Cultivating Cultures of Belonging

By Rachael Powles '22, February 25, 2022

Dr. Raja Gopal Bhattar speaks at IC.

Dr. Raja Gopal Bhattar is a renowned diversity, equity, and belonging specialist.

(Photo by Rachael Powles)

On February 14th, Ithaca College welcomed diversity, equity, and belonging specialist Dr. Raja Gopal Bhattar to campus as part of the Peggy Ryan Williams Difficult Dialogues Symposium. Dr. Bhattar’s talk, “Cultivating Cultures of Belonging,” encouraged audience members to re-evaluate their expectations and to dismantle systems of inequality in higher education and beyond.

The symposium, named for President Emeritus Peggy Ryan Williams, began as a way for the IC community to engage in challenging topics in a space that promotes understanding and growth.

“[Our students today] are diverse, they are engaging in this world in ways that I never thought possible when I was 19. Thinking about the ways that they think about solutions to the world’s problems: ‘how do we listen to them more, how we can actually help them, and how does that inform the work that we do?’”

Dr. Raja Gopal Bhattar

“Our students today across the board, across the world are more technologically advanced than I will ever dream to be,” Dr. Bhatter told the audience. “They are invested in their academics. Many of them are working multiple jobs, changing majors, expressing desires that they have never thought about before. They are incredibly invested in the success of their experience on campus. They are diverse, they are engaging in this world in ways that I never thought possible when I was 19. Thinking about the ways that they think about solutions to the world’s problems: ‘how do we listen to them more, how we can actually help them, and how does that inform the work that we do?’”

Dr. Bhattar most recently served as assistant provost and executive director of the Center for Identity + Inclusion at the University of Chicago, and now offers consulting in diversity and inclusion to businesses and colleges across the country. Their work largely focuses on the intersectionality of identity, and the needs of LGBTQ people, immigrants, first-generation students, international students, and people of color in higher education. Their keynote speech focused on the differences between equity and equality in education, and the need to recognize the intersectional needs of all students, especially in the return to campus after multiple remote semesters.

Symposium organizer and associate provost Christina Moylan said Dr. Bhatter’s wealth of experience in diversity and equity initiatives made them a fitting choice for this year’s event.

“Dr. Bhattar's work focuses on central elements core to our being and to our humanity: the need for belongingness, the necessity of mattering, and the quest for genuine and authentic connection through an equity lens. My hope is that audiences can put these into practice across their spheres of influence.”

Luca Maurer, interim executive director for Student Equity and Belonging and director, Center for LGBTQ Education, Outreach and Services

“Dr. Bhattar's presentation was intended to specially name and keep this critical topic at the forefront of our dialogue,” said Moylan. “They encouraged us to self-evaluate our various identities; consider how we enter spaces with these identities and how others may enter spaces with theirs; consider the role of historical impact and trauma that plays out today via structural inequities which subsequently lead to disparate impact; know the difference between equity and equality; and offered important self-reflective questions we should be asking when engaging with the campus community.”

Her sentiment echoes the message at the core of Dr. Bhattar’s work.

“The need to belong to a community where I’m able to contribute is a value that everything across the world shares,” said Dr. Bhattar. “It is not an academic desire, it’s a human desire. For me, that's part of how we start creating a sense of inclusion.”

Luca Maurer, interim executive director for Student Equity and Belonging and the director of the college’s Center for LGBTQ Education, Outreach and Services, also served on the symposium planning committee, and agreed that everyone had something to learn from Dr. Bhatter’s keynote.

“Dr. Bhattar's work focuses on central elements core to our being and to our humanity: the need for belongingness, the necessity of mattering, and the quest for genuine and authentic connection through an equity lens,” said Maurer. “My hope is that audiences can put these into practice across their spheres of influence.”