2021 State of Diversity Panel

Office of Diversity and Inclusion Author

11/08/2021 Added

61 Plays

Description

The State of Diversity 2021 featured several diversity leaders across the nation in a panel conversation designed to educate and inform campus on pressing diversity issues and perspectives on building equity across institutions of higher learning.

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:06.960]So, thank you all so much again for joining us.
[00:00:09.830]We are now entering in our second half
[00:00:12.270]of State of Diversity 2021,
[00:00:14.900]and I would like to now introduce our panelists.
[00:00:18.760]The session will be led by our Vice Chancellor
[00:00:21.330]in a conversation on diversity,
[00:00:22.610]equity, inclusion across universities,
[00:00:25.230]and especially ways that it can help to shape
[00:00:26.870]the work that we do here at Nebraska.
[00:00:29.180]But before I begin, I will say that we will have
[00:00:31.660]a session or a section here where we will have
[00:00:34.400]an opening for people in our audience
[00:00:36.680]that's here with us live,
[00:00:37.840]but also if you're with us virtually to submit questions
[00:00:40.670]via the chat feature.
[00:00:43.730]Just a note, we may not be able to get
[00:00:45.400]to all of your questions.
[00:00:47.200]We try to frame these in a way
[00:00:48.650]that we solicit it beforehand.
[00:00:50.784]We'll try our best to get to questions,
[00:00:52.630]but we are trying to allocate some time today
[00:00:55.980]so we can get to some of the panelists' questions
[00:00:58.190]for our audience as well.
[00:00:59.600]So with that being said, let me introduce our panelists.
[00:01:03.350]So we have with us today four leaders
[00:01:06.440]across universities across the nation.
[00:01:09.090]Our first panelist is Dr. Amer Ahmed.
[00:01:11.950]He currently serves as Vice Provost
[00:01:14.150]for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Faculty
[00:01:17.220]in the Higher Education and Student Affairs Administration
[00:01:20.310]program in the College of Education and Social Services
[00:01:23.545]at the University of Vermont.
[00:01:26.040]He has keynoted prominent conferences,
[00:01:27.970]including the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity,
[00:01:30.590]also known as NCORE, White Privilege Conference
[00:01:34.040]and the Society for Intercultural Education,
[00:01:36.120]SIETAR Conference.
[00:01:38.590]Our next panelist, Dr. Allison Davis-White Eyes,
[00:01:41.800]currently serves as the Vice-President
[00:01:43.740]of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
[00:01:46.010]as well as Associate Faculty in Leadership Studies
[00:01:48.330]at Fielding Graduate University.
[00:01:50.820]Dr. Davis-White Eyes has over 30 years
[00:01:53.170]of higher education experience that includes
[00:01:55.030]admissions, academic advising, international education
[00:01:58.950]and indigenous sovereignty.
[00:02:01.640]Excuse me.
[00:02:03.420]Our next panelist, Dr. Georgina Dodge,
[00:02:05.860]was appointed the Inaugural Vice President
[00:02:07.680]for Diversity and Inclusion
[00:02:09.320]at the University of Maryland in June, 2019.
[00:02:12.500]Her teaching has included courses
[00:02:14.020]in multi-racial and women's literatures,
[00:02:16.190]and she later became the Director
[00:02:17.430]of the Department of African American
[00:02:18.990]and African Studies Community Extension Center.
[00:02:23.190]Our final panelist is Antonio Farias.
[00:02:26.310]He serves as the Vice Chancellor
[00:02:27.570]for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,
[00:02:29.580]responsible for driving and developing initiatives
[00:02:32.170]that build on and advance CU Denver's
[00:02:35.760]commitment to equity and justice.
[00:02:37.830]Vice Chancellor Farias joined CU Denver
[00:02:40.280]from the University of Florida,
[00:02:41.930]where he served as its Inaugural Chief Diversity Officer
[00:02:44.660]and Senior Advisor to the President.
[00:02:47.150]Again, leading this discussion will be
[00:02:49.130]our Vice Chancellor, Marco Barker.
[00:02:50.900]Thank you.
[00:03:00.970]So first let me offer my warm regards
[00:03:04.680]to those of you who have stayed on
[00:03:07.180]for our State of Diversity,
[00:03:08.400]and then for those of you who are just joining us
[00:03:11.540]for this portion of the segment
[00:03:13.440]or the segment of the experience,
[00:03:15.350]please welcome on my behalf of being here today.
[00:03:20.330]I am just so thrilled to be able to be joining my colleagues
[00:03:25.000]on the conversation.
[00:03:26.500]We've had a chance to talk prior to today
[00:03:28.720]and had a chance to relive and reflect
[00:03:33.120]on what a year we've had.
[00:03:36.950]This particular State of Diversity conversation,
[00:03:39.310]as I was thinking about what might be the most salient
[00:03:43.780]for our conversation today,
[00:03:44.930]I thought about what our past year has looked like
[00:03:48.320]and having this particular focus,
[00:03:51.410]this notion of equity sort of stood out for me
[00:03:53.730]and particularly how there is now greater attention
[00:03:57.020]on racial equity.
[00:03:58.520]And if we think about racial equity
[00:04:00.047]and how that might be able to lead to inclusive practices,
[00:04:05.330]that can absolutely address other forms
[00:04:07.490]of inequity and oppression.
[00:04:09.660]And so for today's panel,
[00:04:12.110]we're gonna be talking about equity
[00:04:13.397]and sort of expounding on that.
[00:04:15.150]As Dr. Friday had mentioned,
[00:04:16.330]we hope that you are formulating questions
[00:04:18.410]for our esteemed panel.
[00:04:19.830]And I know that I appreciate
[00:04:22.570]their perspective and expertise,
[00:04:24.570]and I know that you will as well.
[00:04:26.870]So hello, colleagues, how are you doing?
[00:04:36.589]Good morning. Good morning, Dr. Barker.
[00:04:38.130]How are you doing? Oh, hi.
[00:04:38.963]Yes, you're in Lincoln. (all laugh)
[00:04:41.170]I hate that you're not here in person,
[00:04:42.930]but we know that we are having to be cautious.
[00:04:46.110]And so I'm glad that everyone's doing
[00:04:49.600]fine this afternoon.
[00:04:52.390]So we're gonna dive right in.
[00:04:54.240]So I suspect like many of you at UNL,
[00:04:59.040]we began utilizing an Inclusive Excellence Framework
[00:05:01.990]when we started thinking about how we do this work
[00:05:04.350]typically called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
[00:05:07.600]And we thought about Inclusive Excellence
[00:05:09.830]as a way to really create an inclusive
[00:05:13.930]and equitable workplace learning environment
[00:05:16.230]and living place for our students.
[00:05:19.960]I'm very curious,
[00:05:21.340]and you can share what frameworks you are using
[00:05:24.670]at your institutions.
[00:05:26.690]And then how has your framework shifted?
[00:05:30.020]Again, I mentioned before last year
[00:05:32.480]with this greater call for racial equity,
[00:05:34.250]we started thinking more about,
[00:05:35.920]does the Inclusive Excellence Framework work for us
[00:05:38.080]and how might it look different?
[00:05:39.990]So I'm just very curious about your frameworks
[00:05:42.170]and have they evolved?
[00:05:43.360]Have they shifted?
[00:05:44.400]Are they re-imagined?
[00:05:45.640]And maybe we'll start with Georgina.
[00:05:51.500]Thank you.
[00:05:52.333]First, let me say it is a pleasure to be here
[00:05:54.560]with all of you.
[00:05:55.420]I'm delighted that you were able to join us today.
[00:05:58.420]And I am coming to you from the University of Maryland Park,
[00:06:02.800]University of Maryland College Park,
[00:06:04.490]let me say that correctly,
[00:06:05.810]which is located on the ancestral lands
[00:06:08.920]of the Piscataway people
[00:06:10.620]as well as the site of a former plantation.
