The Center for Social Justice and the Civic Engagement Rope Team hosted Milton J. Bennett, co-founder and director of the Intercultural Development Research Institute for a keynote and conversation on communicating across differences on a national and global scale. Bennett suggests that the newly evolved consciousness necessary to support multicultural relations is one that can maintain, embrace, and engage otherness on an everyday basis. In his presentation, he explored how we can continue to develop this intercultural consciousness, even in the face of the cultural polarization we are experiencing today.
Watch the recording of Dr. Bennett’s keynote.
This event served as a keynote presentation for the series Lifting Every Voice: A Conversation on Democratic Engagement. The series continues on Thursday, June 26, with an online discussion at 5:30 p.m. ET.
Bennett is known for originating the Development Model of Intercultural Sensitivity embedded in Excelsior’s JEDI Framework and used as the theoretical foundation of the Intercultural Development Inventory. He has consulted with hundreds of universities, companies, and communities throughout the world on topics of international and domestic intercultural relations. He is an adjunct professor of intercultural communication in the Department of Sociology at the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy.