Student-led CAIR to host intercollegiate conference addressing inequity

Ashley Peake (’23) and Tal Feldman (’23)

The Collegiate Association for Inequality Research (CAIR), co-founded by Wake Forest students Tal Feldman (’23) and Ashley Peake (’23), is addressing inequity on a broad scale and supporting students researching solutions with its first major intercollegiate event, the Conference on Inequality and Social Justice, on April 24.

The virtual conference will include 35 oral presentations and 45 poster presentations on topics that will touch on inequity in a variety of fields, from biology and computer science to anthropology and economics. Forty-eight higher education institutions will be represented during the conference, including Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Rice University, Duke University, Vanderbilt University and New York University, including its campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai.

“Watching this group of students take a nascent idea and develop it to the level of a student-run symposium would be notable in any year, but Tal and Ashley’s efforts are all the more extraordinary in a time marked by COVID-19. They have demonstrated great ambition and perseverance in brainstorming, designing, and executing each step of their increasingly impressive plans. And now they’re bringing together student-scholars from across the country to analyze and propose solutions for some of the most complex challenges facing our world,” said Jackie Sheridan, director of the Scholars Program.

Read more about CAIR and the Conference on Inequality and Social Justice on the College News website