[00:06:15.550]So equity is a huge word.
[00:06:18.130]It's a huge word. (laughs)
[00:06:19.640]And I don't want to pretend that we're all using
[00:06:22.710]the same vocabulary.
[00:06:24.430]So I do want to make a brief distinction
[00:06:26.750]between the concept of equity and equality.
[00:06:29.950]And many of you have probably seen
[00:06:31.840]what is a well-known graphic that shows
[00:06:34.280]the three people looking over the fence at the baseball game
[00:06:37.890]and being given equal boxes that allow a couple of them
[00:06:42.830]to see over the fence,
[00:06:43.950]but the one who has the least height
[00:06:46.210]is not able to see over the fence.
[00:06:48.160]So equity is giving people what they need
[00:06:51.420]in order to succeed.
[00:06:53.520]And that's an important difference from equality
[00:06:56.400]which is giving everyone equal treatment.
[00:06:59.740]So I just wanted to make that distinction
[00:07:01.220]to ensure we're on the same page from the outset.
[00:07:04.180]At the University of Maryland,
[00:07:05.860]we have been using a similar framework
[00:07:07.760]of Inclusive Excellence.
[00:07:09.270]And one of the shifts that we are seeing happen
[00:07:11.830]is more of an emphasis on inclusion.
[00:07:15.900]We're realizing how important it is
[00:07:17.950]for people to feel included.
[00:07:20.010]And there is so much research indicating
[00:07:23.220]that feeling excluded actually has physical impact
[00:07:27.960]on individuals and communities that can cause some,
[00:07:32.820]a great deal of neurological harm.
[00:07:34.860]And so we're really focusing on developing programs
[00:07:39.455](computer chimes) that focus on inclusion,
[00:07:40.630]and I can talk more about one of those later.
[00:07:43.160]But another thing that we have seen shifted
[00:07:45.890]after everything we've gone through,
[00:07:47.770]through COVID, through anti-racism movements,
[00:07:54.120]that have been ongoing for many, many years,
[00:07:56.050]I don't want to pretend that they just started last summer,
[00:07:58.440]Goodness knows, is this emphasis on,
[00:08:02.510]even as we are focusing on EDI,
[00:08:04.460]Equity, Diversity and Inclusion,
[00:08:06.710]more of a focus on what's being referred to as JEDI.
[00:08:10.020]Which is justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.
[00:08:14.640]And I think that justice is a somewhat tricky word.
[00:08:17.650]I'm not going to define it
[00:08:18.900]because I think that it holds different meaning
[00:08:21.290]for different peoples and communities.
[00:08:24.150]But I think it's an important concept
[00:08:25.900]that we need to embrace,
[00:08:27.600]even as we're looking at how we can strive toward equity.
[00:08:32.250]And I also just want to add in conclusion here
[00:08:35.710]that equity is tricky.
[00:08:37.620]Equity is tricky.
[00:08:38.840]When we actually talk about giving each individual
[00:08:42.590]or community what is needed for success,
[00:08:45.780]that really calls into some question
[00:08:48.240]how assets are distributed.
[00:08:50.690]And we know that can be very challenging
[00:08:52.580]because what that is calling for is change.
[00:08:55.600]And Dr. Barker, I love it when you talked earlier
[00:08:58.410]about moving the bar,
[00:09:00.180]and how do we do the work differently?
[00:09:02.440]I think that's a critically important question.
[00:09:05.030]How do we do the work differently?
[00:09:07.010]And to add to that question,
[00:09:08.730]how do we do it differently in the face
[00:09:11.340]of resistance to change?
[00:09:15.170]No, that's great, Georgina.
[00:09:17.770]I'm really curious, Amer, you are relatively new to Vermont,
[00:09:23.160]so I'm very interested in sort of what was
[00:09:25.580]the framework that was there,
[00:09:27.690]I guess when you got there?
[00:09:29.390]Have you introduced something different,
[00:09:30.830]and has that even changed?
