The Space welcomes academic and arts writer Lisa Brock as its 2021 Scholar in Residence.

“You can be diverse without being inclusive. You can have inclusivity without equity. You can have equity without Justice. Social Justice requires a deep inquiry into the systems that create oppression, and its aim is eradicate them. In order do that we must develop more transparent and life-affirming visions, imaginaries, and institutions.”

Lisa Brock (aka Doc Brock) is a professor and activist who has spent her life in social justice movements and over thirty years in higher education. She fought for girls rights in her middle school, sat-in for the first African-American history course in her high school, organized against police abuse in college, and became a leader in the anti-apartheid movement in graduate school. She holds a doctorate in History from Northwestern University and spent ten years as founding Academic Director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College. As an academic leader, she has led massive changes on every campus she has worked, especially in the area of curricular diversity, equity and inclusion. She has shepherded agendas and programs that establish senses of belonging of staff, faculty and students. While a specialist in Transnational Black History, she has a wide-range of knowledge in all areas of oppression. She develops workshops and trainings with folks who are prepared to take a probing look at racism, anti-racism, other forms of oppression, and social justice. These workshops center the voices and experiences of those most impacted by injustice but are created with the idea that all people, no matter their identities, ages, genders or sexualities can become anti-racist social justice agents of change. Doc Brock inspires regular people to make what the late Congressman John Lewis called “good trouble for justice”.