The Denison University Campus Environment Team will present an All-Community Diversity Forum at 7 p.m. on Wednesday (April 13) in Herrick Hall. The Forum will be facilitated by Next Generation Leadership Fellows in association with the Barat Education Foundation. Their goal is to enhance the success of business, government and civic organizations by facilitating constructive dialogue that will help them tap the potential of our diverse society.

Diversity Forum panelists are accomplished leaders from varied professional and cultural backgrounds who model discussion on controversial social issues and challenge their audiences to broaden their thinking on divisive questions about race, class, gender, globalization and opportunity in our society.

In 1997, the Rockefeller Foundation created the Next Generation Leadership Fellowship (www.nglnet.org), a network of leaders from diverse communities and professional backgrounds from across the United States.

The forum will open with comments from four panelists on issues identified in advance by the audience, followed by broader discussion which is facilitated with attention to the means by which divergent opinions can be presented in constructive ways that lead to new insights and solutions.

The panelists for this forum include:Rev. Dr. Joseph W. Daniels, Jr., the senior pastor of the Emory United Methodist Church, a 350-member multiethnic congregation in northwest Washington, D.C., where he has served for the past ten years. During Daniels' leadership at Emory, the church has been awarded the "Kim Jefferson Northeast Jurisdiction Award" for effective urban ministry representing the United Methodist Church and has been selected as one of the 25 initiative churches in the "Strengthening the Black Church for the 21st Century" effort of the United Methodist Church. For the past five years, he has served as a delegate in mission service to churches in Zimbabwe and South Africa, providing training for pastors and laity in the area of congregational and community development.

Daniels holds a doctor of ministry degree from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. He also is a graduate of the Howard University School of Divinity, and has earned bachelor's and master's degrees in the areas of public communication, psychology, and journalism and public affairs from the American University in Washington, D.C.

Tariq Cheema, M.D., cofounded Doctors Worldwide, an international organization which provides medical relief to the victims of natural and man-made disasters, and represents NIAAT, a global anti-tobacco coalition of nonprofit organizations, at World Health Organization (WHO). Prior to this position, he was associate director of the Islamic Medical Association of North America, the largest Muslim physician organization in the North American region. He serves as vice president at the National Association for Exchange of Health Resources. Most of his experience has been in the planning and management of healthcare programs focused on human development, disaster and hunger relief.

Cheema was born and raised in Pakistan and immigrated to the United States in 1992. He received his M.D. from the University of Istanbul and has completed his graduate studies in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector at Loyola University in Chicago.

Robert Kallenfounded RSK Strategies, LLC, which provides expertise and capital to small and growing companies specializing in the food and education sectors. At one time, he was vice president of operations and general counsel for Bake-Line Products, Inc. (a private-label cookie manufacturing company with national distribution and annual sales of over $100 million). Kallen also was a staff attorney at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C. and at the Environmental Law and Policy Center of the Midwest.

Kallen has taught for over 18 years and is currently an adjunct professor of law and economics at DePaul University and the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. Additionally, Kallen worked on the 1992 Clinton/Gore transition team for economics.

He received a B.A. in history and economics from the University of Illinois, a M.A. in economics and a law degree from Washington University in St. Louis.

Priya Parker, with classmate Jackie Switzer, founded Sustained Dialogue at the University of Virginia. Drawing on their experiences with biracial heritage and living abroad, and distressed by the racial tensions and separateness they saw at U.Va., Parker and Switzer founded Sustained Dialogue their sophomore year to improve the climate for diversity. U.Va. is the second university to implement Sustained Dialogue, following Princeton's lead; about a dozen other colleges have begun their own groups since then.

Harold H. Saunders, a former deputy secretary of state, first developed a communications process 20 years ago to help ethnic factions in Tajikistan resolve conflicts. Now director of international affairs for the Kettering Foundation, Saunders has established an international institute to help other community organizations and colleges in the United States and worldwide form Sustained Dialogue groups. Parker, a political and social thought major, found out about Sustained Dialogue from her mother, who heard Saunders talk at her workplace.

Now a graduating senior, Parker will work for the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue in Washington, D.C. this fall.

About Denison:

Denison University, founded in 1831, is an independent, residential liberal arts institution located in Granville, Ohio. A highly selective college enrolling 2,100 full-time undergraduate students from all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, Denison is a place where innovative faculty and motivated students collaborate in rigorous scholarship, civic engagement and the cultivation of independent thinking.

For press inquiries:

Name

Barbara Stambaugh

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Director, Media Relations

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stambaughb@denison.edu

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(740) 587-8575