President's Dream Colloquium touches hearts, opens eyes

"The recently completed President’s Dream Colloquium on Returning to the Teachings: Justice, Identity and Belonging was about healing and heart,” says co-organizer Vicki Kelly, an SFU professor of education.

“It was conceived as an important contribution to the vision of what reconciliation means and what education reconciliation is all about.”

The 10-part public lecture series—the eighth since the colloquium’s inception in 2012—attracted the largest and most diverse audiences of any colloquium, and the accompanying graduate credit course attracted an unprecedented number of students.

Brenda Morrison, professor of criminology and director of SFU’s Centre for Restorative Justice, co-organized the colloquium with Kelly.

She says: “Reconciliation requires us to work across institutional silos—not only those that uphold the state: justice, education, health—but also disciplinary silos: education, criminology, psychology. This colloquium opened up new institutional spaces to work across silos with a vision for reconciliation. It has been a privileged to work with the Nations and the students towards this vision.