Celebrating the Life & Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
2025 Schedule of Events
All events are free and open to the public unless otherwise specified within the program description or registration link.
For more information, please contact the Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion by calling (412) 268-2150 or emailing csdi@andrew.cmu.edu.
This page is subject to be updated as more information becomes available.
Special MLK Day 2025 Event
Conocimiento: Personal Storytelling featuring a National Day of Racial Healing experience
Monday, January 20, 2025
4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Connan Room, Cohon University Center First Floor
In honor of the legacy of Dr. King and the National Day of Racial Healing movement, the Center for Student Diversity & Inclusion invites you to join us for an afternoon of personal storytelling within our campus community.
Conocimiento means knowledge and wisdom, to be conscious and to become aware. It is a practice that builds community and deepens relationships through group discussions and personal growth. A critical component of racial equity and racial healing work, the Conocimiento principle: emphasizes the necessity of consciously creating community within a group, heightens the potential for personal growth and shared action, helps foster and cultivate a culture of belonging. Conocimiento is not an icebreaker, but an engagement practice that encourages people to bring their full selves into the room.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Birthday Celebration
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
11:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Cohon University Center
In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, the Office of the Vice Provost of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and the Center for Student Diversity & Inclusion, with support from Chartwells and Sustainability Initiative at CMU, invite the entire campus community to join us for a special birthday celebration. Stop by a campus location to grab a sweet treat and learn more about upcoming programs celebrating the life of Dr. King.
Registration is not required.
Storytelling for Sustainability: Conocimiento
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Sustainability Studio, Hunt Library
MLK Interfaith Lecture:
Rebuilding a Nation with Revolutionary Love featuring Valarie Kaur
Thursday, January 23, 2025
5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Simmons Auditorium, Tepper Building
Valarie Kaur is a civil rights leader, lawyer, award-winning filmmaker, educator, best-selling author, Sikh American, and mother. She is building a movement to reclaim love as a force for justice, healing, and transformation in America. Today, she leads The Revolutionary Love Project, where she leads a movement to reclaim love as a force for justice. The talk will be followed by a Q&A session and a book signing with light desserts.
Register for the MLK Interfaith Lecture.
MLK Interfaith Breakfast
Friday, January 24, 2025
10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Doors open at 9:30 a.m.
Rangos Balloom, Cohon University Center
Join the Center for Student Diversity & Inclusion and Wellness and Meaning-Making Programs for the annual Martin Luther King Interfaith Breakfast on Friday, January 24 in the Rangos Ballroom. Every year, members of the Carnegie Mellon community are invited to an informal breakfast with campus and community interfaith leaders, followed by fellowship and conversation about the life and legacy of Dr. King through the lens of faith, activism, and social justice.
Doors will open for breakfast at 9:30 a.m. and the program will begin at 10:00 a.m.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Keynote Lecture featuring Admiral Michelle J. Howard
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Rangos Ballroom, Cohon University Center
Admiral Michelle J. Howard had a trailblazing 35-year career in the U.S. Navy, becoming the first woman to reach the rank of four-star admiral and the first to serve as Vice Chief of Naval Operations, the second-highest rank in the Navy. She made history as the first African-American woman to attain both three-star and four-star ranks across any branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, as well as the first African-American woman to command a ship in the Navy. Throughout her career, Admiral Howard led critical military operations, including NATO peacekeeping, Desert Storm, and the 2009 rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates, later depicted in the film Captain Phillips. Her leadership extended beyond military service, as she served as a professor at George Washington University and has been a member of the boards of IBM and the STIMSON Center.
A dedicated leader with expertise in cybersecurity, defense strategy, and international affairs, Admiral Howard also commanded U.S. Naval Forces Europe and U.S. Naval Forces Africa, overseeing missions in diverse regions from the Balkans to Iraq. She is an accomplished speaker on leadership, innovation, and diversity, offering powerful insights from her groundbreaking career. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, she has continued to shape national defense policy, including chairing The Naming Commission, which recommended changes to military assets linked to the Confederacy. Admiral Howard remains a prominent advocate for diversity and leadership, inspiring others with her pioneering legacy.
Register for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Keynote Lecture.
Pittsburgh Community Event
American Century Cycle: Poetry Slam
Saturday, January 18, 2025
6 PM
August Wilson African American Cultural Center
Kickoff the new semester with The Center as we reconnect with arts & culture in Pittsburgh. The Center has procured a limited number of tickets for undergraduate and graduate students to the upcoming “Poetry Slam” event being hosted by the August Wilson African American Cultural Center.
