We invite you to the Fourth Annual LGBTQ+ IFO Conference on Wednesday, March 27th. Register to attend here.

Following the passage of a resolution at the 2018 IFO Delegate Assembly, faculty began to form Equity Caucuses (Faculty of Color, LGBTQ+, Women) on each of the seven campuses. The first Joint Equity Caucus meeting was held in summer 2018. Out of dialogues at that meeting came a framework for the 2019 IFO LGBTQ+ Conference which centers on intersecting oppressions and resistances.

It’s important to understand that the five criteria of our PDP/PDR process include support work in “multicultural, anti-oppression, and/or inclusion topics,“ and you are afforded professional development days supported by your IFO professional development funds to attend this conference. I hope you will take this opportunity to join us at the conference and engage in the critical organizing for social justice in the Union.

This year, the central dialogue will be “Black Queer Femme Insights on Faculty Coalition Building in Higher Education” led by Dr. Mel Michelle Lewis, Director of the Center for Geographies of Justice and Associate Professor and Program Coordinator of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and Africana Studies at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, and Dr. Shannon J. Miller, Associate Professor and Chair (2015-2018) of the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

The central dialogue will be followed by the forum "Same Corner of an Alien Heaven: Building Our Capacity for Truthtelling.” This forum will be facilitated by Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, the 2017-2019 Winton Chair in the Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. It will be based on her extensive archival research and the oracle she has constructed on Audre Lorde, Black lesbian feminist truthteller and poet. This interactive lecture will contextualize and facilitate the practice of speaking beyond the silences between multiple oppressed people.

Registration is open until March 26. Please register here: https://www.ifo.org/ifo-lgbtq-conference/