Around 80 guests, including local Bay Area activists, gathered Saturday for the Gender, Equity and Justice Summit at the Black Community Services Center, connecting students across disciplines with mentors working for social justice in reproductive rights, healthcare, queer Asian Pacific Islander (API) power and more causes.
The Women’s Community Center (WCC) hosted the event, which campus groups including the Black Community Services Center, the Feminist and Gender Studies Department and others co-sponsored. According to coordinator and WCC intern Lily Forman ’25, the summit — themed around “Embodying Healing, Hope, and Connection Toward Liberation” — has been in the works for months.
Participant Tobi Bankole ’25 saw the gathering as “super timely.” In recent months, the Trump administration has moved to repeal and eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts across society, limited access to gender-affirming care for children nationwide and backed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a congressional bill that complicates voting for millions of individuals, including married women.
Originally called the Stanford Women’s Leadership Conference, the WCC has held a student-led event aimed at promoting gender equity and justice annually for the past 20 years. The summit’s name changed to the Gender, Equity and Justice Summit in 2019 to be more inclusive.
“The students have worked really hard over the last year to put [this event] together,” said Faith Kazmi, associate dean and director of the WCC. “Especially in these times, I think it’s wonderful to have this kind of gathering to have people connect, network and learn about how they can use their talents to make a change in the world,” Kazmi added.
Keynote speaker Prentis Hemphill — a therapist, somatics teacher, political organizer and author — spoke about the importance of embodiment in “new and dangerous” times.
“I think it’s honest to say we’ve ventured into a new and dangerous time where chaos is going to be… with more of us, more often,” Hemphill said.
Hemphill opened their talk with a breathing exercise. They admitted that, despite their efforts to bring levity to the lecture, “it [was] not gonna be super light.” Over their 45-minute talk, Hemphill spoke about the “difference between what we say we believe and what our body actually does in moments of pressure.”
Despite Hemphill’s frequent allusions to fears amid the current political climate, summit participants still laughed along with them as they recounted the difference between their and their wife’s “fight, flight or freeze” responses. While hiking, Hemphill said, they had stepped on something soft that hissed up at them. While Hemphill ran, their partner froze and “studied” the snake.
“I was showing you that [running] was an option,’” Hemphill said to their wife in the aftermath of the rattlesnake run-in, they said. Hemphill tied examples like this one to the importance of understanding how one’s body reacts to stress and fear in a politically tumultuous era.
“I think that in a time where a lot is up in the air, it was really great to have a keynote speaker who focused on somatics, embodiment and how you’re supposed to feel in times like these,” Bankole said.