In honor of the late August Wilson, 10 Pittsburgh writers will compete in a 4-round poetry slam for a chance to win $1000 and a slot on AWAACC’s “Poetry Unplugged” event in April. Each poet will draw a title from one of August Wilson’s “American Century Cycle” plays to determine the order of performances based upon the decade that the play represents.
Pittsburgh Community Event
Pittsburgh Racial Justice Summit
People Power & Progress: Community Engagement for Justice & Accountability
Saturday, February 22, 2025
9:00 a.m. - 6:00 a.m.
CCAC Allegheny Campus
808 Ridge Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15212
The Racial Justice Summit, (PRJS) formerly known as the Summit Against Racism, is a flagship event for Pittsburgh organizers. The Summit creates opportunities for attendees to learn, connect, and act on behalf of racial justice. The PRJS is a community conference dedicated to providing resources and spaces for community dialogues, sharing strategies and experiences of organizing for racial justice, healing from racial trauma, and providing connections to social support services for all attendees.
Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Joe Trotter
Joe William Trotter, Jr. is the Giant Eagle University Professor of History and Social Justice and past History Department Chair at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is also the Director and Founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE), President Elect of the Urban History Association and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The Center is giving away a limited number of copies of Dr. Trotter’s new book, Building the Black City: The Transformation of American Life.
A new way of seeing Black history—the sweeping story of how American cities as we know them developed from the vision, aspirations, and actions of the Black poor.
Building the Black City shows how African Americans built and rebuilt thriving cities for themselves, even as their unpaid and underpaid labor enriched the nation's economic, political, and cultural elites. Covering an incredible range of cities from the North to the South, the East to the West, Joe William Trotter, Jr., traces the growth of Black cities and political power from the preindustrial era to the present.
Trotter defines the Black city as a complicated socioeconomic, spiritual, political, and spatial process, unfolding time and again as Black communities carved out urban space against the violent backdrop of recurring assaults on their civil and human rights—including the right to the city.
Cities covered: Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Richmond, Birmingham, Durham, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Tulsa, early New York (New Amsterdam), Philadelphia, Boston Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Seattle
Combating Hate Series
The State of Hate: What Does the Data Say?
January 29, 2025
5:00 p.m. - 6:15 p.m.
Simmons Auditorium A, Tepper Building
This session examines recent data on hate-driven behavior targeting marginalized groups, highlighting trends and the real-world impacts of prejudice. Dr. Wanda Heading-Grant, Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer, and Melissa Baker, Assistant Vice Provost, Institutional Research and Analysis, will analyze statistics and case studies to illustrate the prevalence and consequences of prejudice. Participants will learn strategies to create safer, more inclusive environments and how to actively oppose hate while supporting those affected.
Combating Hate Series
The Face of Xenophobia
February 12, 2025
5:00 p.m. - 6:15 p.m.
Simmons Auditorium A, Tepper Building
This presentation examines xenophobia across various forms, including Islamophobia, anti-Asian hate, anti-Black racism and anti-immigrant prejudice. Susan Baida, Executive Director of the Center for Applied Research on Targeted Violence and Mark D’Angelo, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Learning and Development Consultant and Trainer will explore its historical roots, social impact and the personal narratives behind this destructive force. By analyzing the cultural and political factors driving xenophobia, they will discuss strategies to challenge these prejudices and foster inclusivity. The session will highlight the human cost of exclusion while advocating for empathy, dialogue and meaningful change.
MLK Reading Series | February
Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions About Small-Town America
edited by Nora Shalaway Carpenter
Tuesday, February 25, 2025 | 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
The Center for Student Diversity & Inclusion, Cohon University Center LL 75
Think you know what rural America is like? Discover a plurality of perspectives in this enlightening anthology of stories that turns preconceptions on their head.
A limited number of copies of each book will be made available for campus community members to read and commit to participate in a featured lunch dialogue.
To receive a copy of the book and register for the lunch discussion, please RSVP.
MLK Reading Series | March
Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir
by Zoe Bossiere
Monday, March 24, 2025 | 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
The Center for Student Diversity & Inclusion, Cohon University Center LL 75
A striking literary memoir of gender fluidity, class, masculinity, and the American Southwest that captures the author’s experience coming of age in a Tucson, Arizona, trailer park.
