Gateway president, Yale scholar earn leadership award

NEW HAVEN — The 2008 Reverend Howard Nash Community Leadership Award Breakfast held Wednesday morning feted Dorsey L. Kendrick and Cynthia Farrar for their leadership roles in promoting civic engagement through dialogue and deliberation in the New Haven area.
Kendrick, shown above, top, and Farrar, and also shown above, last October held the BY THE PEOPLE deliberative forum on immigration at Gateway Community College, where Kendrick is president.
Kendrick became president of Gateway in August 1999. Under Kendrick’s leadership, the college has significantly increased program offerings and community partnerships.
Farrar is a research scholar and director of the program on deliberative democracy and local governance at Yale University’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies, and a lecturer in political science and in ethics, politics and economics.
The Reverend Howard Nash Community Leadership Award was established in 2002 to honor community leadership in the area of dialogue and to support The Dialogue Project.
The award is named in memory of the Rev. Howard Nash, formerly of St. Bernadette’s Roman Catholic Church of New Haven, who helped found The Dialogue Project.
Nash was known throughout the community for his tireless work for justice and reconciliation.
To respond to severe racial tensions in Greater New Haven, Community Mediation Inc. initiated The Dialogue Project in 1997, in partnership with Interfaith Cooperative Ministries Inc.
Kendrick thanked the audience for the award, saying she’s made “a small footprint in Rev. Nash’s shoes.’’ Farrar also thanked those in attendance, noting she and Kendrick were the first “female recipients” of the Nash award and that: “What’s best in me is New Haven.”
The Dialogue Project continues to focus on creating constructive community dialogue around issues of faith, race, gender and other potentially divisive issues, such as immigration, the DP’s current focus.
The project is funded by The NewAlliance Foundation, United Church on the Green, Trinity Episcopal Church and Center Church on the Green.