifica’s two campuses, both of which are located a few miles south of Santa Barbara, California. https://www.pacifica.edu.

About Fielding Graduate University
Fielding Graduate University provides interdisciplinary programs for a community of scholar-practitioners within a distributed learning model grounded in student-driven inquiry and leading to enhanced knowledge. It is an accredited independent school of higher-learning and has offered degree programs to diverse adults since 1974. Fielding’s offices are located in Santa Barbara, California, and Washington, D.C. https://www.fielding.edu.

About For the Love of Black People: Historical Exhibit
We, Healing Justice Santa Barbara, prepared the following visual Black history timeline on the traditional, ancestral, and unseeded territory of the Chumash on which we are organizing today. As a Black-led and centered group, we deeply understand the ways that capitalism has succeeded by exploiting the labor of Black bodies; so too have these harmful systems benefited from obscuring the existence of Indigenous people because by doing so those aligned with colonialism can feel less conflicted about laying claim to land and resources which are not Theirs.

Our words and actions matter. It is not enough to point to public statements that repeat the values of diversity and inclusion. Instead, we must interrogate and actively respond to our own complicity in the oppression of others. Our communities are deserving of more, and so as a collective of stolen people organizing on stolen land, we fully support our Chumash siblings Fin pushing for Indigenous reparations and sovereignty.

Part of our work, in this moment, is telling the full truth of the Black experience and disrupting the lies of erasure and white supremacy. When we tell the truth, stories of Black and Indigenous solidarity, Black and Latinx partnerships and Black joy making emerge. We commit ourselves to
continuing the tradition of Black kin-keepers — notably Sojourner Kincaid Rolle and Cedric Robinson — because we know that we must collect and retell our own histories to counter false narratives of white-centered history which obscure Black efforts to create family, joy, and Community.

We are not “professional” historians or archivists. We are people who love our kin, and who must continue to tell their stories. We are activist mothers, who find healing in telling the truth of our ancestors. This is our Kinship Story.

Juneteenth: Remembrance and Reflection

A Panel Discussion

Wednesday, June 21

5:00-6:30 p.m. PDT | 8:00-9:30 p.m. EDT

This event is hybrid.

In person: Pacifica Graduate Institute, South Hall, 249 Lambert Rd, Carpinteria, CA 93013

Space is limited. Please, R.S.V.P. your attendance at 805.898.2926 or giving@fielding.edu

Attend online: R.S.V.P. here.

The purpose of this panel discussion is to offer an intellectually stimulating conversation on the continued persistence of white supremacy, the racial wealth gap, unequal education, and persistent health disparities that African American contend with every day in the United States.

Understanding our history is critical to the development of our understanding of ourselves. Juneteenth, which celebrates the emancipation of enslaved peoples in the United States, is a time for remembrance and reflection. As a historical event with broad sweeping humanitarian consequences, it exemplifies both “roots” and “routes” to democracy. We cannot help but reflect on American history without deeply considering Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty—with the understanding that our history is rooted in land stolen from Indigenous peoples, and built by people stolen from their land.

To that end, we find Juneteenth a time not only to celebrate a collective liberation, but also a time to reflect on how different our country would be had this event not happened at all. In what ways have the vestiges of this colonial framing continued? And more importantly, how are we responding to the historical challenges laid before us with hope, innovation, compassion, and a willingness to commit to change. As a nation, Juneteenth is not just about Black liberation, it is also about the liberation of America from the chains of slavery that shackle the mind to illusions of supremacy and bigotry. As Americans we all know our potential lies within ourselves, to be our best selves. Juneteenth is an opportunity to raise up those ideals and move forward.

Speakers:

Thyonne Gordon, Ph.D.

Thyonne Gordon, Ph.D.

