Kindred: A Summit for Students & Faculty of Color

On April 15th, the English department, Kundiman, and the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer co-sponsored Kindred: A Summit for Students & Faculty of Color at Fordham. The distinguished speaker for the night was Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and a leading voice for the human rights of undocumented immigrants. The event also featured readings from Ama Codjoe, a poet from Cave Canem, a home for Black poetry, and professor of social justice and inclusion at The New School, and Deborah Paredez, co-founder of CantoMundo, a nonprofit for Latinx literature.

 The event created a space for students to meet and hear from POC clubs and organizations, as well as to discuss goals for increasing the visibility of POC communities at Fordham.

Vargas, author of Dear America: Notes of An Undocumented Citizen, spoke on the history of immigration and assimilation in the United States, the presence of immigrants in our families and nation, and his own status as undocumented. He also addressed his experiences as a person of color outside of the dominant black/white paradigm in the United States.