September 22, 2005

Antioch College has launched the Coretta Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom, a program that promotes the college’s historical emphasis on diversity and freedom of thought.

“There is a direct connection between what Horace Mann imagined education should be and the agenda of the Coretta Scott King Center,” said interim Antioch College President Rick Jurasek. “The center will enable us to live out our mission more faithfully and in a more concentrated form. It’s a big thing for the college.”

The center’s inauguration comes at a time when American freedom of thought and inquiry sometimes seems at risk, according to associate professor Beverly Rodgers, who is chair of the Coretta Scott King Center committee.

“We seem to be at a critical time when people need to stand up for cultural and intellectual freedoms,” she said.

The center’s first public event will take place Wednesday, Oct. 12. “The Native American Symposium, The Miami Nation: Issues and Everyday Activities” will give attendees “a better understanding of what it means to be a federally recognized tribe and the issues confronting contemporary Native Nations,” according to a press release from Antioch.

Symposium speakers will include members of the Miami Nation who currently live in Oklahoma, along with Rodgers, who is of Miami Nation descent. The Miami Valley was once home to the nation, which was forced to relocate in 1846, Rodgers said. The speakers will “present a variety of views on activism” and will also address the challenges they face, she said.

The speakers will also cover aspects of the responsibilities that come with taking controversial stands, Rodgers said.

“Part of my personal goal in the center is the real promotion and support of responsible freedom, both cultural and intellectual,” she said. “When our students take a stand and speak out on issues, it’s important that they’re well-informed and know the ramifications. Freedom without responsibility is problematic.”

The Coretta Scott King Center is not a physical structure, Jurasek said. Rather, it is a “concentration of energy and intentions,” he said.

The college chose to call the program a center because the word “lends more centrality, predictability and aura to our intentions. If we call it a center then it is one of the centers inside Antioch,” he said.

The center is currently located in Main Building and is overseen by Ona Harshaw, who is the college’s diversity advocate. A director for the center has been hired and will start next June, according to Jurasek, who said he could not disclose the director’s name at this time because she may not yet have notified her current employer.

In the future, the center will offer more symposiums, conferences and special events that will provide “a forum for individuals to express their ideas and to have them challenged and discussed,” according to the college’s press release, which also states that the center will serve as a “living laboratory where the freedom to think clearly about ethical issues in a global society is essential.”

The center will offer a second symposium in the spring, Rodgers said.

The King Center was born from a directive of the college’s Renewal Commission, which wrote the renewal plan and mandated that the college create a center for cultural and intellectual freedom, Rodgers said. The committee charged with creating the center’s programming and funding sources was originally chaired by Antioch professor and former President Bob Devine, followed by Rodgers, who teaches anthropology.

The committee applied for a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and will hear from the NEH within the next few months, Rodgers said. According to Jurasek, the college hopes to receive a matching grant of $2.5 million, with Antioch raising $2 million and the NEH granting $500,000. Jurasek said that the college has begun fundraising efforts, and that the grant allows the college three years to complete its fundraising efforts.

The $2.5 million would create an endowment for the center, and interest would fund the center’s operations and director’s salary, as well as an endowed chair in the humanities, Jurasek said.

Last spring Jurasek and several other college officials traveled to the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Atlanta to meet with Coretta Scott King and discuss the center, said Jurasek, who described the experience as “one of the highlights of my career.”

King, an Antioch College graduate, gave her blessings to the center, according to Jurasek, who said that King seemed to view the center as “an obvious educational and moral extension of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center.”

“She really understands the college and its significance, not just in her life, but in higher education,” he said.

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com