Medill Prof. Ava Thompson Greenwell (Medill ’84) doesn’t remember having any Black woman as her professor while she was an undergraduate student at Northwestern, she said. Her latest project, an upcoming documentary titled “Hearing Silences,” aims to highlight the contributions and document experiences of Black women faculty at Northwestern, a group that has increased in.
NU faculty discuss racism, lack of support in “unprecedented conversation”
Faculty of color discussed experiences of racism on campus, frustration with the University’s lack of support and its impact on students in a Monday panel.
Moderator Shannon Barlett, associate dean of inclusion and engagement at the Pritzker School of Law, said she organized the event after conversations with African American Studies Prof. Barnor Hesse made her realize the two shared similar concerns despite holding different positions on different campuses. Bartlett and Hesse were joined by four other faculty members in the conversation.
Barlett said two aspects of the University’s response to social unrest over the summer and fall motivated the conversation: first, a lack of recognition about the way racism affects faculty and staff, and second, a lack of acknowledgement about how Northwestern “largely operates with indifference to or even an ignorance of structural racism.”
In July of 1993, Nelson Mandela visited Chicago three years after he was released from prison and one year before he was elected as South Africa’s first Black president.
“Mandela in Chicago,” the new documentary by Medill Prof. Ava Thompson Greenwell (Medill B.S. ’84, M.S. ’85, Weinberg Ph.D.’14), explores the monumental role Chicago activists played in the movement by putting pressure on the governments of South Africa, Illinois and Chicago to halt their support of South Africa’s oppressive systems. The film was broadcast on Feb. 18 and Feb. 21 on Chicago’s WTTW Channel 11.
“(Mandela) came to thank the people for all the work they had been doing, and I wanted Chicago to get some credit for that,” Greenwell said. “So much of history would have been lost had it not been for the film, so I’m hoping that the film itself will be a catalyst to really reignite interest in what happened in South Africa, but also what is still happening in South Africa.”