The Harvard University Graduate School of Design will be hosting its first Black in Design Conference, organized by the African American Student Union (AASU).

The Black in Design Conference seeks to simultaneously recognize the contributions of African Descendants to the design field and broaden our definition of what it means to be a designer. In doing so, we must recognize that it is designers who construct our built environment, which in turn contributes to social inequity within our lived experience.

We believe that the first step towards addressing social injustice within design is including the histories of underrepresented groups in design pedagogy. We hope that this conference will serve as a call to action for the GSD to instill within each and every student who passes through its doors the responsibility to build just and equitable spaces at every scale.