Men2Men conference offers attendees the opportunity to connect across racial and generational lines to discuss sexual harassment, other issues

Harvey Weinstein. Kevin Spacey. Bill Cosby. Rob Porter.

Sexual harrassment and assault are all over the news these days, and many men want to understand more about what we all can do to enact positive change. So maybe it’s time they start talking to each other about their actions and behaviors.

That was the idea behind “Men2Men,” an intergenerational, interdenominational men’s conference co-hosted by Arizona State University’s Project Humanities and the Historic Tanner Chapel A.M.E Church's men's ministry March 3 in Phoenix.

“There’s something immediate and necessary that we need to discuss openly and critically — men and boys’ behaviors whether it’s the #MeToo movement, school shootings, bullying and ‘toxic masculinity,’” said Neal A. Lester, conference chair, founding director of Project Humanities and Foundation Professor of English. “This conference allows men to talk to each other in a meaningful way and figure out what can be done about all of these issues so that we can be better than too many headlines present.”

Project Humanities is an award-winning initiative that brings together individuals and communities from across Arizona to instill knowledge in humanities study, research and humanist thought. Project Humanities aims to facilitate conversations across diverse communities to build understanding through talking, listening and connecting.

ASU Professor Neal Lester speaks at the Men2Men event at the First Church UCC in Phoenix on Saturday. Photo by Marcus Chormicle/ASU Now

Just over 100 individuals — mostly men and boys — participated in the event at the First Church UCC in downtown Phoenix, coming together to raise awareness of critical issues directly related to their lives and to arrive at strategic personal and collective goals for advancement and enrichment.

Lester said the conference aligned well with Project Humanities’ ambitious Humanity 101 efforts to get men and boys to think about, embrace and promote principles that manifest our shared and individual humanity — respect, integrity, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, empathy and self-reflection.

Lester also attends the Historic Tanner Chapel. He said he “couldn’t say no” to his pastor, the Rev. Benjamin Thomas Sr., when approached about a year ago to create the conference. The daylong event included guest speakers, workshops and participatory activities, discussing issues such as sexual harassment and male allies, race-based stress, personal health and wellness, men of color navigating the law and political and social engagement.

“Men have a problem opening up with other men and sharing and communicating,” Thomas said. “We internalize a lot of our hurt and frustration. It may hurt to engage in these conversations, but we as men can learn from them.”

The men learned plenty from Jacque Starks, who facilitated a workshop titled “Sexual Harassment and Male Allies.” Starks, who manages diversity, equity, inclusion and engagement for Maricopa Community Colleges, said the conference was perfectly timed for men to hear her message.

“I’ve been teaching this since the 1980s, but the #MeToo movement is making men realize they have a responsibility to pay attention to what’s going on and not to be afraid to take action if they see anything wrong,” said Starks, who defined for her workshop what constitutes sexual harassment, what it looks like and how to be an effective ally to women.

Men also need to learn how to be an ally to themselves where it concerns their health, said facilitator Michelle Melton, a licensed clinical psychologist who led a workshop called “Men’s Race-Based Stress and Resiliency.” She said the more men experience racism and prejudice, the more they tend to internalize those feelings and begin to experience depression, anxiety and, sometimes, suicidal thoughts.

“If we’re going to make a social change or impact, we first have to learn how to take care of ourselves,” Melton said. “Otherwise, we’ll have more negative health outcomes.”

Men can feel better about themselves if they are grounded in spirituality and become more socially and politically active, said facilitator Earl Newton.

ASU's Project Humanities facilitates conversations across diverse communities throughout Arizona. Photo by Marcus Chormicle/ASU Now

“Women seem to take the forefront on many issues surrounding community,” said Newton, founder and president of the Whole Truth Community Development Corporation. “But if we’re going to change generations behind us, men have to take their rightful place, and that’s being politically and socially engaged.”

The conference also presented opportunities to talk about the local and national political climate and registered attendees to vote.

That’s one of the reasons why Maurice Barnes Jr. brought his 16-year-old son, Maurice Barnes III, to the conference.

“It was a good opportunity to learn about the challenges of what it’s like for his generation to grow up in today’s society,” said Barnes Jr. “The challenges of his generation are much more different than my challenges when I was his age. It’s important that we learn these topics together and grow from it.”

A continuation of the conference will happen March 9 and 10 with a public film screening and discussion of the documentary, “The Mask You Live In,” about how society raises boys to subscribe to a destructive and self-destructive "toxic masculinity"; a homeless outreach effort with Project Humanities; and a youth-targeted workshop on bullying and self-harm.

Top photo: Participants engage in a workshop on sexual harrassment and male allies at the Men2Men conference at the First Church in Phoenix on Saturday. Organized by ASU Professor Neal Lester, Men2Men facilitates open conversation about critical issues affecting men today. Photo by Marcus Chormicle/ASU Now

Nonprofit co-founder Sarita Brown, other leaders give preview of meeting; ASU's Crow says success of ethnic group is key to success of US economy

They are the nation’s largest ethnic minority, claiming nearly 18 percent of the population and 17 percent of the labor force, yet there is growing concern about the impact of Latinos not achieving the higher education needed to help move America’s economy forward.  

