Global Dialogue

The first and second World Conferences on Racial and Ethnic Economic Inequality expanded the Wilkins Center's dialogue to new colleagues around the world and presented exciting new avenues for research.

World Conferences on Remedies to Racial and Ethnic Economic Inequality (1996 and 1998)

Experts from 10 countries and various professional disciplines came together to examine models from around the world that address racial and ethnic economic inequality. Participants discussed the basic causes of inequality and discrimination and examined models—existing and theoretical—to eliminate ethnically based inequality. The discussion was enriched by the broad spectrum of professional and international experience.

One day of the first World Conference brought international policymakers and researchers together with community leaders working to eliminate inequality and racism through a series of workshops that examined community action models. Speakers included former U.S. Appeals Court Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.; actor Edward James Olmos; LeBaron Taylor of Sony Music; Jomo K.S. of the University of Malaya; Colin Bourke of the University of South Australia; Rose Brewer of the University of Minnesota; and Carol Stack of the University of California–Berkeley.

Building on the insight gained at the first World Conference, the Wilkins Center presented a second conference in conjunction with the Faculty of Aboriginal and Islander Studies at the University of South Australia. Held in Adelaide, Australia, the conference gathered participants from the United States, the South Pacific, and Asia. Each day of the conference addressed a particular theme, including giving meaning to inequality, the meaning of race, reconciliation, and strategies to overcome inequality. Speakers included John Herron, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs (Australia); Evelyn Scott, chair of the Aboriginal Reconciliation Commission (Australia); and Mary Frances Berry, chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

In conjunction with the second World Conference in Australia, the Wilkins Center coordinated a study trip for 60 people to visit the International Research Institute for Maori and Indigenous Education at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. In New Zealand, participants attended sessions about the socioeconomic demographics of the Maori population; the history and current state of Maori–white relations and the Maori-centered education movement; and efforts to change political and land rights. Participants also visited students at a Maori school. In Australia, members of the local Aboriginal community were actively involved in the second World Conference and facilitated visits to an Aboriginal autonomous community and an Aboriginal school. Participants from the Wilkins Forum, American Indian nations, universities, and the U.S. government gained invaluable knowledge about the experience of indigenous people in Australia and New Zealand.