Webinar III Caps Summer Series |
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Washington, D.C., Sept. 7th, 2020 |
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Contact: Maria Castilla 703-631-0650 |
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In its now basically Webinar powered programing Dialogue on Diversity again has assembled a core of knowledgeable and instruction-minded panelists, each at their own site around the country, with CEO Ma. Cristina Caballero at the controls in suburban Virginia — all united by the probing questions of the Moderator — a format imposed by the continuing COVID threat. The recent, August 31st Webinar featured three panelists, all wrestling with the combined topics of the still rampant sickness, the measures seeking to rescue those embroiled in the resultant economic distress, and, with urgency, the dimensions of an admitted duty to relieve and repair the harms experienced by the millions of distressed persons, innocently caught up in the fearsome health/economic maelstrom.
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Leading off was a skilled engineer, Roberta Rincón, Senior Director for Research at the Society of Women Engineers. Her investigations have been material in many of the internal decisions of the Society. She has formed a carefully nuanced picture of the choices young women make in determining whether to take the bold step of study in the STEM sciences and then entry into the professions. Her presentation, in compelling detail, laid out the education and career choices, by gender and age and ethnic/racial characteristics for generations of young women, all under the baleful rubric of pressures generated by the Pandemic and the economy’s skidding to a halt, leaving many high and dry — and now awaiting, perhaps in vain, for renewed relief.
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The following speaker was Joycelyn Tate, formerly of the MMTC organization, a center of technical and legal expertise in telecommunications and broadband issues, subsequently tech chief for Black Civic Participation. Her experience and, most important, her fund of encyclopaedic information on many aspects of these tech and social-justice quandaries have long been a stimulative force for our Dialogue. In a very timely exposition, she laid out some of the key issues in the heated debates over the ethics of policing and related public policies, which are edging inexorably into the disorderly debates of an intense political season. Ms. Tate’s trenchant analysis of the role of algorithms (with their often powerful cultural bias) in criminal proceedings, from policing to prosecution and even sentencing, formed a picture of a juggernaut of white-centered values and cultural norms, often loading American society’s systems against Black and other non-white groups. In a fascinating dialogue between her and Moderator James Robb, the problem of loaded algorithms and possible remedies was aired, as were the specific ills of perversely aimed investigative practices and even the often grotesquely misleading profiles animating sentencing guidelines.
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Perhaps the most fascinating and timely segment was the account by Gregory L. Rohde on the history of plagues and the fitful attempts of beleaguered populations to find remedies. In the figure of Mr. Rohde a copious technical and legal knowledge in communications (he was NTIA chief in the Clinton Administration) comes together with a sensitive consciousness of the history of science and philosophy (he holds a Doctorate in Theology from CUA) as Mr. Rohde narrated the telling story of the discovery of a Cholera immunization technique in the midst of a terrifying Victorian-age epidemic, through the almost chance discoveries by an amateur mechanic and a physician. The integral role of science in tandem with the healing arts, has been spectacularly productive and continues as the sovereign strategy for relief from pandemics in our vastly more advanced scientific environment. At all events, it is the leg work and the care for the sick at the down-to-earth level, all undergirded by the productive alertness, powered by skilled perceptions, to the universe of symptoms — all that have always made the curative arts the handmaid to a restless and ever advancing body of scientifically designed strategies for diagnosis, and an often multi-themed attack on the elusive core mechanisms of the sickness itself.
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Dialogue on Diversity continues its now Webinar-centered programing with the traditional Entrepreneurship / Information Technology program, set for September 25th, linked with an update on the COVID-19 developments as they will stand on that date, with expert views and analysis that can form our understanding of the related public policy issues — and most to the point, on the entrepreneurial practices that are continually being sharpened by the close brush with the Classic plague-like régime that has not quite overtaken us. Also, remember that this year marks the Thirtieth Anniversary of Dialogue on Diversity. In conjunction with the September 25th substantive program, there will be music by Latin combos and the presentation of awards to persons who have made our success to now.
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Dialogue on Diversity depends on both corporate and private support.
Your contributions help to keep our annual cycle of educational
and policy programs going.
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Dialogue on Diversity: Founded in 1991, Dialogue on Diversity, a §501(c)3 non-profit, is an international network of women, and men, entrepreneurs and professionals, NGO executives and staff, a non-profit civil society organization bringing together Latino and other diverse ethnicities and cultural traditions, for exploring essential social and policy questions. |
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Dialogue on Diversity, Inc. 1629 K Street, N.W., Suite 300, Washington, D.C. 20006
Dialogue on Diversity, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) Organization, Contributions are tax-deductible.
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