Join Claremont Discourse for a talk by Dr. Tessa Hicks Peterson, Director of Critical Action+ Social Advocacy (CASA), Assistant Vice President of Community Engagement and Professor of Urban Studies at Pitzer College, titled "Liberating the Classroom: Healing and Justice in Higher Education."

About Claremont Discourse
Established in 1998, the Claremont Discourse lecture series is a forum for faculty at The Claremont Colleges to present their current research, publications, and creative projects from a wide variety of disciplines. Please note that any views or opinions expressed by presenters in the course of a Claremont Discourse lecture do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, or values of The Claremont Colleges Services or The Claremont Colleges as a consortium or as individual institutions. For more information or if you would like to suggest a topic for a future Claremont Discourse lecture, please reach out to discourse@claremont.edu.

Lecture Description
Dr. Peterson's lecture is based on her book of the same title where she discusses how universities can transform into places that directly disrupt injustice and work toward personal and collective liberation. Instead of reproducing social inequity, she proposes that higher education institutions could become engines of healing. This transformation, however, requires a major conscience shift at the level of the individual (student, educator, leader), the classroom (teaching and learning), administration (culture and policy), and the institution (structures and systems).

Dr. Peterson examines innovative models, practices and theories that students, teachers and administrators can apply to implement both personal and systemic change. Her research and book represent a major contribution in placing the claims of social justice, personal and social healing, and holistic pedagogy in a dialogue that is at once passionate and deeply considered. Peterson presents a vision of teaching and learning in which these three claims are mutually transformative. Her guide offers a cadre of thinkers and practitioners who provide distinct but connected resources for realizing that vision and explores what changes in pedagogical practice, campus culture, academic-community relationships and institutional structures would be needed to create spaces in higher education that could fully braid these values together.

About Dr. Tessa Hicks Peterson
Tessa Hicks Peterson is a scholar activist, teacher, writer, facilitator, mother and dancer. She is an ever-evolving human trying to practice what she preaches and ground herself in beloved community wherever possible but most tenderly with her beautiful family in their home in the foothills of Los Angeles.

Regarding titles and credentials… She is Assistant Vice President of Community Engagement and Professor of Urban Studies at Pitzer College. Her duties since she arrived at Pitzer in 2006 have included teaching and administration, including directing the Community Engagement Center (CEC), Critical Action + Social Advocacy (CASA), Office for Consortial Academic Collaboration (OCAC) and Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. From 1998-2005, Tessa worked with communities throughout Los Angeles on human relations and civil rights issues, ranging from the Associate Director at the Anti-Defamation League, Youth Programs Director at the National Conference for Community and Justice, and Health and Life Skills Director at the Boys and Girls Club. She has a Masters and PhD in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University and a BA in Psychology, with focuses in Sociology and Spanish from UC Santa Cruz.

Tessa teaches classes and facilitates trainings on issues ranging from anti-bias education and social justice to empowerment through movement, mindfulness and art. Her scholarship centers on transformative movement organizing and healing justice, community-based education and research, trauma-informed and equity-centered critical pedagogy, social change theories and movements, decolonization and indigenous knowledge, and prison education and abolition. Tessa spends most of her work advancing community-campus partnerships for social change and is a board member of Bringing Theory to Practice and Starting Over, Inc. Tessa’s ultimate work in the world is to engage with, teach about, learn from and better connect healing*arts*education*justice.

Additional Event Information
Claremont Discourse lectures are free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided starting at 4 p.m.