2024 IDI Speaker Series
The Institutional Diversity and Inclusion Speaker Series at Michigan State University brings experts into conversation with Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer, Jabbar R. Bennett, Ph.D. to talk about current diversity, equity and inclusion topics impacting higher education.
The 3rd annual signature event features:
Indigenous Knowledge Systems
Monday, April 1, 2024, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. (book signing at 7:30 p.m.)
Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center, Auditorium
219 S Harrison Rd, East Lansing, MI 48824
Join Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer Jabbar R. Bennett, Ph.D., for a conversation with Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, Ph.D., dean of Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy, and the Carlos Montezuma Professor of Education and Social Policy, for a talk on Indigenous Knowledge Systems.
How can Indigenous Knowledge Systems inform the ways we think about classrooms and research?
In this talk, Brayboy asks: How might Indigenous Knowledge Systems inform schooling and research? Drawing on recent work around knowledge systems, he adds an Indigenous perspective to reimagine classrooms and research. Brayboy argues that re-framing how we think about schooling and research through a knowledge systems framework opens up different possibilities and moves toward new classrooms and research questions.
The event will be followed by a booksigning of The School-Prison Trust (2022), which considers the colonial school—prison systems in relation to the self-determination of Indigenous communities, nations and peoples.
Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, Ph.D. (Northwestern University)
Dr. Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy (Lumbee) is dean of Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy and the Carlos Montezuma Professor of Education and Social Policy.
Brayboy came to Northwestern from Arizona State University, where he was the President’s Professor in the School of Social Transformation and vice president of social advancement. He also served as senior advisor to the president, director of the Center for Indian Education, and co-editor of the Journal of American Indian Education. From 2007 to 2012, he was visiting President’s Professor of Indigenous Education at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
A member of the National Academy of Education and a fellow of the American Educational Research Association, Brayboy’s research focuses on the role of race and diversity in higher education, and the experiences of Indigenous students, staff and faculty in institutions of higher education.
He is the author or co-author of more than 100 scholarly documents, including nine edited or authored volumes, dozens of articles, book chapters, and policy briefs for the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences.
He has been a visiting and noted scholar in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway. His work has been supported by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the Ford, Mellon, Kellogg and Spencer Foundations and several other private and public foundations and organizations.
Over the past 17 years, he and his team have helped prepare more than 165 Native teachers to work in American Indian communities and more than 24 American Indian Ph.D.s.
Brayboy earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and his master’s and Ph.D. (with distinction) at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the father of two sons.