Professor Matthew Girson will be holding a teach in for the DePaul community to discuss racism and related topics on Tuesday, Sept. 8 from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Presenters are from a wide variety of disciplines to unpack each individual topic. A full schedule of the presentation topics and presenters can be found on Newsline. There will be individual zoom links for each session. 

Amid the various Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and the recent events in Kenosha, Girson was inspired to take action towards discussing racial inequality. It was a spontaneous idea, which turned into the racism teach in.

“On Monday of Aug. 31, I sent an email out to about 40 or 50 faculty colleagues to say, if we were to do a teach in, if anybody thinks this is a good idea who would be interested. On Tuesday I put a call out to the university faculty,” Girson said. “On Thursday night at midnight we’re up to 14, maybe 15 presenters.”

Individual zoom sessions will be offered for each topic so presentations can last for more than the offered time instead of a continuous zoom session that would prohibit sessions to continue.

“I’ve set it up with individual sessions so that if a presenter wants to continue her conversation with the audience sits there, she can do it. People can pop in and pop out throughout the whole day which I imagine will happen, they’ll just have to choose where they’re going, each time,” Girson said. 

Despite the spontaneous planning, Girson is appreciative of the faculty and staff’s flexibility and dedication to teaching. 

“The faculty of this institution, rock, right, like the faculty at DePaul are fabulous, thoughtful people. I’m so excited and so inspired by some of the topics and I know they’re gonna have great discussions and presentations,” Girson said.