University of Nebraska Kearney

Events for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

All students, faculty, and staff are invited to participate in the following events, planned in recognition of Martin Luther King Jr. Day:

Monday, January 17

Tuesday, January 18

See guest speaker biographies below.

American Democracy Project at UNK - http://www.unk.edu/adp/
Ethnic Studies Program - Claude Louishomme, Director - louishommeca@unk.edu 

Haroon Kharem is an Associate Professor of Urban Education at Brooklyn College. He received his Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Kharem collaborated with Performing Arts and Technology High School (PATHS) in Brooklyn teaching history courses (for four years) that critically looked at the struggles of African Americans and took his students to present at a number of national conferences. A number of his students from PATHS are currently students at Brooklyn College and other colleges throughout the city and nation. Professor Kharem continues to mentor and advise his former (PATHS) students.  He has spent the last 10 years training and mentoring NYC Teaching Fellows, developing relationships with numerous schools in the Bedford Stuyvesant, East New York and Brownsville sections of Brooklyn where he consistently mentors elementary and high schools teachers and students. Currently, Professor Kharem works in partnership with East New York Family Academy High School where he teaches history. He takes his students to analyze historical sites throughout NYC. Dr. Kharem sits on several East New York Community organizations that provide the development of youth. He was the recipient of Brooklyn College’s prestigious Murray Koppleman Award in 2007. As an Education and African American history scholar, Dr. Kharem is an accomplished published scholar with a book titled A Curriculum of Repression: A Pedagogy of Racial History in the United States. He has co-edited two books: Education as Freedom: African American Educational Thought and Activism and Teaching Bilingual/Bicultural Children: Teachers Talk About Language and Learning. His most recent articles deal with racial images of African Americans, the Moors in Spain, street gangs, and recently finished an article titled A Dangerous Truth: the Exclusion of African American History in Schooling. He is currently working on an article called Black Males, Teachers and Schooling: Conflict and Resistance. Dr. Kharem is also working on two new book projects The African Free Schools: A Fulcrum for Change, Community, Conflict and Black Activism 1800-1865; and Excluded Histories: Explorations of Historical Events and Periods of African American, Latino and Indigenous Native American People. 

Dr. Kharem is currently working with Dr. Anderson at The Urban Community Teachers Project, a program that professionally develops African American male teacher candidates to become community teachers in Brooklyn’s neighborhoods. 

Noel S. Anderson is acting chairperson and associate professor in the department of political science at Brooklyn College. He received his B.A. cum laude from Brooklyn College, M.S. Ed. from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. from New York University. His research centers on urban politics, social policy (anti-poverty programs and education), college access and students of color and comparative issues in education policy (U.S./South Africa). Anderson is co-founder and co- director of the Empowerment, Recruitment, Investing and Supporting (ERIS) Program of the Black Male Initiative at CUNY. Recently, with a $426,000 grant from the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation and Schott Foundation for Public Education, Anderson founded the Urban Community Teachers Project, a partnership between the Brooklyn College School of Education and his ERIS program to train Black males and other underrepresented groups to teach in targeted urban schools in Brooklyn. He has authored and co-authored numerous scholarly articles and two books, titled, Our Schools Suck: Students Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on the Failures of Public Education (New York University Press, 2009) and Education as Freedom: African American Education Thought and Activism (Lexington Books, 2009). He is currently working on another book project, entitled “Beyond Obama: Race, Gentrification and the Struggle for Equity in Urban Education.” Anderson is also a frequent contributor to www.politic365.com and www.thegrio.com, an African American news site in conjunction with MSNBC. Anderson has acquired a number of academic awards and fellowships. He was recently awarded 2008 Whitney M. Young Education Leadership Award by the National Urban League.