Isaac Julien

Isaac Julien, Distinguished Professor of the Arts at the University of California Santa Cruz, is a British artist whose work draws from and comments on a range of artistic disciplines and practices (film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture) and unites them in dramatic audiovisual film installations, photographic works and documentary films. Born in London in 1960, Julien was a founding member of the Sankofa Film and Video Collective formed to expose the racialised unconscious of British Society in the Thatcher years, and subsequently of Normal Films established to produce queer cinema in a UK context. Julien is represented in museum and private collections throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate, the UK Government Art Collection, Centre Pompidou, the Guggenheim Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and the Brandhorst Museum.

Jennifer Baszile

Jennifer Baszile is Interim Vice Chancellor for the Division of Student Affairs and Success at UC Santa Cruz. Jennifer leads a diverse and talented group of professional and student staff who provide campus-wide coordination and leadership for student affairs and success programs and activities across departments, divisions, colleges, and administrative units.

Jennifer is an award-winning researcher and former professor at Yale University where she taught American history and African American studies. She also taught writing at the University of Connecticut and the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of The Black Girl Next Door: A Memoir, published by Simon & Schuster, and has received numerous awards, including Ebony magazine’s recognition as a top leader under 30, the Morse Research Fellowship, and the Poorvu Family Prize for Teaching. Jennifer holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in American history from Princeton University and a B.A. in history from Columbia University.

Gerald Casel

Gerald Casel is the Provost of Porter College and Associate Professor in the Department of Theater Arts at UC Santa Cruz. He is a dance artist, performance maker, and cultural activist. As an immigrant from the Philippines, he is proud to be a first-generation college graduate. 

Casel leads Dancing Around Race, a community engagement process that interrogates racial inequity in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. He is also a member of the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Human Rights Commission’s Racial Equity Working Group. Casel’s latest project, Not About Race Dance, has been awarded a National Dance Project grant, which will be in residence at The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, premiere at CounterPulse in San Francisco in 2021, and will tour around the country with generous support from the New England Foundation for the Arts and the San Francisco Arts Commission.

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