Inclusion Me Out

It's "Inclusion Day"--my favorite day of the year--at York University (a campus which, go figure, isn't so "inclusive" when it comes to including the viewpoints of pro-Israel students). In conjunction with the day, there's an Inclusion Day Conference, of course. I thought that the invitation to attend the event, held under the auspices of the university's Centre for Human Rights, was so unintentionally amusing that I had to post it:

Inclusion Day Conference

The CHR invites you to submit a proposal for the attend the 6th annual Inclusion Day Conference 2015 

Theme: Past Histories & Present Stories: Finding Meaning in Human Rights

The conference, being held January 28, 2015, at the Keele campus, will explore the following themes:

• How are human rights made real?
• How are identities navigated/changed?
• What are the new human rights battles being fought or are we still fighting the same issues from the past?

Some of the areas that proposals could focus on, but are not limited to:

• Indigenous knowledge
• Intersectional identities
• Race and racialization
• Gender expression/expectations/identity
• (dis)Abilities
• Business, Science & Human Rights
• Religion/Spirituality
• Knowledge production & pedagogy
• Immigration/Refugee issues
• Community leadership & mobilisation
• Sexual orientation
• Social Media & Human Rights

There's a crucial area that I doubt will be explored:  How to be open to debating with those whose opinion/political orientation differs from yours in that it is not the default leftism of academe and other societal elites.