Higher Education CoP: The Role of Implicit Bias in People’s Everyday Lives and Work Teams

This is a joint Duke Project Management CoP and North Carolina Project Management Institute Higher Education Community of Practice event

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speaker: Benjamin Reese, Jr., PsyD

Abstract

Implicit bias is a judgment and/or behavior that is rooted deep in subconscious attitudes and/or beliefs. Implicit biases can be either positive or negative toward a specific group with certain characteristics, such as age, appearance, race, sexuality or weight. 

“I think everyone is familiar with explicit biases, the conscious behaviors that are discriminatory,” explained Reese, a clinical psychologist with more than four decades of experience.  “However, implicit biases refer to the ways in which we behave, or make decisions, that we are not aware of.  We may think our decisions are fair and equitable, but there is still a subconscious bias.”

During the event, Dr. Reese will define implicit bias and share steps that individuals can use to identify and decrease these subconscious judgments.

He will also discuss free implicit association tests that can help individuals identify their own implicit biases. One example is Project Implicit, hosted by Harvard University.

Learning Objectives:

Attendees will get a better understanding for the following:

1. What is Implicit Bias?
2. How to recognize Implicit Bias in our personal interactions and in work teams
3. How to improve relationships by minimizing Implicit Bias in personal and working relationships

About the Speaker: Benjamin Reese, Jr., PsyD

Benjamin Reese is vice president of the Office for Institutional Equity at Duke University and Duke University Health System and a licensed clinical psychologist.  His office oversees diversity, inclusion, affirmative action/equal opportunity activities and harassment/discrimination prevention for the university and the health system.  He is also an adjunct faculty member in the Departments of Community & Family Medicine and Psychology & Neuroscience.

Before assuming this role, Reese served as the assistant vice president for cross-cultural relations at Duke. For almost 45 years, Reese has worked as a consultant to educational institutions, profit and nonprofit corporations, and health care organizations in the areas of implicit bias, race relations, cross-cultural education, diversity and inclusion. 

Before moving to North Carolina, he was the associate executive director of the Fifth Ave. Center for Counseling and Psychotherapy in New York City, a practicing clinical psychologist, the ombudsperson for the Rockefeller Foundation, and founder and director of The Institute for the Study of Culture and Ethnicity in Manhattan.

He has represented both the International Council of Psychologists and the World Federation for Mental Health (Non-Governmental Organizations) at the United Nations. He currently serves on the board of The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, and is on the Advisory Board of the Full Frame Film Festival. Dr.  Reese is the Immediate Past President of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education and was one of its founders.  In 2016, the N.C. Triangle Business Journal honored him with their Lifetime Diversity Achievement Award in recognition of almost 50 years of engagement with issues of race relations and diversity.