What Makes a Society? Understanding Systemic Challenges to Human Rights

“Respect and uphold society’s moral order as you would have society respect and uphold your autonomy to live a full life.” –Amitai Etzioni, The New Golden Rule

What happens when the autonomy to live a full life is denied? In this much-needed OPEN.ed session, our series returns to discuss the complexities associated with building a cosmopolitan community intent on improving education and health, reducing poverty and the myriad deprivations associated with it, and, perhaps most importantly, eliminating inequality and injustice for all. Avenues Director of Global Journeys Kevin Murungi leads an esteemed panel of passionate experts as they address systemic challenges to basic human rights as we imagine and design for a better tomorrow.

Dr. Ali Michael
Ali Michael works with schools and organizations across the country to help make research on race, whiteness, and education more accessible and relevant. Dr. Michael has authored a number of bestselling and award winning books, including Raising Race Questions: Whiteness, Inquiry and Education. In addition to her work as the Co-Founder and Director of the Race Institute for K-12 Educators, Dr. Michael teaches in the Diversity and Inclusion Program at Princeton University as well as the Equity Institutes for Higher Education from the University of Southern California. When she is not writing, speaking, or training, Ali is striving to be an anti-racist co-parent to two amazing young kids.

Kym Ward Gaffney
Kym joined Avenues with more than 20 years of coaching and consulting experience with global companies in varied industries. For the past eight years, she led PricewaterhouseCoopers' coaching strategy, where she created curriculum to enhance leaders' ability to "coach across differences" and developed a team that resulted in a meaningful increase of women and people of color admitted into U.S. and global partnership. Kym also sits on the board of MESA (Math Engineering Science Academy) High School and is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Institute for Transformational Leadership. She holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Howard University and an MBA double major in international business and marketing from NYU Stern Graduate School of Business.

Dr. Thiago de Souza Amparo
Thiago de Souza Amparo is on the faculty the Fundação Getúlio Vargas Law School, specializing in human rights, constitutional law international law, public policies, diversity and discrimination. He holds bachelor's degree from PUC-SP, a master's and doctorate degree in human rights (LLM) from Central European University (Budapest, Hungary) and was a visiting fellow at Columbia University. He is a weekly contributor to the Folha de São Paulo and participates in the Legal Alliance for Racial Equity. He was also City of São Paulo’s Deputy Secretary for Human Rights and Citizenship in 2017.