ADC President Kassie Freeman Details ADC’s Beginning

Kassie Details ADC’s Inception

I remember like it was yesterday, when I met with Dr. Henry M. Levin in his office at Teachers College, Columbia University, and discussed my deep belief in and desire for the interconnectedness and a collective/global approach to address common economic, educational, and artistic outcomes across the African Diaspora. He said he thought I was on to something, and he would discuss with his colleague, Dr. Ernest Morrell at Teachers College (now at the University of Notre Dame). We scheduled a joint meeting with Dr. Michael Nettles, ETS, and the idea and concept for the African Diaspora Consortium (ADC) was born during that meeting. From my comparative studies and experience being a visiting scholar/professor in Budapest, Hungary, I realized the similarities in the experiences of African descendent populations globally and thought that there must be some way to address these issues collectively.

The interest and engagement in our work across the African Diaspora has taken off and grown much faster than we anticipated, and we now have highly accomplished Board members and leadership team members, including our Board Chair, the Honourable Paula A. Cox, a former Premier of Bermuda. Having already led a large university system, I knew some about managing multiple views, expectations, challenges, and opportunities. These skills have served me well in my role with ADC.

There are several aspects of the focus of our work that make what we do unique and cutting edge. We take pride in our focus on scholarship and the arts as unified and not separate entities from not just a historic perspective, but the impact on individual’s lives. Utilizing research and best practices, we are bringing together world class scholars and artists to reimagine new and different ways to collectively work together and address challenges across the African Diaspora. Thus far, each initiative that we have envisioned and planned is off and running. Overall, however, I anticipated my challenges to be ensuring that we had the resources to move our work ahead so we are working on that. Even so, I’m pleasantly surprised by such accomplished team members giving so generously of their time and talents. We are so grateful for our team members for their belief in and amazing outcomes from our work.

I am most excited about the future of our work and we have just begun to scratch the surface of what we will accomplish. There is so much to come, and we look forward to positively impacting education at every level across the Diaspora.