Press "Enter" to skip to content

CANR Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Access Posts

Celebrating Diversity Month in AprilCelebrate Diversity Month

Celebrating Diversity Month in April

Published April 6, 2023 by cmanneri

Since 2004, April has been considered Celebrate Diversity Month. It is a time to recognize and understand our differences, be it gender, race, ethnicity, faith, sexual orientation, and other factors while honoring the common essence of humanity. 

The White House released a proclamation earlier this month in recognition of National Arab American Heritage Month.

The Arab American story is the American story — one of diverse backgrounds and faiths, vibrant tradition, bold innovation, hard work, commitment to community, and stalwart patriotism, all coming together to accomplish something greater than any one of us.  This month, we join together to celebrate the immeasurable contributions of Arab Americans to our Nation and recommit ourselves to the timeless work of making sure that all people have the opportunity to achieve the American Dream.

                             President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

Some major religious holidays are happening during April, including Easter, Passover, and Eid al-Fitr!

  • Passover, which began at sunset on April 5,  is an eight-day Jewish holiday celebrating the freeing of Israeli slaves.
  • Easter will be celebrated on April 9. Easter is the day on which Christians celebrate Jesus’ resurrection.
  • Eid al-Fitr is one of two major holidays on the Islamic calendar. It’s an Arabic term that means “Festival of Breaking Fast,” because it’s celebrated at the conclusion of Ramadan on April 21.
71% of students reported that their classrooms did not include any LGBTQ+ topics

April 14 is the GLSEN Day of Silence, a national student-led demonstration where LGBTQ students and allies all around the country—and the world—take a vow of silence to protest the harmful effects of harassment and discrimination of LGBTQ+ people in schools. Students go through the school day without speaking, ending it with Breaking the Silence rallies and events to share their experiences and bring attention to how their schools and communities can become more inclusive.

April 22 is the day to celebrate the environmental diversity of Earth and highlight ways of protecting our planet. Earth Day is a day observed by more than 192 nations. It honors the environmental movement that protects the Earth for future generations. CANR continues the celebration of Earth until the end of the month with our biggest college-wide annual event Ag Day! This year’s theme is “Ag Around the Corner.”

Comments closed
CANR DEI Special Presentation: Karelle HallKarelle Hall event image with headshot

CANR DEI Special Presentation: Karelle Hall

Published April 5, 2023 by cmanneri

On Tuesday, April 4, the CANR DEI Committee hosted guest speaker Karelle Hall as she presented her research, “Sovereignty and Race: Intersections of Nanticoke and Lenape Identities.”

Karelle is a Ph.D. student in the Critical Interventions in Theory and Ethnography program in the anthropology department at Rutgers University. She received her bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College in Anthropology with a minor in Native American Studies. Her dissertation research explores embodied and distributed Indigenous sovereignty in public and performative spaces. 

“My presentation explores how racial identities and categories particularly impact the Nanticoke and Lenape people of Delaware and New Jersey.  Their ongoing efforts to maintain and assert tribal sovereignties are continuously intersected with the politics of race and ever shifting racial categories.” 

Karelle Hall

She has taught cultural and linguistic anthropology classes at Rutgers University and presented her preliminary research at conferences. As a member of the Nanticoke Indian Tribe, she has represented her nation at numerous events as a speaker and dancer. 

She is actively working on Nanticoke language revitalization, including writing a children’s book and developing lessons for community classes. Using her experience and connections in the legal field, she assisted the Nanticoke Tribe with ratifying their recognition in the state of Delaware. She continues to work as an activist and representative for her community, promoting visibility, decolonization and education.

We would like to again extend our sincere thanks to Karelle for coming to campus and sharing her knowledge of Nanticoke and Lenape communities.

We would also like to thank Dr. Pascha Bueno-Hansen and Jon Cox for attending. They shared information about what the UD Anti-Racism Initiative (UDARI) American Indian and Indigenous Relations committee is doing at a university level to help educate the UD community about our history.

Please find more information about the Living Land Acknowledgement at the following website: https://sites.udel.edu/antiracism-initiative/committees/indigenous-programming/living-land-acknowledgement/

A recording of the event can be viewed below.

Additional resources courtesy of Ms. Sarah L. Dobe-Hund, Assistant Director, Academic & Career Integration at UD.

Throughline and Code Switch are two of her favorite regular podcast listens. Code Switch especially has given a lot of book recommendations by minoritized authors, including these:

  • The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline (native YA science fiction)
  • Where the Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson (Cherokee)
  • There There by Tommy Orange (urban Native Americans)
Comments closed
Dr. Wangarĩ Muta MaathaiWangarĩ Muta Maathai

Dr. Wangarĩ Muta Maathai

Published March 28, 2023 by cmanneri

Dr. Wangarĩ Muta Maathai was a Kenyan social, environmental and political activist and the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Maathai was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. Wangari Maathai obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas (1964). She subsequently earned a Master of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh (1966). She pursued doctoral studies in Germany and the University of Nairobi, obtaining a Ph.D. (1971) from the University of Nairobi, where she also taught veterinary anatomy.

Dr. Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977 to plant trees across Kenya, alleviate poverty and end conflict. She was driven by a perceived connection between environmental degradation and poverty and conflict. “Poor people will cut the last tree to cook the last meal,” she once said. “The more you degrade the environment, the more you dig deeper into poverty.”

She mobilized Kenyans, particularly women, to plant more than 30 million trees, and inspired the United Nations to launch a campaign that has led to the planting of 11 billion trees worldwide. More than 900,000 Kenyan women benefited from her tree-planting campaign by selling seedlings for reforestation.