Holding a Ph.D. in Human and Organizational Development from Fielding Graduate University, Dr. Gordon brings an extensive experiential background in organizational structure and management to Pacifica’s Board of Trustees. As a Social Profit Management expert, Producer and Writer, Dr. Gordon works with businesses to accelerate their growth through her proven methodology of the S.T.O.R.Y. AcceleratorTM (Structure, Targets, Ownership, Relatability/Relevance and YOU). She currently serves as Executive Director for She Ready Foundation in Los Angeles, coaches in board governance and is the Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Board Chair. Dr. Gordon encourages us all to “bloom where we are planted and thrive.”

Tracy Fisher, Ph.D.

Tracy Fisher, Ph.D.

Tracy Fisher, Ph.D. works at the intersections of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Black Diaspora Studies, and Cultural Anthropology. She takes a critical intersectional approach to explore the ways in which people of different racial-ethnic backgrounds have actively transformed racial meanings and struggle to build transracial-ethnic gendered solidarities within a particular constellation of intersecting political-economic and socio-cultural circumstances. She comes to Fielding Graduate University with much experience in teaching, researching, organizing, and participating in a range of interdisciplinary projects and collaborations rooted in social justice.

Dr. Fisher is the author of What’s Left of Blackness: Feminisms, Transracial Solidarities, and the Politics of Belonging in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan Press, Comparative Feminist Studies Series). The book analyzes the transformations in black women’s grassroots socially engaged political work in England—from anti-imperialist groups to service providers—alongside shifts in Britain’s political economy and the deployment of blackness as a political imaginary from the late 1960s until the 2000s. She is also the co-editor of Gendered Citizenships: Transnational Perspectives on Knowledge Production, Political Activism, and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan Press, Comparative Feminist Studies Series). This book’s central epistemological intervention lies in the critical linkages made between feminist theories of intersectionality, ethnographic studies of citizenship, and feminist theories of citizenship. It features ethnographic research on cultural citizenship and women of color in the US and beyond. Her work has also appeared in peer-reviewed journals and anthologies.

Before joining Fielding Graduate University, Dr. Fisher was visiting faculty at Scripps College and Pitzer College, and she was on the faculty at UC Riverside.

Ivory Toldson, Ph.D.

Ivory Toldson, Ph.D.

Dr. Ivory A. Toldson is the national director of Education Innovation and Research for the NAACP, professor of counseling psychology at Howard University and editor-in-chief of The Journal of Negro Education. Previously, Dr. Toldson was appointed by President Barack Obama to devise national strategies to sustain and expand federal support to HBCUs as the executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (WHIHBCUs). He also served as president and CEO of the QEM Network and contributing education editor for The Root, where he debunked some of the most pervasive myths about African-Americans in his Show Me the Numbers column.  Dr. Toldson is the executive editor of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Research, published by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. He is also the author of Brill Bestseller, No BS (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe in Black People Enough Not to Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear about Black People. Dr. Toldson is ranked among the nation’s top education professors as a member of Education Week’s Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, an annual list recognizes university-based scholars across the nation who are champions in shaping educational practice and policy.  Dr. Toldson serves on the board of Fielding Graduate University.

Wendi S. Williams, Ph.D.

Wendi Williams, Ph.D.

Psychologist, advocate, and educator, Dr. Wendi Williams applies her work at the intersection of education and psychology to her scholarship and leadership praxis. Williams completed undergraduate studies at the University of California, Davis where she majored in psychology and minored in African and African American Studies. She completed graduate study at Pepperdine University (MA in Psychology) and Georgia State University, where she earned a doctorate in counseling psychology, with an emphasis in multicultural psychology and family systems.

In a career spanning two decades, Williams’ work delves into the contours of Black women’s and girls’ inner lives, leveraging deep knowledge of their interiority as source content for the development of culturally-responsive educational and psychological interventions. Applying critical lenses of liberation psychology and Womanist, Black, and Intersectional feminist theoretical frames with an equity-centered systems power analysis, Williams develops and implements educational, wellness, and leadership intervention programming with individuals, groups, and organizations. Her work attends to the individual and organizational transformation required to foment the optimal growth and development of diverse women and girls, while attending to the organizational and societal systems-level change required for sustainable equity practice.