[00:09:33.500]Yeah. Thank you.
[00:09:34.333]And I want to acknowledge that the University of Vermont
[00:09:37.200]is on the ancestral land of the Abenaki people
[00:09:39.870]and we seek to be good stewards of the land
[00:09:43.530]and respect the Abenaki peoples stewardship of the land.
[00:09:50.000]An Inclusive Excellence Framework has been used
[00:09:52.470]at University of Vermont prior to my arrival.
[00:09:55.700]I think the major challenge has been
[00:10:00.130]to systemically engage an Inclusive Excellence Framework
[00:10:03.340]in which there's broad buy-in in terms
[00:10:06.890]of implementation of strategic planning.
[00:10:10.600]And so when I, shortly before I came,
[00:10:14.630]they completed the prior cycle of planning.
[00:10:17.560]And when I reviewed the plans of various areas
[00:10:21.360]of the institution, they were all over the map.
[00:10:23.980]Some were data-driven, some were not.
[00:10:28.904]And the last Campus Climate Survey was conducted
[00:10:34.150]after the start of that plan,
[00:10:36.410]and the prior time it was conducted had not been
[00:10:40.410]for many, many years prior to that.
[00:10:42.280]So the last plan was not particularly baselined
[00:10:47.370]in a data-driven manner.
[00:10:48.367]And so that's something that we are embarking on now
[00:10:51.450]as we're up for our three-year cycle
[00:10:53.860]and we're up for another five-year cycle
[00:10:56.960]of Inclusive Excellence and strategic planning.
[00:10:59.010]And so we want those,
[00:11:00.850]we want that baseline connected
[00:11:03.890]to that over a longitudinal data
[00:11:05.980]that we want to collect over time,
[00:11:08.330]to be able to track progress as you seem to be doing
[00:11:11.330]at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
[00:11:14.540]But I do think that it's important to contextualize
[00:11:17.910]as a person who worked at University of Michigan
[00:11:19.790]for seven years.
[00:11:20.623]I'm acutely aware of how we got from diversity
[00:11:24.990]to talking about inclusion
[00:11:26.770]and increasingly around equity and now justice.
[00:11:30.240]Which is that serving in an institution
[00:11:33.650]that went to defend affirmative action
[00:11:36.884]and race-conscious admissions policies at the Supreme Court,
[00:11:41.520]when I began to understand the rationale
[00:11:45.640]for the defense of those policies by University of Michigan
[00:11:49.290]at the Supreme Court,
[00:11:50.930]they talked about the educational benefit
[00:11:53.350]for all around diversity.
[00:11:55.750]And it connoted the sense that there,
[00:12:00.340]the assumption of inclusion, right?
[00:12:03.150]That compositional diversity in of itself
[00:12:06.360]creates academic excellence.
[00:12:09.300]And we know that's not the case,
[00:12:10.980]because if you have a group of diverse individuals
[00:12:14.360]of all different kinds of backgrounds in the classroom,
[00:12:17.540]if you don't have an equitable
[00:12:18.497]and inclusive background environment,
[00:12:22.400]you can't harness the diversity of those identities
[00:12:25.650]and experiences and backgrounds
[00:12:27.200]as a resource for learning in a meaningful way,
[00:12:30.050]because there's all sorts of historical and climate factors
[00:12:34.220]that silence different voices and perspectives
[00:12:37.020]and sends the implicit message that certain perspectives
[00:12:42.460]and background are valued and some are not.
[00:12:45.890]And so this journey to talking about Inclusive Excellence,
[00:12:50.610]as necessary for us to be able to get that
[00:12:53.510]to academic excellence, I think is incredibly important.
[00:12:57.310]And then we have increasingly in our work understood
[00:13:01.190]that you really can't have inclusion without equity.
[00:13:05.390]And then the piece around justice, I think,
[00:13:07.560]speaks to the historical (computer chimes)
[00:13:09.840]base systems of inequity that shape and influence
[00:13:13.000]and impact our climate.
