Civility Week 2024

Dialogue Dynamics: The Art of Communication

Dr. Susan J. Breton, associate professor/development specialist, Enrollment Management and Student Success
Dr. Jay Choi, director, FIT Counseling Center

In today’s diverse world, the ability to engage in civil discourse with those we disagree with is critical. Led by two clinical psychologists, this session explored effective communication strategies, active listening techniques, and conflict resolution skills.

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NEGRITA Screening and Q&A

Elena Romero, professor, Marketing Communications

NEGRITA, the debut documentary film from director Magdalena Albizu, interrogates the cultural prejudice and presumptions surrounding the lives of Afro-Latina women in America. Albizu, a self-described negrita, explores an unconscious ideology of anti-Blackness in which both American and Latino cultures perpetuate a false narrative of Black as undesirable otherness. Through family pictures, childhood videos, and frank conversations with family members, scholars, and Latinas, NEGRITA uses the director’s own personal history to illuminate the larger tapestry of shared experiences throughout the Black and Latino community. Hand in hand with women from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Honduras, and Panama, Albizu and her subjects collectively confront their own Black identities, empowering themselves as Afro-Latinas. 

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Balancing Acts: Diversity and Civility in Media with Don Lemon

In an unprecedented year of social upheaval and civil unrest, citizens around the country feel challenged by violence, xenophobia, bullying, and threats to our humanity and our democracy. This has been a lightning rod in the center of the 2024 election—and the heart of America. FIT invited Don Lemon, renowned journalist, to discuss the importance of civility while being a journalist of color during this intense and historic election cycle.

Don Lemon is host of The Don Lemon Show, which streams live daily on YouTube and podcast platforms. An outspoken truth-teller, Lemon brings three decades of award-winning journalism to the show, welcoming myriad guests and newsmakers to discuss the topics shaping lives and conversations, and offering his personal takes as well. Lemon anchored the long-running CNN primetime program Don Lemon Tonight as well as CNN This Morning, and was an anchor and correspondent at NBC, MSNBC, and local TV stations in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis. He has won distinguished awards for his work, including an Edward R. Murrow award, multiple Emmys, a Peabody, and others. He has also been honored for the social impact of his work: he was one of Ebony’s "150 most influential African Americans" in 2009; was on The Advocate’s 2014 list of the "50 Most Influential LGBTQ People in Media"; was recipient of a 2016 "Native Son Award"; was on Out’s 2017 "Power 50" list; and in 2019, the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, Queerty named him a "Pride 50 LGBTQ Trailblazer". Lemon revealed he was gay in his auto-biographical book, Transparent (2011); his second book, This is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism (2021), inspired by the murder of George Floyd, debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Lemon earned a BA in broadcast journalism from Brooklyn College. He and his husband live in New York City with their three dogs.

Emil Wilbekin is an associate professor of journalism at FIT and a multimedia maverick who contributes to The New York Times, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Vogue, The Cut, Architectural Digest, Time, Essence, Ebony, and Town & Country. He is the co-producer and co-writer of the documentary The Remix: Hip Hip X Fashion on Netflix. He is also the founder of Native Son, a platform created to inspire and empower Black gay and queer men. Wilbekin has served as chief content officer at Afropunk, editor-at-large at Essence, managing editor of Essence.com, editor-in-chief of Giant magazine and Giantmag.com, style guru at Complex media, VP of brand development at Marc Eckō Enterprises, editorial director/vice president of Vibe Ventures and editor-in-chief of Vibe magazine. Under Wilbekin’s leadership, Vibe won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002. He holds a BS in mass media arts from Hampton University and an MS in journalism from Columbia University.

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Banned Book Drag Story Hour and Voter Registration Drive

Jenne Brady, library associate, Gladys Marcus Library
Rebecca Hoffman, counselor/assistant professor, Counseling Center

Featured readings of banned books by performers Arteigh Fischel and Scarlet Foxx, with special guest Stonewall veteran Joe Negrelli. Students and members of Services and Advocacy for GLBTQ Elders (SAGE) were on hand to help attendees with voter registration. The event is sponsored by the FIT Library, along with the Counseling Center, Student Life, LGBTQ+ Student Alliance, Theatre Club, and SAGE.

Build a Bridge from a Wall

Barbara Weinreich, Assistant Professor, Interior Design
Todd Brown, Assistant Professor, Social Sciences

Walls can separate us. Divide us. Prevent us from moving forward …because they block us. Words can separate us. Divide us. Prevent us from moving forward because they hold such emotional power. But what if we take the elements that build a divisive wall, and repurpose, reframe, reposition them? What if we take words that are negative, divisive, absolute and rephrase them … and build a bridge from that wall? In this interactive exercise, attendees physically “reframed the argument” and created a new, inclusive physical element.  

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Norman Hill, Civil Rights Legend

Daniel Levinson Wilk, professor, American History

Norman Hill is a legend of the Civil Rights Movement and a neighbor of FIT. A protégé of A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, Hill desegregated beaches in Chicago and restaurants along Route 40 between New York and Washington, D.C. He helped plan the March on Washington, where he stood on the stage with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Hill served for many years as president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, forging connections between the civil rights and labor movements and managing voter registration campaigns across the nation. Attendees learned from Hill about his lifetime of activism and his memoir, Climbing the Rough Side of the Mountain, which he wrote with his wife and partner-in-activism, Velma Hill. 

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