A limited number of copies of each book will be made available for campus community members to read and commit to participate in a featured lunch dialogue.
To receive a copy of the book and register for the lunch discussion, please RSVP.
MLK Reading Series | APRIL
To Be Marquette
by Sharon Dilworth
Wednesday, April 9, 2025 | 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
The Center for Student Diversity & Inclusion, Cohon University Center LL 75
Sharon Dilworth’s To Be Marquette portrays an undergraduate narrator groping for meaning in a world where personal transformation takes place alongside conflicting cultural paradigms.
A limited number of copies of each book will be made available for campus community members to read and commit to participate in a featured lunch dialogue.
To receive a copy of the book and register for the lunch discussion, please RSVP.
2025 Selected Readings
February
Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions About Small-Town America
edited by Nora Shalaway Carpenter
Think you know what rural America is like? Discover a plurality of perspectives in this enlightening anthology of stories that turns preconceptions on their head.
For most of America’s history, rural people and culture have been casually mocked, stereotyped, and, in general, deeply misunderstood. Now an array of short stories, poetry, graphic short stories, and personal essays, along with anecdotes from the authors’ real lives, dives deep into the complexity and diversity of rural America and the people who call it home. Fifteen extraordinary authors—diverse in ethnic background, sexual orientation, geographic location, and socioeconomic status—explore the challenges, beauty, and nuances of growing up in rural America. From a mountain town in New Mexico to the gorges of New York to the arctic tundra of Alaska, you’ll find yourself visiting parts of this country you might not know existed—and meet characters whose lives might be surprisingly similar to your own
march
Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir
by Zoe Bossiere
A striking literary memoir of gender fluidity, class, masculinity, and the American Southwest that captures the author’s experience coming of age in a Tucson, Arizona, trailer park.
Newly arrived in the Sonoran Desert, eleven-year-old Zoë’s world is one of giant beetles, thundering javelinas, and gnarled paloverde trees. With the family’s move to Cactus Country RV Park, Zoë has been given a fresh start and a new, shorter haircut.
Although Zoë doesn’t have the words to express it, he experiences life as a trans boy—and in Cactus Country, others begin to see him as a boy, too. Here, Zoë spends hot days chasing shade and freight trains with an ever-rotating pack of sunburned desert kids, and nights fending off his own questions about the body underneath his baggy clothes.
As Zoë enters adolescence, he must reckon with the sexism, racism, substance abuse, and violence endemic to the working class Cactus Country men he’s grown close to, whose hard masculinity seems as embedded in the desert landscape as the cacti sprouting from parched earth. In response, Zoë adopts an androgynous style and new pronouns, but still cannot escape what it means to live in a gendered body, particularly when a fraught first love destabilizes their sense of self.
But beauty flowers in this desert, too. Zoë persists in searching for answers that can’t be found in Cactus Country, dreaming of a day they might leave the park behind to embrace whatever awaits beyond.
Equal parts harsh and tender, Cactus Country is an invitation for readers to consider how we find our place in a world that insists on stark binaries, and a precisely rendered journey of self-determination that will resonate with anyone who’s ever had to fight to be themself.
april
To Be Marquette
by Sharon Dilworth
In this compelling campus novel, a college freshman exposes hidden secrets as she fights for environmental justice in Marquette.
Arriving in Marquette for her freshman year at Northern Michigan University, Molly enrolls in Dr. Robinson’s ecology studies class, hoping to learn more about the natural world and how to protect the planet from human impact. She befriends her classmates, Dr. Robinson’s Crusoes, who share her love of hiking, camping, and building bonfires on the shores of Lake Superior.
Together, Molly and the Crusoes protest the development of Project ELF, a Navy program that is installing a series of extremely low-frequency transmitters across the Great Lakes. The US government claims Project ELF will help the country defend itself in the event of a nuclear invasion, but Upper Peninsula residents fear the communications lines will disrupt the natural environment that they hold sacred.
Initially preoccupied with the contingencies of freshman year—roommate problems, dormitory life, and dating—Molly begins to sense that the Project ELF protests may mask a more problematic dynamic between the students and faculty. As she struggles to find her purpose, Molly uncovers layers of lies and misunderstandings about campus life, Project ELF, and her time in Marquette that make her question her place in the community.