Jane Elliott, an internationally-known teacher, lecturer and diversity trainer, and creator of the controversial "blue eyed-brown eyed" exercise, developed in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., will speak at Hamilton College, on Monday, Feb. 19 at 7-10 p.m. in Wellin Hall.
Elliott will show her new documentary, The College Eye, and present interactive strategies for working within diverse communities. The presentation is sponsored by the Office of the President and is free and open to the public.
In The College Eye, the tables are turned on young white Americans as they face what it is like to be treated as minorities. The College Eye, which is intended to address the recent rise of hate crimes on college campuses, is shot in MTV/Real World style, where the participants not only participate in the process but also step back and comment on their experiences.
The blue eyed-brown eyed exercise, which labels participants as inferior or superior based on the color of their eyes, is a powerful tool in exposing white people to the experience of being a minority. It was prompted by Leon Uris', Mila 18, as eye color was one of the ways Hitler determined who went to the gas chamber. The exercise was immortalized in the 1970 ABC News documentary, Eye of the Storm, and was the subject of a book, A Class Divided (Yale University Press, 1971).
Elliott was featured in a BBC documentary on the tyranny of racism, Five Steps to Tyranny, in a profile in German Vogue (12/00), and Oprah Winfrey's "O" Magazine "Phenomenal Women column (12/00). She has lectured for schools, corporations and Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. and worldwide, including Australia, England and Belfast, Ireland.
