Antioch College Main Building. (News archive photo)
Summit at Antioch College to envision ‘Another World’
- Published: February 11, 2025
An upcoming four-day summit hosted by Antioch College’s Coretta Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom aims to inspire students, artists, researchers, activists, organizers, educators and scholars not only to envision, but also to help create — as author Toni Morrison once told a group of collegiate graduates — “the world as it ought to be.”
The theme of the center’s 2025 Global Racial and Social Justice Summit is “Another World is Possible,” to be held Thursday–Sunday, Feb. 13–16.
Those attending the summit will have access to more than 30 workshops, panels, film screenings, art installations, performances and discussions covering a wide range of topics and themes, which broadly include anti-racism; nonviolence and peace work; community-building, resistance-building and collaboration; equity and advocacy in education; and transgender rights and advocacy, among others.
The News spoke this week with Dr. Queen Meccasia Zabriskie, director of the Coretta Scott King Center, who is organizing the summit. She said the goal of the series of events is to bring together those who are engaged in racial and social justice work through research, art, community organizing and activism and find ways to move forward together through collective resistance.
“We’ll talk about how we can support each other — especially when we know that this work is under attack in so many ways,” Zabriskie said. “Then we can take the time to collectively think about what we’re working for, what we’re envisioning, knowing that we all will have different ways of getting there.”
The summit will open with an evening of activities intended to set the tone for the weekend through collaborative creation and movement. First will be a “visioning session” with Shelby Chestnut, chair of the Antioch College Board of Trustees and executive director of the Transgender Law Center. The session, Zabriskie said, was inspired by a similar activity introduced by Chestnut at an event last year.
“[Participants] created a beautiful visual art piece collectively that was about this future they were working toward,” Zabriskie said. “That’s how we’ll start the summit.”
The visioning session will be followed and amplified by an “embodied synthesis” led by Un/Commoning Pedagogies, a collective of dancer-scholars founded in 2018 whose work focuses on “embodied anti-racist praxis,” according to the group’s website.
Zabriskie, who is a founding member of the collective, said Un/Commoning Pedagogies’ contribution to the opening session will be to “bring the body into the conversation” that surrounds anti-racist and social justice.
“So many of the systems we’re trying to navigate — systems of inequality, racism, sexism, capitalism — they impact us not only intellectually, but they also impact our bodies. … My own research is on how dance can be a tool to help not just build community, but really navigate the everyday stress of racism that people experience,” Zabriskie said. “Un/Commoning Pedagogies will do an embodied reflection of [what’s created in the visioning session], so that it’s not just on the wall, but we’re also thinking about what it means in practice.”
Un/Commoning Pedagogies will lead sessions at the opening of each of the summit’s four days of events, encouraging participants to explore ways to use their bodies to recontextualize what it means to disrupt systems of inequality. For example, Zabriskie said, the collective might ask participants to “intentionally navigate spaces in ways that are not dictated by surrounding structures” — such as trying to climb up the side of a set of stairs rather than walking up, or leaving the sidewalk and walking across the grass.
“What does it mean to go against existing structures that might be limiting us?” she said. “How does this small activity help us to think about what limits us, or what we can do to make things possible? How do we work together in these situations? There are all kinds of possibilities.”
Opening night of the summit will end with a conversation on hip hop, education and social justice, featuring local resident, artist and educator Truth Garrett and Miles Iton, founder of Lo-Fi Language Learning, an organization founded on a pedagogical model that teaches English through hip hop.
Iton will also present and discuss his documentary film, “Sincerely, the Black Kids,” as part of Saturday’s summit events. The film highlights the prevalence of racism in colleges and universities with predominantly white student bodies — particularly with regard to BIPOC students in leadership roles.
For those unable to attend the entire summit, but who are still interested in some of its offerings, there are two events that will be accessible via separate tickets. First, on Friday, Feb. 14, in the Foundry Theater, is “Mareas/Tides,” a dance performance created by Denison University faculty members Marion Ramirez and Ojeya Cruz Banks. According to a press release, the performance celebrates “sacred celestial-ocean relationships through story-telling, song and improvisation,” tracing the “storied geographies between and through Puerto Rico, Guåhan to Aotearoa to Alabama to Senegal.” The dance work will be accompanied by live music, performed by Pete Mills, Timothy Carpenter, Matthew Dixon and Dean Hulett — the latter who recently appeared in the Foundry Theater as part of the Mark Lomax Quartet’s celebration of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.”
On Saturday, Feb. 15, a Fireside Chat in honor of “Coretta Scott King Remembrance Day” will be held at the Foundry, with a panel discussion featuring Chestnut; Antioch College President Dr. Jane Fernandes; Dr. Kimberley Richards, executive director of the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond; and Elba “Alicia” Pagan, Ohio State director of the League of United Latin American Citizens. The discussion, according to a press release, will focus on “challenges in the contemporary moment and ways to move into a more just and inclusive present and future.”
The cost of the summit is $75 — but Zabriskie noted that admission is free for Antioch College students, faculty and staff, and the college is offering a “pay what you can” option for those who might need it. Even if what you can pay is nothing, she added, if you’re of high school age and above and you’re interested in what the summit offers, come on out.
“In creating this summit that imagines another world, we wanted to make sure people could access it,” Zabriskie said. “You’re absolutely welcome — come in proudly and participate fully, because that’s important.”
And it’s particularly important now, Zabriskie added, as the newly elected president of the United States and attendant government continue to ramp up policies aimed at dismantling support systems for often vulnerable identities.
“People are resisting, and will be resisting — that’s the point of this gathering,” she said. “For some of us, who we are is under attack. … How can we support each other through that? Because we need to, and we need each other.”
To register for the 2025 Global Racial and Social Justice Summit, and for a full listing of events, or to purchase tickets to “Mareas/Tides” or the Fireside Chat, go to http://www.antiochcollege.edu/calendar.
Support for the summit is provided by the Great Lakes Colleges Association through its Global Crossroads Initiative, made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation, as well as a grant from the Endeavor Foundation.
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