[00:13:15.210]And if we go back to that University of Michigan case
[00:13:17.520]around the case for diversity,
[00:13:18.970]they specifically did not make
[00:13:20.730]the historical argument around these pieces
[00:13:24.070]because they thought they were going to lose
[00:13:25.970]at the Supreme Court if they made that argument.
[00:13:29.100]And so we have to be able to understand
[00:13:31.020]why these terms exist and why they matter
[00:13:35.220]and what happens when we think about certain aspects
[00:13:38.710]of thinking about this work,
[00:13:40.340]and not some other aspects of this work
[00:13:44.635]and the implications of that.
[00:13:46.735]Yeah. That's really interesting, Amer.
[00:13:49.660]As you're talking about, and both of you and Georgina
[00:13:52.870]talked about this notion of justice.
[00:13:55.717]And justice is now becoming another term
[00:13:58.370]that is getting connected
[00:14:00.190]to equity, diversity and inclusion.
[00:14:02.270]So how do we make sense out of all of that?
[00:14:04.490]I'm really curious maybe from Allison,
[00:14:07.740]can you share a little bit about...
[00:14:09.750]So I'm gonna kind of move us from the...
[00:14:11.850]Both of you are on the East Coast order to the West Coast.
[00:14:14.560]So Allison, you spent some time in Oregon
[00:14:18.410]and we know that context matters.
[00:14:19.590]So very curious about the framework
[00:14:21.890]and also even more curious about,
[00:14:24.760]are there ways that you've connected justice and equity
[00:14:28.250]in the work happening there?
[00:14:30.640]This is a fantastic question.
[00:14:32.360]So thank you.
[00:14:33.270]And I'm dialing in right now from the homelands
[00:14:36.730]of the Chumash people.
[00:14:38.110]Fielding Graduate University is a distributed
[00:14:40.420]learning model, but the headquarters are in Santa Barbara.
[00:14:44.010]So I would just want to acknowledge the Chumash
[00:14:46.970]who have given us this opportunity
[00:14:48.860]to have this wonderful conversation that we're having today.
[00:14:52.320]So as regards frameworks,
[00:14:54.270]and especially when we're talking about equity,
[00:14:56.040]I really cannot add too much more than my colleagues have
[00:14:59.490]on this topic.
[00:15:00.970]What I will say, though, about frameworks,
[00:15:02.980]and you're right, Dr. Barker, context matters.
[00:15:06.150]And so I think we all understand that no one framework
[00:15:10.290]can just be placed over and transposed
[00:15:15.160]upon another community or institution.
[00:15:18.520]Frameworks are really dependent
[00:15:20.090]upon the culture of your institution.
[00:15:22.160]And as you probably all know,
[00:15:23.770]there is no one size fits all framework
[00:15:25.700]that can be transferred from one institution to the other.
[00:15:29.530]One of the things that I will say,
[00:15:31.800]having had the Oregon experience,
[00:15:34.070]which very much was working towards Inclusive Excellence
[00:15:37.290]and I think really came up with some working models
[00:15:40.530]to address that and to address some of the equity issues,
[00:15:43.780]was this challenge that you speak to around justice.
[00:15:46.540]Justice for whom?
[00:15:48.030]And justice determined by whom?
[00:15:51.020]For what purpose and to what end?
[00:15:53.210]And I think that's going to be a continuous
[00:15:56.330]moving target throughout our country,
[00:15:59.530]because as we all know, as we are standing presently,
[00:16:04.010]the landscape shifts under our feet so ever slightly.
[00:16:07.370]I think Dr. Ahmed talked about the court.
[00:16:09.650]So I know that recently, Dr. Emerson Sykes
[00:16:12.730]was talking about Senate Bill 1775 in the state of Oklahoma.
[00:16:17.670]So we have some interesting legal and policy challenges here
[00:16:23.900]and all of these sort of connect around this term justice.
[00:16:27.120]So what we have been doing both Edward and State University,
[00:16:32.070]and I believe at Fielding.
