Grounding for the Greater Good: Cultivating Patience to Interrupt Reactivity and Racial Bias

Bridging Differences in Higher Education: Research-Based Practices that Build Belonging


  • Venue: Online
  • Date: February 10, 2025
  • Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 PM PT / 1:30-2:30 PM ET
  • Price: Free

“In our culture, higher education is one of the only places where there can actually be real conversations about difficult topics,” says Beth Douthirt-Cohen, a public health professor at University of Maryland, College Park. In 2017, the university brought in Douthirt-Cohen to build the capacity of students, faculty, and staff to engage with differences in power and racial identity in healthy, ethical ways. 

They found that when we’re equipped with mindfulness tools, it is possible to make higher ed a space where we can have a really difficult conversation and stay in it. In fact, mindfulness can help us feel connected to our agency. Instead of reacting, we get grounded and find the patience we need to make choices and even interrupt unconscious bias.

Watch this interactive conversation with Douthirt-Cohen and psychologist Sarah A. Schnitker (Baylor University), who will draw from her research to explain how grounding practices like these cultivate our patience and exercise our curiosity, courage, and empathy. Hosted by Juliana Tafur, GGSC’s Bridging Differences Program Director.

You leave the session with:

  • an embodied mindfulness practice
  • a deeper understanding of patience
  • ideas for how to integrate mindfulness (and patience) into anti-racist work or other restorative endeavors on your campus

Free! Designed for higher education, open to all. 

  • Juliana Tafur directs the Bridging Differences program at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, advancing skills and strategies to connect across geography, race, religion, politics, and more. She’s spent more than a decade designing experiences that foster understanding and belonging, both as a social entrepreneur/workshop creator, and as an Emmy-nominated storyteller. A TEDx speaker, she leads science-based trainings for campuses, organizations, and communities, and makes bridge-building practical and accessible through partnerships, multimedia content, speaking engagements, and workshops. Juliana is an honors graduate of Northwestern University and a 2021–22 Obama Foundation Scholar at Columbia University.

  • Beth Douthirt Cohen builds spaces for racial, disability, LGBTQ+, and gender justice, helping leaders and students build the somatic awareness, courage, skills, relationships, and compassion for collective transformation. At the University of Maryland School of Public Health, Beth’s coaching, research, and teaching invites people to explore how we heal from the trauma of identity-based prejudice, and how we can build authentic and durable solidarity across power and identity differences—through our shared capacity to love, grow, connect, and create change. 

  • Dr. Sarah Schnitker is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Baylor University. She holds a Ph.D. and an MA in Personality and Social Psychology from the University of California, Davis, and a BA in Psychology from Grove City College. Schnitker studies virtue and character development in adolescents and emerging adults, with a focus on the role of spirituality and religion in virtue formation. She specializes in the study of patience, self-control, gratitude, generosity, and thrift. Schnitker has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and edited chapters, and she has procured more than $16 million in funding as a principal investigator on multiple research grants.