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The Northern Plains Ethics Institute at NDSU and the YWCA Cass Clay have announced former Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan C. Page will be the Learning the Language of Diversity and Meaningful Inclusion program’s first speaker.

Page is scheduled to participate in the conversation series on Wednesday, Sept. 30, at noon via Zoom. He will discuss his experiences, especially those related to students of Color and post-secondary education.

Dr. Faith Wambura Ngunjiri, Director of the Lorentzsen Center for Faith and Work, and Associate Professor of Ethics and Leadership at the Offutt School of Business at Concordia College will lead the conversation and moderate discussion.

The event is provided free of charge by North Dakota State University: College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; the Northern Plains Ethics Institute; YWCA Cass Clay; and Humanities North Dakota to all NDSU stakeholders and the public.

After graduating from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1978, Justice Alan C. Page worked as an attorney for a law firm in Minneapolis, then served seven years as an attorney in the office of the Minnesota Attorney General.

He was elected to Minnesota Supreme Court in 1992, becoming the first African American on the court and one of the few associate justices ever to join the court initially through election rather than appointment by the governor. He was re-elected in 2004 and 2010 and served until he reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 in 2015.

Law was Page’s second career; he was first known for his skills in football both in college and in the NFL. At Notre Dame, he led the school’s storied football program to the 1966 national championship, and in 1993 he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Page was a first-round draft choice of the Minnesota Vikings in 1967 and he played for the Vikings until 1978. The last three years of his football career were with the Chicago Bears. Page was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1988.

Page and his wife, Diane, founded the Page Education Foundation in 1988. The foundation assists Minnesota students of Color in their pursuit of post-secondary education. To date, it has awarded $15 million in grants to 7,500 students.

In 2018, Page received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Page and his daughter, Kamie Page, have written four children’s picture books, “Alan and His Perfectly Pointy Impossibly Perpendicular Pinky,” “The Invisible You,” “Grandpa Alan’s Sugar Shack” and “Bee Love (Can Be Hard).”

The Learning the Language of Diversity and Meaningful Inclusion project is intended to create a series of conversations about racism. The goal is to educate students and other attendees about the issues and complexities involved, as well as help them build skills and values that provide positive benefit for themselves and their communities.