[00:16:33.097]I'm new, I've been there 18 days,
[00:16:35.260]all of 18 days. (Dr. Barker laughs)
[00:16:36.093]I think I pass you up Dr. Ahmed on being new.
[00:16:39.430]But I think that it's going to take
[00:16:40.690]a series of conversations around what exactly do
[00:16:43.570]these terms mean.
[00:16:45.500]And I think, Dr. Dodge, you said something very interesting,
[00:16:48.320]is people bring their lens, their lived experience
[00:16:51.690]and their own interpretation of these terms.
[00:16:54.390]That's true.
[00:16:55.780]But at the end of the day,
[00:16:57.550]we are going to have to come to some general agreement
[00:17:00.970]on what these terms mean.
[00:17:02.150]And I believe that justice, which is a very contested term,
[00:17:06.500]is going to be one of those conversations.
[00:17:09.020]So, as I think about frameworks and as I think about DEI,
[00:17:14.880]Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,
[00:17:16.320]and let's add justice because you're absolutely right,
[00:17:19.080]that is the overarching umbrella here,
[00:17:21.760]I have found that the conversations
[00:17:24.580]that I am having currently in my new institution
[00:17:27.910]are really shifting towards justice,
[00:17:32.290]anti-racist, anti-oppressive and decolonial frameworks.
[00:17:38.270]And this is going to be a very interesting conversation.
[00:17:41.650]This is something that institutions will need
[00:17:44.850]to do some deeper dives and deeper inquiries on.
[00:17:48.980]Yeah, absolutely.
[00:17:50.410]As you were talking, Allison,
[00:17:52.680]I was thinking about just this notion about,
[00:17:56.370]what are the right terms?
[00:17:57.530]Are there particular terms?
[00:17:58.630]Are we defining them all the same?
[00:18:01.360]So I'm curious, Antonio, as we...
[00:18:04.440]So we've heard a number of foci around justice,
[00:18:09.560]decolonization, anti-oppressive frameworks,
[00:18:13.520]anti-racist frameworks.
[00:18:14.970]I'm curious, what are some of the terms
[00:18:17.950]or focus that are emerging at your institution?
[00:18:22.360]And then how are you ensuring that your entire university
[00:18:27.340]understands those definitions?
[00:18:30.250]Thank you. Great question.
[00:18:31.550]And thank you colleagues for setting a great platform
[00:18:35.040]and also to all our colleagues out in,
[00:18:37.690]at the University of Nebraska.
[00:18:39.227]And I send you a chili welcome (Dr. Barker laughs)
[00:18:41.800]and good morning from the Mile High City at CU Denver,
[00:18:46.610]which also resides on the historical lands
[00:18:49.150]of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Ute people.
[00:18:52.000]And more recently, because this is a new university.
[00:18:54.750]We are an urban serving university that was created in 1953.
[00:18:58.800]We also sit on the displaced Auraria Campus
[00:19:03.160]or Auraria neighborhood,
[00:19:04.300]which was predominantly a Latinex community,
[00:19:06.730]which we're in dialogue right now about.
[00:19:09.060]I really appreciate it.
[00:19:10.260]I heard the land acknowledgement.
[00:19:12.140]I thought it was incredibly powerful.
[00:19:14.360]And I think all of us as land-grant universities
[00:19:16.770]have a debt to pay.
[00:19:19.510]I know the R word doesn't get used a lot,
[00:19:22.700]but reparations right across all our communities
[00:19:25.260]is something that we have to really deal with.
[00:19:28.420]To answer the specificity of your question,
[00:19:31.220]we also use the Inclusive Excellence model
[00:19:33.870]here at CU Denver.
[00:19:37.185]And we're using it in ways, we're using multiple models.
[00:19:40.740]And again, I think that's the challenge that we all have.
[00:19:43.220]And I see it as nesting dolls.
[00:19:45.340]There isn't one model, there isn't one size that fits all.
[00:19:48.740]The reality is that our universities are very complex.
