Date & time
Friday, November 14, 2025
12 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.
12 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.
Workshops & seminars, Meetings
Share this event:
The audacity of contemplative resistance: Projecting possibilities and imagining new futures
Speaker(s)
David Robinson-Morris, PhD.
Cost
This event is free.
Organization
Contact
Where
Online
This workshop is part of the Contemplative Practices Summit series.
Education is never neutral; it can either replicate harm or nurture liberation. As educators and contemplative practitioners, we cannot simply dwell on what is broken. While tending to present realities, we must also engage our collective imagination to imagine new possibilities for futures that are whole, just, and life-affirming. Imagination, when joined with collective action, becomes a transformative mode of contemplative resistance.
For some, this resistance evolves into a liberatory pedagogy that makes freedom, equity, and justice more than intellectual exercises. They become embodied practices—ontological decisions—that allow us to breathe into the present moment while envisioning generative, just futures beyond inherited systems of domination. This includes working towards liberation, cultivating collective care, encouraging the praxis of justice, and embodying vigilant hope.
In this session, Dr. Robinson-Morris will explore contemplative pedagogy and practices as methods of resistance. Through a brief lecture and discussion, participants will be called to activate the audacity of our collective imagination to project new futures.
Facilitator’s bio:
Dr. David W. Robinson-Morris is an author, scholar, and strategic advisor working at the intersection of imagination, equity, contemplative practice, and institutional transformation. He is the Founder & Chief Reimaginelutionary of The REImaginelution, a strategic social impact consultancy that helps organizations design liberatory futures through imaginative inquiry and values-driven strategy.
With nearly two decades of cross-sector leadership, his career spans higher education, healthcare, philanthropy, and nonprofit administration. He most recently served as the inaugural Executive Director of the Institute for Black Intellectual and Cultural Life at Dartmouth College and is the founding Executive Director of The Center for the Human Spirit and Radical Reimagining, a dream-think tank activating collective imagination to dismantle systemic inequity.
In service to advancing contemplative pedagogy and practices in higher education and society, Dr. Robinson-Morris led the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society (CMind), an international community of contemplative scholars and practitioners. Under his leadership, CMind deepened its mission to integrate racial, social, and environmental justice into contemplative education before sunsetting in 2022.
The author of Ubuntu and Buddhism in Higher Education (Routledge, 2019) and co-editor of Contemplative Practices and Acts of Resistance in Higher Education: Narratives Toward Wholeness (Routledge, 2025), his scholarship draws from the South African philosophy of Ubuntu, Eastern contemplative traditions, and the belief that imagination is humanity’s most powerful tool for transformation. A respected academic and thought leader, his work has appeared in Lion’s Roar, academic journals, and public forums across the country. He is a frequent lecturer and consultant across sectors, nationally and abroad.
This program is funded by Quebec's ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur, through contributions from the Canada-Québec Agreement on Minority-Language Education and Second-Language Instruction.