The Dismantling the Ivory Tower Network Gathering is for people of color connected to colleges, universities, and academic centers who want to chart new strategies for social justice organizing. This gathering is coordinated by and welcomes participation from queer, trans and cisgender academics of color as an opportunity to create strategies to better engage these institutions. We will begin by outlining the challenges we face as academics invested in social justice, such as the separation between academic institutions and the communities in which they are located and how we can heal from traumatic experiences within academia. The rest of the day will be spent strategizing. We will set priority areas of engagement for institutional change by sharing skills we can use to dismantle the “Ivory Tower” and make organizing our guiding principle on and off campus.