Wangari Maathai is internationally recognized for her persistent struggle for democracy, human rights and environmental conservation. She has addressed the UN on several occasions and spoke on behalf of women at special sessions of the General Assembly for the five-year review of the earth summit. She served on the commission for Global Governance and Commission on the Future. She and the Green Belt Movement have received numerous awards, most notably the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.

Others accolades include The Sophie Prize (2004), The Petra Kelly Prize for Environment (2004), The Conservation Scientist Award (2004), J. Sterling Morton Award (2004), WANGO Environment Award (2003), Outstanding Vision and Commitment Award (2002), Excellence Award from the Kenyan Community Abroad (2001), Golden Ark Award (1994), Juliet Hollister Award (2001), Jane Addams Leadership Award (1993), Edinburgh Medal (1993), The Hunger Project’s Africa Prize for Leadership (1991), Goldman Environmental Prize (1991), the Woman of the World (1989), Windstar Award for the Environment (1988), Better World Society Award (1986), Right Livelihood Award (1984) and the Woman of the Year Award (1983). Professor Maathai was also listed on UNEP’s Global 500 Hall of Fame and named one of the 100 heroines of the world. In June 1997, Wangari was elected by Earth Times as one of 100 persons in the world who have made a difference in the environmental arena. Professor Maathai has also received honorary doctoral degrees from several institutions around the world: William’s College, MA, USA (1990), Hobart & William Smith Colleges (1994), University of Norway (1997) and Yale University (2004).

Comments closed
Kadiatou Balde and Zainab KoliKadiatou Balde and Zainab Koli

Kadiatou Balde and Zainab Koli

Published March 23, 2023 by cmanneri

Ramadan Mubarak!

As the Muslim community embarks on one of the holiest months in their faith, Ramadan, we’d like to showcase two Muslim women who founded an organization that blends faith and environmental sustainability through education, activism and entrepreneurship.

Kadiatou Balde and Zainab Koli launched Faithfully Sustainable. This organization engages with an online community of more than 2,500 members through social media posts, talks and fellowships. Across spaces of minority narratives, they encourage members to understand and adopt sustainable practices.

Kadiatou Balde’s passion for environmentalism came from lived experience. She was born in the Bronx, New York, Lenape territory. However, she spent much of her childhood in Guinea, West Africa, which informed Balde on environmental injustice.

Zainab Koli is an Indian American Muslim woman born and raised in Queens, New York, occupied land of the Matinecock tribe, a division of the Algonquin Nation and Lenape people. Community is at the center of everything Koli does. 

Koli and Balde graduated from schools in the State University of New York system and received awards in their senior years. They met at the awards ceremony in Albany, New York, in a chance encounter that Balde calls fate. As Koli said, “When two hijabis see each other at an event, they say hi.”

When starting Faithfully Sustainable, Koli and Balde embarked on a journey to learn more about the connection between sustainability and their Islamic faith. They both cite the book “Green Deen: What Islam Teaches about Protecting the Planet” by Ibrahim Abdul-Matin as integral to their understanding of sustainability and environmental justice.

Their largest campaign to date is the No Eid Shopping campaign, which encourages community members to reduce consumption by wearing clothes they already own for Eid. They also encouraged their community members to donate the money they would have used for clothes to worthy causes, such as the Black Lives Matter movement.

Eid takes place at the end of Ramadan. The name “Eid al-Fitr” translates as “the festival of the breaking of the fast.” This year, Eid al-Fitr will begin the evening of Friday, April 21, 2023.

Comments closed
Dr. Temple GrandinDr. Temple Grandin

Dr. Temple Grandin

Published March 20, 2023 by cmanneri

Dr. Temple Grandon is one of the most famous and successful people with autism. She has devoted her life to reducing the stress of animals and people with autism.

Grandin was unable to talk at age three and exhibited many behavioral problems. As a child, she was withdrawn and extremely sensitive to touch and sound. She went through many hours of speech therapy and intensive teaching, enabling Temple to learn speech. She was later diagnosed with autism. Her parents, rejecting a doctor’s advice to place her in an institution, instead sent their daughter to a series of private schools where her high IQ was nurtured.

Mentoring by her high school science teacher and her aunt on her ranch in Arizona motivated Temple to study and pursue a career as a scientist and livestock equipment designer. She obtained her B.A. at Franklin Pierce College and her M.S. in Animal Science at Arizona State University. Dr. Grandin received her Ph.D. in Animal Science from the University of Illinois in 1989. 

Dr. Grandin is a designer of livestock handling facilities and a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. Facilities she has designed are located in the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and other countries. Almost half of North America’s cattle are handled in a center track restrainer system she designed for meat plants. Curved chute and race systems she has designed for cattle are used worldwide and her writings on the flight zone and other principles of grazing animal behavior have helped many people to reduce stress on their animals during handling.

She has also developed an objective scoring system for assessing the handling of cattle and pigs at meat plants. Many large corporations are using this scoring system to improve animal welfare. Other research areas are cattle temperament, environmental enrichment for pigs, reducing dark cutters and bruises, bull fertility, training procedures, horse perception of novel objects, and effective stunning methods for cattle and pigs at meat plants.

Grandin has said she can understand animals’ reactions to sensory stimuli because she has had the same reaction to loud noises and sudden movements. “Animals are very aware of small, sensory details in the environment,” and so are people on the autism spectrum, she said in a 2014 interview for the Stanford Medicine website. 

Comments closed