Higher Education Resources
These departments, centers, divisions and programs are spaces of impossibility; they cannot do the things they are tasked with as they are not empowered to hold community members accountable when they fail to uphold stated investments in equity. They operate on a hope that edifying others with best practices means that those people will implement such practices. They exist not to create systemic change but as evidence that the work has already been done. Here, organizations say, is our investment in equity: engage with it, ignore it or belittle it as you’d like. (McInnis, 2020)
DCLA Diversity Statement:
The Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning (DCAL) facilitates professional development for Dartmouth's teachers. We embrace Dartmouth's commitment to maintain a diverse and inclusive workplace and welcome all members of Dartmouth's scholar-educator community to join us in cultivating a culture that values and rewards teaching. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment that welcomes diversity in many aspects, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, socio-economic status, class, and religion. We acknowledge we gather on the indigenous lands of the Abenaki. We welcome and strive to include all voices - those we already have and those we want to include. We encourage you to help us include a diversity of perspectives and experiences in our work.
We understand that Dartmouth students differ in terms of learning abilities and disabilities, and that these differences affect teaching and course design. We recognize classroom power dynamics associated with race, gender, ethnicity, class, and other identities, and understand how they can impede learning. We believe it is important for teachers to be aware of their own implicit biases, assumptions, values and expectations of students, and be able to articulate how these might affect interactions with students.
We recognize the importance of diversity and inclusion in teaching effectiveness, and therefore provide professional development that allows Dartmouth teachers to create learning environments that welcome, challenge and support all students. We also work to increase our own knowledge and capacity in this area and seek to partner with other staff and faculty who have expertise and conduct programs in these areas.
Training for Change is a training and capacity building organization for activists and organizers. We believe strong training and group facilitation is vital to movement building for social justice and radical change.
On their website, they feature various free articles and tools falling under a variety of categories.
Today we celebrate the lives and work of Rep. John Lewis and the Rev. C.T. Vivian. We’re eternally grateful for their lifelong, courageous activism. As we remember these leaders’ relentless pursuit of equality, we hope educators will join us in continuing to work for justice and liberation for all. And we hope young people will join us in holding Representative Lewis, the Rev. Vivian and other change makers as models for who we can be when we decide to make “good trouble.”
Look back to another moment when racial equality and civil rights were roiling campuses: the 1960s. In July 1963, President John F. Kennedy called on college presidents for assistance: “The leadership that you and your colleagues show in extending equal educational opportunity today will influence American life for decades to come.” Some academic leaders rose to the historic challenge, but many shrank from the task of directly addressing racism.
The statements from college presidents came in flurries, bullet-pointed and chock-full of promises. Most were issued last summer in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis police. There were announcements of new committees, initiatives, and task forces. There was talk of transformation, roadmaps, and “action steps.” Many nodded toward sweeping curricular reforms. The president of Duke University wrote that the institution would “assess and remediate systemic biases in the design of our curricula.” Castleton University’s president pledged a review of courses that would seek to “combat systemic racism and implicit bias.” The president of Bates College assured members of the community in bold type that there would be “structural change across the entirety of the student experience.”
The report found significant and “alarming” differences between Republican and Democratic students’ comfort speaking about current political events happening during the fall 2020 semester, said Melissa Stiksma, a contracted data analyst for the Heterodox Academy and author of the report. She noted that 44 percent of Republican students said they were reluctant to speak about the Black Lives Matter movement, versus 12 percent of Democratic students. This discrepancy was consistent when students were asked about discussing the presidential election -- 46 percent of Republican students felt reluctant to speak about the election, compared to 23 percent of Democratic students, the report said. |
To be sure, my efforts will continue to include a focus on the importance of engaging a wide range of viewpoints, perspectives and backgrounds as I go about the diversity, equity and inclusion work that’s so important to me personally and to the organizations I work with. But my focus will also be on the fight to eradicate systemic racism. This focus has been a source of contention in some of the organizations and environments where I’ve worked or consulted. The belief abounds that we can simply conflate the interrogation of systemic racism with conceptualizations of diversity involving gender, age, LGBTQ identity, disability and so forth. The argument often goes something like this: “Our organization respects all differences, and we work to create an environment where everyone feels included and can do their best work.” (Reese, 2020)
It’s important to note that it is very difficult to identify and address every critical area in a course. Countless articles, some very extensive ones, cover the concept of inclusion and diversity. This short blog is only intended to get you thinking about key components of designing an online course with diversity in mind.
If we acknowledge that diversity influences learning, then we may be able to create discussions that result in examples that are culturally relevant. Your work as an instructor sets the tone for a safe space in the classroom where students can share their experiences and perspectives. (Hollister, 2020)
Brown-Nagin wondered how to apply Kendi’s antiracist framework to the work of creating diverse and inclusive college campuses. The author took aim at the college admissions process, noting that standardized tests advantage those who can afford expensive test prep courses. Black students also often can’t access advanced placement courses at their high schools, Kendi said, or are simply steered away from them by guidance counselors. “So how is that admissions factor race-neutral when Black students can’t even necessarily compete?”
The outlook is bleak: American institutions have already ensured immense generational advantages for whites and disadvantages for people of color. And this will continue if we do nothing.
The time for all social institutions to become antiracist and sever all ties with systemic racism is long overdue. As Beverly D. Tatum, a scholar of race in America, reminds us, we are in an active cycle of racism. Being passive will only ensure that we will still have racial inequities far into the future. (Metivier, 2020)
Speak up when it’s hard. In a faculty meeting, when somebody says to me something that’s rude, speak up. Or when we’re on a search committee and somebody says, about a candidate of color, “I just don’t see that they would succeed here” without any reason for why, I need my colleagues to say, “Well, what does that mean? How can we get them to succeed here?” (Words of Sirry Alang in an interview with Francie Diep, 2020)
Twelve ways that white faculty members can better support Black academics in their department and across the campus.
She [Bernard] sees her classroom as one of these spaces. “I want to illuminate what already exists inside my students, which is the capacity to be human — and to enlarge their vision,” says Bernard, whose books explore historical examples of successful interracial partnerships.
From history to health fields, from sociology to school counseling, a wide range of disciplines address the historic and ongoing manifestations of racial inequality and injustice in the curriculum. These efforts are part of a broad educational movement of social justice education wherein educators equip students to analyze, understand, and intervene in systems of oppression in order to advance equity for all people.
Social justice education has implications for what we teach (curriculum) and how we teach (pedagogy). Despite an increasing number of instructors bringing a critical analysis of racial in/justice to their curriculum, many report challenges in teaching this content effectively. To begin to address this need, this guide summarizes some of the common challenges instructors may encounter and offers five broad pedagogical principles for teaching racial justice, and three possible strategies for implementing each strategy in the classroom.
For the purpose of this guide, we are using ‘teaching race’ and ‘teaching racial injustice’ interchangeably, and using both terms as shorthand for courses that incorporate content related to race, racism, racial injustice, and movements for racial justice. (Thurber, Harbin, & Bandy, 2019)
APTR calls upon post-secondary educational institutions in the United States—particularly health professions schools and their academic units that teach prevention and public health— to take action to reduce the impact of racism from within their walls and to assume proactive responsibility for teaching students and the general public about racism’s causes and effects.
This toolkit was developed by APTR members to support the APTR Policy: Role of Academia in Combatting Structural Racism in the United States. APTR designed the toolkit resources to assist health professions faculty address and seek to reduce the effects of systemic racism in our society through their professional work: as teachers, as clinical and public health practitioners, as researchers, and as members of a university community. The toolkit has an organizing structure and provides resources such as websites, files, research articles and recommended readings.