On Saturday, December 13, 2014, Arash Daneshzadeh, Interim Director of Skyline College’s TRiO SS Program, was keynote speaker at a conference on Race, Gender and Equity at the Claremont Colleges. This two-day program was hosted by Pitzer College. Over 175 students participated in Arash’s workshop on community cultural wealth, presentation on hip hop and critical pedagogy and brown bag seminars highlighting his career investment with historically marginalized communities of color, particularly in the wake of public scrutiny over police brutality.
Arash’s keynote presentation was conceptually grounded in his doctoral research on issues germane to the school-to-prison pandemic—such as restorative justice, black male identity theory, cultural mistrust, and zero tolerance policies. This event was sponsored by the governance bodies representing the Associated Students and Black Student Union of the Five Claremont College Consortium. Student leadership at both Pitzer College and Pomona College will continue to utilize Arash’s seminal work on integrating cultural wealth and restorative justice into the judiciary practices on their own campuses.
Article by Arash Daneshzadeh
