Speaker Series
research, knowledge, understanding and change
The OEDI’s Courageous Conversation Speaker Series was launched in fall 2020, featuring discussions on racism, anti-racism, colonialism, and complaint.
Inspired by Maya Angelou and Violet King, the series engages the campus community and beyond in difficult conversations about systemic inequities. The series features locally and internationally renowned teachers, researchers, practitioners, and community-engaged scholars and activists by exploring critical questions about what needs to be done to effect sustainable change and ensure accountability.
Identifying, naming, discussing, and tackling historical and contemporary injustices can be profoundly unsettling. That’s where courage comes in – the courage to speak truth to power, to say things that the comfortable might not want to hear. Courageous Conversations are vital to advancing EDI in a university. It ensures that we are discussing EDI and modelling our expressed commitment to human rights, human dignity and cultivating equitable pathways that enable human flourishing.
Learning Together: LGBTQ2S+ Inclusive Teaching, Research and Scholarship
This presentation delves into the transformative principles of queer pedagogy, which challenge conventional educational frameworks. By advocating for a pedagogical approach that embraces critical engagement, disrupts heteronormative assumptions, and values the complexity and fluidity of identities, this discussion aims to foster inclusive and dynamic learning environments.
Thursday, August 29, 2024
12:00 - 1.30 p.m. MT
VIRTUAL
Working Together: Practicing the Science of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
This presentation covers the necessity and best practices of EDI, addressing the discrimination faced by stigmatized social identities. It will discuss evidence-based EDI strategies across the employment cycle, including attracting, selecting, and retaining diverse employees, with research spanning race, gender, sexual orientation, weight, religion, neurodiversity, pregnancy, medical conditions, and age.
Thursday, October 10, 2024
3:30 - 5:00 p.m. MT
HYBRID (location TBD)
Presented by the Haskayne School of Business and the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion as part of Courageous Conversations.
Thinking out loud together: Why civil discourse matters on campus
This presentation emphasizes the critical role of civil discourse in universities to bridge divides, resolve conflicts, and address extreme positions within the academic community. Civil discourse is essential as it enables individuals to acknowledge and engage with differences and disagreements, fostering mutual and shared understanding of key issues and ideas.
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
12:00 - 1:30 p.m. MT
IN-PERSON (location TBD)
Courageous Conversations Speaker Series Host
Dr. Malinda S. Smith
Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President Research (EDI) Office
Dr. Malinda S. Smith (she/her) is the inaugural Vice Provost and Associate Vice President Research (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) and a full professor of political science at the University of Calgary. Prior to joining the UCalgary she was a full professor of political science at the University of Alberta, where she held various roles including Provost Fellow (EDI Policy) in the Office of the Provost, and Associate Chair (Graduate Studies) in the Department of Political Science.
Dr. Smith has served on numerous higher education governance committees, including as Vice President (Equity Issues) for the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and as Chair of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion External Review Committee for the Canada Research Chairs. Currently, she serves on SSHRC Governing Council and Executive; as Vice Chair of the Inter-Institutional Advisory Committee for the Scarborough Charter, on Statistics Canada’s Immigration and Ethnocultural Statistics Advisory Committee; and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s External EDI Advisory Board.
Dr. Smith is the coauthor, editor, or coeditor of 7 books, numerous articles, book chapters and reports and has given dozens of invited keynotes and public lectures in the areas of equity, diversity, human rights, and decolonization in higher education, African political economy, and international relations. Dr. Smith is the coauthor of The Equity Myth: Racialization and Indigeneity at Canadian Universities (2017); coeditor of Critical Concepts: An Introduction to Politics (OUP 2023); the Nuances of Blackness in the Canadian Academy (UofT Press, 2022); States of Race: Critical Race Feminism for the 21st Century (BTL 2010). and three books on Africa, including Securing Africa: Post-9/11 Discourses on Terrorism (2010).
Dr. Smith is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including Calgary Black Chambers’ Lifetime Achievement Award (2023), an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Simon Fraser University (2021), Compelling Calgarians (2021), the International Studies Association’s Women’s Caucus’s Susan S. Northcutt Award (2020), 100 Accomplished Black Women Honouree (2020), the ISA-Canada Distinguished Scholar Award (2018-19), P.E. Trudeau Foundation Fellow (2018), the HSBC Community Contributor of the Year Award (2016); and the Canadian Association of University Teachers’ Equity Award (2015).
Past Sessions
For a full list of all recorded Courageous Conversations Speaker Series session, please visit to learn more, watch or listen.