BUFFALO, NY – The JUSTICE Project at Canisius University will welcome Jane Elliott to campus on Wednesday, March 11. Elliott will speak in the Grupp Fireside Lounge, located on the second floor of the Richard E. Winter ’42 Student Center, at two different times throughout the day: 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 – 6:30 p.m.
Both presentations are free and open to the campus community however registration is required for the 4:00 – 6:30 p.m. lecture. To register for the 4:00 p.m. lecture, visit www.canisius.edu/justice. Jane Elliott’s visit is part of The JUSTICE Project’s professional development series.
Jane Elliott is an educator, lecturer and diversity trainer renowned for her “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise, which teaches about the anatomy of prejudice. This now famous exercise labels participants as inferior or superior based solely upon the color of their eyes, and exposes them to the experience of being a minority.
Elliott developed the “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise more than 40 years ago, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She was a third grade teacher at the time. Since then, her bold experiment has served as the subject of the Peabody Award-winning film “The Eye of the Storm,” which explores the problems of racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia and ethnocentrism, and the responsibility shared by everyone in eliminating them from the world.
The JUSTICE Project at Canisius is funded by the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs. Its mission is to revise and enhance the curricula and field experiences of childhood and special education programs to ensure that undergraduate and graduate teacher candidates meet the highly-qualified teacher (HQT) guidelines, and to help improve urban education and the education of students with high-incidence disabilities.
To learn more about The JUSTICE Project at Canisius, click here.
Canisius University is one of 28 Jesuit universities in the nation and the premier, private university in Western New York.