To provide a brief overview before their annual national meeting, being held this year in Phoenix on March 1-2, one of the nation’s leading Latino education advocacy groups held a reception Feb. 28 at the Downtown Phoenix campus.

Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Excelencia in Education, in partnership with Arizona State University, Maricopa Community Colleges and the Helios Foundation, organized the informational networking reception to frame the discussions they will have in the next two days about the state of higher-education attainment by Latinos.  

“Here we live in the fastest-growing county of the more than 3,000 counties in the United States with more than 4 million residents,” said ASU President Michael M. Crow during the reception. “And people of Latino heritage have a college-attainment level at one-third of the level necessary for the economy to be wildly successful at that high degree of outcome.”

For the U.S. to continue the social-mobility progress made in the past decades, it has to be unbelievably economically successful, Crow said.  The economy must grow by at least 4 percent on average for more than 83 years. That hasn’t happened in decades. 

“The reason we haven’t done it for decades is because we have not fully embraced the total talent and energy and creativity in our society at the level that we can,” Crow said.  “We haven’t gotten to the level of excellence that this new model for a country built on egalitarian access, built on the idea of all people are equal, built on the notion that we’re all here with the same rights and privileges and opportunities, and all we need is hard work and a chance.”

ASU has made significant progress in admitting Latino students. In 1985, the university had only 225 freshmen of Latino descent — in a state that at the time had more than 1 million Latino residents.

“That was not a sign of success in the design of a public university,” Crow said. “This last fall we admitted 3,000 (Latino) freshmen, a quarter of the freshman class, a tremendous transformation in the design of the institution.”

Arizona’s Latino population is young and growing. It is the sixth largest in the nation, accounts for 31 percent of the overall population and 44 percent of all K-12 students in the state. The median age for Arizona Latinos is 27, compared with 46 for white non-Hispanics.  

However, Arizona’s Latinos are lagging in higher education, according to U.S. Department of Education data from 2014-2015. Only 17 percent of Latino adults age 25 or older had attained an associate degree or higher, in contrast with 36 percent of all adults. The Latino graduation rate was also lower during that same time period at 40 percent. It was 49 percent for whites.

“We are committed to drive up educational attainment for what will be the new majority population,” Crow said.  “We believe that our institution is not successful unless the student body is completely representative of the socioeconomic diversity of our place. It is now; it never was before. Ever.” 

In overall numbers, ASU’s Tempe campus leads the state in awarding bachelor’s degrees to Latinos, followed by University of Arizona, Grand Canyon University and Northern Arizona University. But to make academic achievement happen on a grander scale, partnerships are necessary.

“We are excited to be a partner with you all,” said Crow, addressing the representatives from Excelencia in Education, Maricopa Community Colleges and the Helios Foundation.

Excelencia in Education has been working on accelerating Latino education for 14 years, said Sarita Brown, co-founder and president. The organization’s nine-member staff has engaged with leaders, institutions, program professionals and other stakeholders across the country for the cause of improving Latino education.

“The way we do our work is through research, policy and practice,” Brown said.

The team’s intent is to leverage their common cause and use what works by starting with data and driving it to the point of action, Brown said. Then they work with elected officials, communities and others who recognize that the country’s most precious resource is the “human resource.”

Top photo: Excelencia in Education co-founder and president Sarita Brown welcomes more than 130 academic and Latino leaders to the Latino Success in Higher Education program in downtown Phoenix on Wednesday. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now

School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership welcomes students, faculty and guests to discuss challenging topics

Robert Post, former dean of Yale Law School, opened Friday with a keynote address that looked at the classic interpretation of the First Amendment and what that means about how it should be interpreted on college campuses, where many feel free speech is currently under attack.

Post pointed out that within days of being confirmed, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy Devos said that the real threat to modern universities is silencing the First Amendment rights of people with whom you disagree.

But, Post said, “if we’re going to assume the First Amendment applies on college campuses, we need to agree on what it protects” and what it doesn’t.

Robert Post, Yale Law School professor and former dean, delivers the keynote address at the inaugural conference of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership on Feb. 23 at the Student Pavilion on ASU's Tempe campus. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now

Post laid out three basic rules that, in its most classical interpretation, ensure the First Amendment stands as a guardian to our democracy: 1) The state, in regulating speech, cannot engage in content or viewpoint discrimination. 2) All ideas are equal from the point of view of the government. 3) The state cannot compel you to speak or pledge allegiance to a particular government or candidate.

At a university, though, Post argued, people are not sovereign citizens; faculty, staff and students are all there to fulfill the function of the university, which is not to allow for airing of public opinion but to teach, to learn and to create knowledge. At universities, there is content discrimination — professors have to stick to whatever subject it is they’re there to teach, professors’ viewpoints have to be considered more valuable than students and individuals can be compelled to talk.

“So why are people talking about the First Amendment when they talk about free speech on college campuses?” Post asked. “What they have in mind are those aspects of the university in which its mission is most clouded,” such as when students invite an outside speaker — a sovereign citizen not beholden to the university’s mission — to speak on campus.

