The endowment was established in March 1992 and amended in March 2004. Below lists the purposes of the endowment:
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Allen and Joan Bildner |
1. To foster the study of human and intergroup relations as they relate to ethnic, racial, multi-cultural, gender, and religious differences.
2. To increase the understanding of the demographic changes occurring in our country and the implication of increasing diversity in our society.
3. To provide support and encouragement for student leaders and the student majority who seek to share responsibility for the human condition with the potential for enriching our larger society.
4. To assist in educating and engaging members of the Dartmouth community in the process of understanding the nature and consequences of bigotry and discrimination.
5. To assist in building a culture at Dartmouth in which human and intergroup differences are respected and valued and contribute to the quality of student life.
Starting in Fall 2009, this new multi-year initiative will maximize the curricular, co-curricular, scholarly, and social impact of the Bildner Endowment by integrating the dynamics of intercultural experiences with the discourses of academic analysis. The goal of the initiative is to make the Bildner Endowment and the issues it promotes central to the Dartmouth experience.
Our social interactions and the structures that shape our attitudes are full of unseen, unspoken, and unheard dynamics that contribute to the building and maintaining of invisible social walls. Behind these walls, many groups and individuals do not have a voice, but they do have much to say. With this initiative, we aim to produce curricular, social, and academic spaces that encourage students to listen attentively to a range of voices, and challenges them to find ways to break down walls and turn them into bridges across the differences.
The Bildner Advisory Committee has met regularly and with enthusiasm throughout the summer, and has selected three outstanding courses as Bildner courses for the 2009–2010 academic year.
* Fall: Pati Hernandez (WGST) and Ivy Schweitzer (English) team-teach “Transforming Narrative” (English 67). In this community-based learning course, students spend half their class time in a traditional seminar room studying the power of narrative to transform our lives, and the other half at Valley Vista Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Center in Bradford, VT, where they participate in a performance program with women patients. Their goal is to learn how to “facilitate” the voices of the women by writing and performing an original play based on the women’s experiences.
* Winter: Ben Herzog, a visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology, will teach “Social Problems” (Sociology 2). This course asks students to examine the very processes by which certain social problems gain visibility. It also encourages students to delve more deeply––to consider how a social problem becomes defined as such, and what are the causes or sources of various social problems. The daily news reports that direct our attention to crime, poverty, prejudice and political corruption, rarely offer a discussion of the systemic causes of these problems. We are left witness to an endless stream of media coverage reporting seemingly isolated incidents. Learning how to analyze such problems critically, students begin to see structural causes for social ills and, therefore, to gain the insight necessary to develop informed responses to them.
* Spring: Michael Dorsey will teach “Environmental Justice in the U.S.” (Environmental Studies 58) Students examine how people marginalized by their low income, color, gender, age, or location, are disproportionately burdened by the dumping of hazardous and toxic materials, and thus deprived of beneficial goods (access to open space, clean air and water, etc.). Yet these communities, although disproportionately impacted by such environmental malfeasance, receive a small portion of state supported efforts to clean-up, regulate and prevent the genesis of these dangerous and poisonous sites. The course examines the theoretical and discursive intersections of racism, classism and environmentalism, the economic, social, psychological and political aspects of race and poverty, the emergence of environmentalism and social justice, and the dynamics of environmental policy surrounding issues of environmental equity, justice and racism, and, finally, the birth of environmental justice movements at local, national, and international levels.
In the history of race-relations in the US, few racial performances have been more defining than that which has produced the black/white binary. In the spring of 2010, a major two-day conference will bring an outstanding array of thinkers to campus to discuss Black Theatricality: Race and Representation in Black Literature and Culture. The meeting, organized by three exciting young scholars in Dartmouth’s department of English, Soyica Diggs Colbert, Michael Chaney, and Shalene Vasquez, will engage students, faculty, and the general public in a discussion about the complex ways in which culture has both enforced racial stereotypes and contributed to their undoing.
In addition to the curricular components and symposium, this initiative wishes to address students’ out-of-classroom experiences directly. The Tucker Foundation and the Council on Service and Engagement are exploring a range of programs that will offer students the opportunity to integrate course learning and co-curricular experiences related to diversity, service, and leadership. The Dean of the College division is continuing the Diversity Peer Leadership Program (DPP) which has been supported by the Bildner Endowment and empowers student participants to create change within the entire Dartmouth community and beyond through a heightened awareness of diversity and social justice issues. The Diversity Peer Advisors (DPAs) program will be expanded to include more peer workshops to be offered to Greek-letter organizations, athletic teams and other student organizations, and in residence halls.
Denise Anthony, Associate Professor of Sociology and Chair of Sociology
Helen Damon-Moore, Director of Service and Educational Programs, Tucker Foundation
Michael Dorsey, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
Jerry Nunnally, Senior Philanthropic Advisor
Adrian Randolph, Director of the Leslie Center for the Humanities
Holly Sateia, Vice President for Institutional Diversity and Equity (Chair)
Barry Scherr, Provost
Ivy Schweitzer, Professor of English and Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies
Sylvia Spears, Acting Dean of the College
Janet Terp, Senior Assistant to the Dean of the Faculty
Lindsay Whaley, Associate Dean of International and Interdisciplinary Programs
Nora Yasumura, Acting Assistant Director of the Office of Pluralism and Leadership
