Williams Hires Vice President of Diversity and Equity

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Williams College has appointed Leticia Smith-Evans to the position of vice president for institutional diversity and equity. She will assume the position on July 1.

Smith-Evans brings considerable experience in working to expand diversity and equity in educational settings, including from her current position as interim director of the Education Practice of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. At the LDF, where she ha’s served since 2008, she has worked both on the ground level with communities around the country that want or need to change and on managing the education practice of an organization that has played a historic role in the advancement of equity.

She also teaches on race, education, and the law at Penn Law School; speaks on these issues to audiences across the country; and is often quoted in national media.

Smith-Evans earned her Ph.D. in educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where her dissertation was titled "No More Profiling in the Classroom: A Midsize Urban School District’s Efforts to Close the Achievement Gap." She also obtained her J.D. at Wisconsin. Many within the Williams community know her as a member of the Class of 1999 and an active member of the Williams Black Alumni Network.

After law school she clerked for the Honorable Dickinson Debevoise ’46 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey and then was an associate at O’Melveny & Myers LLP in New York City and Washington, D.C.


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Williamstown Affordable Housing Trust Hears Objections to Summer Street Proposal

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Neighbors concerned about a proposed subdivision off Summer Street last week raised the specter of a lawsuit against the town and/or Northern Berkshire Habitat for Humanity.
 
"If I'm not mistaken, I think this is kind of a new thing for Williamstown, an affordable housing subdivision of this size that's plunked down in the middle, or the midst of houses in a mature neighborhood," Summer Street resident Christopher Bolton told the Affordable Housing Trust board, reading from a prepared statement, last Wednesday. "I think all of us, the Trust, Habitat, the community, have a vested interest in giving this project the best chance of success that it can have. We all remember subdivisions that have been blocked by neighbors who have become frustrated with the developers and resorted to adversarial legal processes.
 
"But most of us in the neighborhood would welcome this at the right scale if the Trust and Northern Berkshire Habitat would communicate with us and compromise with us and try to address some of our concerns."
 
Bolton and other residents of the neighborhood were invited to speak to the board of the trust, which in 2015 purchased the Summer Street lot along with a parcel at the corner of Cole Avenue and Maple Street with the intent of developing new affordable housing on the vacant lots.
 
Currently, Northern Berkshire Habitat for Humanity, which built two homes at the Cole/Maple property, is developing plans to build up to five single-family homes on the 1.75-acre Summer Street lot. Earlier this month, many of the same would-be neighbors raised objections to the scale of the proposed subdivision and its impact on the neighborhood in front of the Planning Board.
 
The Affordable Housing Trust board heard many of the same arguments at its meeting. It also heard from some voices not heard at the Planning Board session.
 
And the trustees agreed that the developer needs to engage in a three-way conversation with the abutters and the trust, which still owns the land, to develop a plan that is more acceptable to all parties.
 
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