So how do we determine when and where free speech is applied on college campuses? It’s not black and white, Post said, but it is a discussion worth having, and schools such as SCETL are recognizing that and attempting to foster those kinds of discussions.

Students offer their perspective

Post’s keynote was followed by a student panel, which included remarks from ASU journalism students Gabriel Sandler and Tea Francesca Price on the question: Why do students need free speech on campus?

As a student at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Sandler covered much of the 2016 presidential election.

“It’s the responsibility of universities to promote and protect free speech,” Sandler said. “And ASU gave students the resources to elevate free speech in a time that really mattered both on and off campus.”

Price also praised the university, saying, “When you go to college, you’re going to be presented with perspectives that are very different from your own, so you need to learn effective communication. … It’s imperative to teach students that in college, if not earlier. ASU is the first place I’ve never felt limited to express myself freely.”

Matthew Foldi, a guest student speaker from the University of Chicago, shared an anecdote from his time with the school’s Students for Free Expression group to illustrate his opinion on the matter. He and others in the group, who held mostly conservative viewpoints, met with a member of the Black Lives Matter movement to learn more about the reasons behind his activism. What they discovered was they had more in common than they realized.

“The open exchange of ideas left everyone better off,” Foldi said.

Finally, Williams College student Zachary Wood talked about his role as president of the student group Uncomfortable Learning, whose mission it is to invite speakers with controversial views to campus.

“What we’re really trying to do is deepen our understanding of the world and humanity,” he said. “We can always gain something by thinking about perspectives that are unfamiliar to us.”

Around 200 people attended a student panel at the conference of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership on Feb. 23 at ASU's Tempe campus. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now

Experts weigh in on opinion diversity

Following the student panel were two faculty expert panels, “Free Inquiry and the Philosophy of Higher Education,” moderated by Rhodes College Professor Daniel Cullen, and “Intellectual Diversity and Higher Education: A Crisis?” moderated by University of Texas at Austin Professor Cristine Legare.

Panelists discussed topics that included the value of diversity, euphemism and dissent in free speech.

Legare, in introducing her panel, said, “One thing that’s useful as a first step in my classes is to teach students how to have a debate.”

All panelists agreed to some degree that introducing students to a range of perspectives and guiding them on how to respond is essential to a true education. The crisis, some said, lies in the fact that you can’t have a range of perspectives if universities are made up of majority liberal professors, which they agreed seems to be the case.

Professors make up “one of the most liberal occupations in the U.S.,” said panelist and Colby College Professor Neil Gross. “About 60 percent identify as either liberal or far left. Only 13 percent identify as conservative or far right.”

The solution to that, fellow panelist and University of Notre Dame Law School Professor Rick Garnett posited, is for universities to accept their role as a crucial part of the infrastructure of public discourse, allowing many voices and viewpoints to have a place to be heard.

Surprising plenary address on heckling

Friday’s events ended with a plenary address from Jeremy Waldron of New York University, which focused on heckling at universities.

Waldron speculated that although some may claim heckling, often seen in the form of shouting down a speaker so as to stop them from being heard, is a direct assault on free speech, it may actually be an exercise of free speech itself.

“Heckling interferes with a persons’ ability to convey their message,” he said. “The provocative thing I’m going to propose is that that is sometimes a good thing.”

In fact, heckling used to be common, acceptable behavior at public speeches. Nowadays, we see hecklers being immediately removed from the audience. Waldron wondered, why is it not as tolerated nowadays?

Some would say it’s an issue of public order, that it disturbs the peace and presages disorder and the chance for violence. But, Waldron said, we need to distinguish between disorder and disruption.

He pointed out that, as with most things in life, there is a spectrum, with disconcerting questions from audience members at the less obstructive end and whole groups of people shouting over a speaker at the more obstructive end. Along the spectrum, there are of course shades of gray.

“Disturbing the composure of a speaker … is sometimes a good thing,” Waldron reiterated. “The speaker must take his audience as he finds them … [the speaker] is not entitled to exclude dissident choruses.

“Even though heckling is impolite and discourteous, it can nevertheless advance the values of free speech.”

More from SCETL

The conference continued Saturday at ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus, with discussions such as “Negotiating Controversial Speakers on Campus,” “Freedom of Speech and Thought on Campus: What Role for the First Amendment?” and “State Legislative Remedies to Free Speech Challenges on Campus: Are They Consistent with Academic Freedom?”

The School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership’s free-speech series continues April 2 on the Tempe campus with Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago Law School giving an address titled “Free Speech on Campus: A Challenge of Our Times.”

Top photo: ASU journalism graduate student Gabriel Sandler (left) speaks on the topic, "Why Do Students Need Free Speech on Campus?" at the inaugural annual conference of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership on Feb. 23 at the Student Pavilion in Tempe. Around 200 people attended the two-day program that culminates a yearlong series of discussions on "Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity in Higher Education" and its implications for American society. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now

Emma Greguska

Reporter , ASU Now

(480) 965-9657 emma.greguska@asu.edu