“Radicalizing Contemplative Education: Compassion, Intersectionality, and Justice in Challenging Times” marks the 20th anniversary of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. Organized around three main tracks – teaching and learning, student affairs, and leadership – the conference will celebrate, and take stock of, the work of CMind over the last two decades, while presenting cutting edge ways contemplative approaches to inquiry and learning can further justice and compassion on college and university campuses and beyond. Through keynote presentations, interactive sessions, and contemplative workshops, participants will explore how diverse contemplative pedagogies and practices can support transformations on multiple levels – self, classroom, organization, community – and invite creative, unconventional approaches to how we imagine and seek to address the many challenges of the 21st century.

The conference seeks to address questions such as:

• How do contemplative practices deepen our capacities to bear witness to each other’s lived experiences and work together to build more compassionate and just communities?
• How do contemplative approaches help us understand privilege and empower us to  work to transform oppressive structures and processes of exclusion on campus and beyond?
• How can a contemplative social justice pedagogy facilitate a deep unlearning of dehumanizing ideologies and practices, a healing from the trauma of injustice, and a deeper ability to sit with the discomfort of that process in order to cultivate more liberatory ways of being with one another?
• How can student affairs professionals employ contemplative approaches to foster deep inquiry and to cultivate personal transformation, as well as social, emotional and inner life competencies necessary for students to face contemporary societal challenges?
• How can forms of leadership and activism be deepened and strengthened by integrating contemplative pedagogies, particularly in social justice work?
• With the evident exponential increase of technology in our lives, what role can contemplative practices play in helping our society develop more harmonious patterns of consumption that prioritize individual and collective wellbeing?

“Radicalizing Contemplative Education” will take place on the 75-acre campus of the 1440 Multiversity in Scotts Valley, Santa Cruz County, California. The setting for the conference, with uplifting gathering spaces and quiet spots for contemplation both indoors and out, provides an ideal context for engaging in dialogue about the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, while exploring and practicing new visions for integrating contemplative practices and approaches to further compassion and justice in higher education and beyond. In bringing together diverse networks of teachers, scholars, administrators, practitioners, students, and community activists, the conference will be a landmark event in furthering a contemplative, socially just educational vision.