Afternoon of Engagement offered experiences, suggestions
This past fall, Harvard President Drew Faust convened a University-wide task force to examine ways to help Harvard thrive as a place where all members of its increasingly diverse community feel that they truly belong. The task force is co-chaired by James Bryant Conant University Professor Danielle Allen, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics; Harvard Kennedy School Academic Dean Archon Fung, the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship; and Vice President for Campus Services Meredith Weenick. Last month, the Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging hosted a campus-wide event, the Afternoon of Engagement, for which capacity crowds filled Sanders Theatre and the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center in Longwood. An audience of staff, students, and academic personnel engaged in a program of storytelling and small group participatory reflection. A report titled “What We Learned from the Afternoon of Engagement” was released earlier this month. The task force’s co-chairs recently sat down with the...