2025 NASPA Racial Equity and Social Change Conference
In-Person Conferences Student Success Policy and Advocacy Supporting the Profession Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice Equity, Inclusion, and Social Justice Division
December 8 - December 10, 2025 Long Beach, CA
The NASPA Racial Equity and Social Change Conference, formerly the NASPA Multicultural Institute, provides space for thought leaders and practitioners to share ideas, strategies, and evidence-based research about advancing our collective work to create more equitable and just campuses and communities.
In shaping the Racial Equity and Social Change Conference, we are prioritizing content that centers racial equity, creates social change, and integrates an intersectional lens. In the context of coordinated attacks targeting queer and trans students, undermining programs focused on BIPOC students, restricting what is taught in and out of the classroom, and dehumanizing and threatening educators, our work toward justice must also be coordinated and collective.
NASPA’s commitment to racial equity is intersectional in nature and impact, because interlocking systems of oppression operate together and exacerbate each other. Everyone benefits when racial equity is advanced, because when equity is at the center, people of all races, all of whom also hold other identities, can access the resources they need to thrive.
Presented By
Conference Focus Areas
In shaping the inaugural Racial Equity and Social Change Conference, we are prioritizing content that centers racial equity, creates social change, and integrates an intersectional lens.
Establishing and Strengthening Pathways for Success for Minoritized Groups
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How are campuses surfacing and removing structural barriers to success and building pathways that enhance access and persistence of minoritized students?
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What assessment mechanisms are campuses implementing to understand the impact of integrating racial equity as a key priority?
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How are campuses funding and staffing programs and initiatives for minoritized groups to ensure equity across their offerings?
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In what ways are campuses preparing students with the skills and capacities to enact equitable and sustainable change?
Advocating for Racial Justice in a Climate of Attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
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With legislation increasingly targeting a broad range of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in higher education, what measures are in place to educate and support staff and faculty about impacts to their work and practice?
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What implications will legislation have for future research and practice that center social and racial justice?
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How are staff, faculty, and students, as well as institutions, taking an active role in the legislative process to counter the current equity backlash?
Building Systems for Sustainable, Healing-Centered Leadership
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In what ways are institutions and the field recognizing and supporting the needs of staff who are navigating uncertainty, exhaustion, and challenging political and organizational climates?
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How do we center healing in leadership and supervision?
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How can we cultivate capacity for visionary work while also acknowledging the state of current institutional and societal realities?
Advancing Student Affairs and Higher Education through Equity-Focused Research and Practice
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In what ways can we foster, propagate, and apply research that spans boundaries, developmental models that speak to intersectional lives, and innovative practices that advance racial equity?
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How do we build and open pathways into research for those whose perspectives and methods have been historically excluded?