Salesforce’s ninth annual Education Summit took place virtually for the second year in a row, with educators and administrators joining in from around the world to share the innovative ways they’re building institutional and student success despite the challenges posed by an ever-changing world.
The event, co-hosted by the University of Colorado, kicked off with presentations from two high-profile figures — historian Yuval Noah Harari and legal expert and civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson — both of whom posed potential solutions to two major hurdles facing the future of higher education: an unpredictable workforce and racial injustice.
In addressing racial injustices still existing in the U.S. and, inevitably, in higher education too, Stevenson began the morning by emphasizing “the power of proximity” when it comes to educating underrepresented students. Before universities can address inequities, he said leaders must learn to get close to the students they’re trying to reach.
“To create healthy educational environments and to make a difference in the lives of young people … we have to commit to getting proximate to the poor, the neglected, the abused, the traumatized and the disfavored where they exist,” said Stevenson.
A legal expert and social justice advocate, Stevenson — who is perhaps most known for his best-selling memoir Just Mercy — is founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and a law professor at New York University School of Law. In his presentation, he credited part of his success as “the product of someone’s choice to get proximate.”
Born in 1959, Stevenson grew up in a community that had long resisted integration. When his father was a teenager, Black students were not allowed in public schools and there were no high schools available for Black students. That is, until lawyers came into his community and forced the school district to abide by the law.
“Because those lawyers got proximate, I got to go to high school, I got to go to college, I got to go to law school,” Stevenson said. “I’m here because people who cared got proximate to me.”