Panel moderator:

Allison Davis-White Eyes, Ph.D.

Allison Davis-White Eyes, Ph.D.
VP of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Dr. Allison Davis-White Eyes currently serves as the Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Fielding Graduate University. Her professional areas of expertise focus on strategic organizational change, strategic partnerships, community building, inter-departmental collaboration, interdisciplinary teaching and research, international partnerships, Indigenous policy, academic partnerships, and student development (both graduate and undergraduate).
Allison earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in American History), and her Master of Arts from UCLA in American Indian Studies with a specific focus on History and Law. In addition, Allison earned her Ph.D. from OSU in Adult Higher Education with an emphasis on International Education. Currently, Dr. Davis-White Eyes is affiliate faculty within the School of Public Policy and the School of Language, Culture and Society at Oregon State University.

Her research areas of interest include: post-colonial cosmopolitanism, trans-national feminism, subaltern research ethics and decolonizing methodologies, inclusive democracy, mobilities of culture and identity, queering of identity and space, critical nation-building and sovereignty, as well as intersectionality in theory and organizational praxis.

June 22 | 6:30-8:00 p.m.

Santa Barbara City College: The Umoja Mural Film & Discussion

Pacifica Graduate Institute | South Hall | 249 Lambert Road, Carpinteria, CA 93013

RSVP: https://alumni.pgiaa.org/events

Questions? Contact Dianne Travis-Teague at DTravis-Teague@pacifica.edu.

The Umoja Mural, which means “unity” in Swahili, is the first mural in Santa Barbara to center on the African American experience. Located on the Campus Center Building where the Center for Equity and Social Justice is housed, the mural has already sparked discussion and reflection on campus, and been included in assignments across multiple disciplines.

The riving forces behind the mural’s creation were Roxanne Byrne, SBCC’s coordinator of equity, diversity, and cultural competency; and Akil Hill, an SBCC admission and records technician and founding member of the Black Faculty and Staff Association.

[From https://www.independent.com/2023/02/14/santa-barbara-city-college-dedicates-the-umoja-mural/]

Roxane Maiko Byrne, Ph.D.

Roxane Maiko Byrne, PhD 

Roxane has an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University and a Ph.D. in Human Development from Fielding Graduate University. As a multiracial, multicultural woman of color, her scholarly and professional work sits near and dear to her heart. Roxane’s research examines multiracial student experiences of identity and belonging in racial affinity spaces. Roxane has worked in higher education for over 16 years as an educational administrator, adjunct faculty, classified staff, and a personal counselor. She currently oversees multiple programs and centers within the Office of Equity, Diversity and Cultural Competency at SBCC including the Center for Equity and Social Justice, the Umoja Center for Black Student Success, The Dream Center for Undocumented Student Success, Basic Needs Centers, and is the founder of the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI+) Staff and Faculty Association. Roxane is the proud mom of three multiracial children and she hopes her work offers support to individuals, families, and systems.

Akil Asim Hill

Akil’s roots in Santa Barbara run deep. A member of the Gilbert family (one of the earliest Black families to migrate to Santa Barbara from the South), his experiences as the son of an Air Force veteran and former Black Panther shaped his understanding of race and racism from an early age. Following in his mother’s footsteps, Akil became involved in antiracism work as a high schooler in the 1990’s. He served as the president of the Black Student Union at Santa Barbara High School and worked closely with his mentor and community activist, Babatunde Folayemi to support youth of color in Santa Barbara.

Akil Asim Hill

Today, Akil continues his antiracism work with an emphasis on supporting youth and families. He serves on the SBUSD Combatting Anti-Blackness Task Force, he is the co-founder of the Black Faculty and Staff Association at Santa Barbara City College and serves as the co-advisor of the Black Student Union at SBCC. Akil is the proud father of three multiracial children and works together with his wife Roxane as a consultant, speaker, and advocate.