Speaker
Thenmozhi Soundararajan
Founder and Executive Director of Equality Labs
Thenmozhi Soundararajan is a Dalit rights activist based in the United States. She is a transmedia storyteller, songwriter, hip-hop musician and technologist. She founded Equality Labs, which “is an Ambedkarite South Asian power-building organization that uses community research, political base-building, culture-shifting art, and digital security to end the oppression of caste apartheid, Islamophobia, white supremacy, and religious intolerance.” Her work and writings against caste oppression in the United States have been featured in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Speaking in
Building Caste Equity in the U.S. Academia
The event will include a one-hour discussion on the topic of caste discrimination in the U.S. academia followed by audience interactions and questions. In this discussion, we will hear from an activist working on the ground to mobilize and effect change in university policy, including from successful campaigns at other U.S. universities and a current UW–Madison faculty member about contextualizing these lessons for the UW–Madison experience. The speakers will share strategies for generating awareness, identifying instances of caste abuse, as well as engaging and dealing with instances of caste discrimination in academic institutions.