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“We cannot talk about reparations and healing of any kind without addressing and redressing the worldwide desecration and dishonor of African sacred cosmologies — our eco-centered, eco-conscious, and cosmic way of life — our right to live — to be and breathe,” Dr. Liseli Fitzpatrick said to delegates and members of the Permanent Forum. Fitzpatrick is a Trinidadian professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass., who attended the second session of the Permanent Forum due to her ongoing commitment to the healing, empowerment and liberation of African peoples. “Any exercise in reparations is futile if we do not recognize and respect the spirituality of African peoples and the inflicted injuries and injustices caused by centuries of spiritual and physical violence,” Fitzpatrick said in her remarks. 

Knowing that objections to freedom of thought and inquiry can have detrimental implications, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars launched The Campus Call. Wellesley College is a member.

“Barbenheimer” became an accidental double feature because of the comical dissonance between atomic blondes and atomic bombs, but the two films share a key aspect: They’re allegories about the power and pitfalls of condensing cities into small, specialized utopias. Los Alamos and Barbie Land are campuses — call them MIT and Wellesley — with self-selected populations that are capable of extraordinary achievements. But these places can become segregated, out of touch, and even destructive to the outside world. As university campuses across America come to life for the fall, Americans might have something to learn from this summer’s movies.

Can Boston spur new development and economic activity in its struggling downtown while preserving its historic character? A new plan from the Boston Planning and Development Agency aims to do just that by streamlining a mishmash of building height restrictions, highlighting areas best suited for new development, updating design and architecture guidelines, and suggesting ways to re-energize public spaces left quiet after the COVID-19 pandemic. “Unless we want our iconic buildings to be continually covered in scaffolding and boarded up because masonry is crumbling off them, then we have to take action,” said Martha McNamara, board chair of Revolutionary Spaces — the steward of both the Old South Meeting House and the Old State House — and an architectural historian at Wellesley College specializing in 18th- and 19th-century New England.

With the opposition claiming victory in the recent Zimbabwe election and contesting the president's re-election, FRANCE 24's Nadia Massih is joined by Dr. Chipo Dendere, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies & Political Science at Wellesley College.

Jennifer Chudy, a professor of political science at Wellesley College and author of the forthcoming book "With Sympathy: Rethinking American Racial Politics", notes in her op-ed that even Republicans reported strong support for Black Lives Matter after Floyd’s murder: “For a party often characterized by its racial insensitivity and antagonism toward racial minorities, this increase in support was striking. But perhaps even more striking is its rapid decline.” After Black linguistic innovations armed the country with terms and ideas that situated Floyd’s death within a wider, structural plight, Republicans swiftly entered negrophobic revulsion, becoming locked into the “wokeness” obsession they claimed to despise.

The presidential election in Zimbabwe last week that kept the governing party in power and was widely criticized as dubious is likely to isolate the country further from the United States and other Western nations. But it has also exposed Zimbabwe to increased scrutiny and pressure from a surprising place: its neighbors in southern Africa... Chipo Dendere, a political science professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, said she saw a broader shift among regional bodies across the continent that want to promote stability. They are acknowledging that “the impact of colonialism is there, but we also have to look inward and think, ‘What are we doing as African governments to move the continent forward?’” said Ms. Dendere, who has researched Zimbabwe extensively.