Annual celebrations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy at MIT

2012 38th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration

MIT/Wellesley Upward Bound, 2012. L to r: Ronald Crichlow, Dir. of Ed. Opportunity Programs; Flora Keumurian, Ed. Program Specialist; Elaine Thomas, Admin. Assist.; Lourdes Pires, Assist. Dir.; Evette Layne, Dir.; Eric Grimson, MIT Chancellor. Source:NEOA

Theme

Expanding the Possible

Keynote

Richard Tapia
University Professor, Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics, Rice University

MLK Leadership Awardees

Edmund Bertschinger
Professor and Department Head, MIT Department of Physics

Julia Jaskólska ‘13

Arnold R. Henderson, Jr.
Associate Dean, Counseling and Support Services, MIT

Alyce Johnson
member, Committee for Race and Diversity, MIT

MIT/Wellesley Upward Bound Program

Cato T. Laurencin PhD
Vice President for Health Affairs, University of Connecticut

Press

MIT honors Martin Luther King Jr. at 38th annual breakfast

Left to right: Keynote speaker Richard Tapia, MIT President Susan Hockfield, Christopher Jones MS '03, and Deborah Liverman joined the MIT community in paying tribute to Dr. King. Photo: Dominick Reuter, MIT News 2012

On Thursday morning, hundreds from the MIT community gathered to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Institute’s 38th annual breakfast celebration of the late civil rights leader. At the event, where invited speakers reflected on the theme “Expanding the Possible,” President Susan Hockfield said that to achieve real diversity and inclusion, “we must answer inertia with momentum.”

“Without constant vigilance, old habits and well-worn pathways will prevail,” Hockfield said. “We need to engineer a set of underlying institutional mechanisms, expectations, habits and rhythms that make diversity and inclusion simply part of what we work on here, every day.”

In her remarks, Hockfield highlighted a number of efforts to cultivate diversity and inclusion in MIT’s faculty and student body: The School of Engineering is honing its procedures to recruit and mentor underrepresented minority (URM) graduate students and faculty; the School of Architecture and Planning is reaching out to its alumni to form a mentoring network for URM graduate students; and the School of Science is identifying new funds to expand its pool of URM faculty.

“Just as everyone at MIT shares responsibility for our mission, if we hope to continue ‘expanding the possible,’ we also share responsibility for making our diverse community thrive,” Hockfield said.

Exhibit

The final project of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Design Seminar (17.922) was on display in Lobby 10 on Friday. The exhibit highlights issues including racial discrimination and economic disparity. Photo: Christopher A. Maynor, The Tech 2012