[00:19:52.320]They're all distributed networks.
[00:19:54.550]And if you come in and you say,
[00:19:56.240]and I've done this before at previous institutions,
[00:19:58.460]where I've said, "Hey, Inclusive Excellence.
[00:19:59.890]We've got this great body of real scholarship behind it.
[00:20:03.010]Let's go with this model,"
[00:20:04.510]and the faculty have vomited all over it.
[00:20:07.310]And why is that? Because it was imposed.
[00:20:10.130]Lessons learned in my 17 years as a chief diversity officer,
[00:20:13.150]that when you, as an administrator, try to impose something,
[00:20:16.870]no good deed goes unpunished.
[00:20:18.540]So this goes back to the concept of shared governance,
[00:20:21.350]which is what I really appreciate
[00:20:22.870]about what Nebraska is doing,
[00:20:24.210]bringing all of your shared governance entities together
[00:20:26.650]into this process.
[00:20:28.070]So for us, Inclusive Excellence has come out of,
[00:20:32.580]organically out of various colleges and schools.
[00:20:35.800]Particularly around what seated it
[00:20:37.810]was the HHMI Inclusive Excellence Grant
[00:20:40.610]that we've now had for nine years.
[00:20:42.660]And that's created some really powerful changes.
[00:20:45.750]As one specific example is we now have
[00:20:47.780]an Inclusive Pedagogy Academy that about 70%
[00:20:50.840]of our biology faculty have gone through.
[00:20:53.440]Within five years, we have dropped the DWF numbers by 50%.
[00:20:59.360]Now, if you were to tell faculty
[00:21:01.070]that they needed to do this,
[00:21:02.610]they would absolutely reject it.
[00:21:04.910]Why did this work?
[00:21:05.980]It was because it was faculty-led, faculty-funded,
[00:21:09.780]and we gave it enough sort of nurturing water,
[00:21:12.860]if you will, in order for it to grow.
[00:21:15.240]What we're in discussions right now is
[00:21:16.900]how do we scale that up?
[00:21:18.360]Right now, we're using a framework
[00:21:19.970]that doesn't exist right now.
[00:21:21.167]And it's called becoming an equity-serving institution.
[00:21:24.550]And what does that mean?
[00:21:26.500]Lots of people, if you Google equity-serving institution,
[00:21:29.000]you're not gonna find any.
[00:21:30.900]And part of this is because when I arrived here,
[00:21:33.103]we were in this push to become an HSI and an AANAPISI.
[00:21:37.840]Hispanic-Serving Institution
[00:21:39.450]and an Asian American and Native American
[00:21:41.450]Pacific Islander-Serving Institution.
[00:21:43.900]Now if you know anything about any
[00:21:45.550]of these sort of terms,
[00:21:46.690]you know that most HSIs and AANAPISIs,
[00:21:49.510]what they do is they get the numbers,
[00:21:51.470]and that's demography, that's luck.
[00:21:53.740]That just happens to be where you're situated,
[00:21:55.760]not necessarily strategic.
[00:21:57.720]And then what we're doing is
[00:21:59.150]where we're just running numbers.
[00:22:00.240]We're saying we're 25% Hispanic,
[00:22:02.060]therefore we must be an HSI.
[00:22:05.900]That's not true.
[00:22:06.733]That just means that we're enrolling humans.
[00:22:09.410]We're not getting them out.
[00:22:10.320]Well, I love your use of data
[00:22:12.990]actually show progression.
[00:22:14.620]And again, sometimes our communities are impatient
[00:22:16.630]with that progression,
[00:22:17.710]but understanding we do that our structures are futile,
[00:22:20.860]literally futile, change is going to take time.
[00:22:25.160]And what I did appreciate about what you said earlier
[00:22:27.520]was that we need to focus on the culture
[00:22:30.090]and not on the individual, which is really powerful.
[00:22:33.140]CDOs do not change organizations.
[00:22:34.940]Chancellors do not change organizations.
[00:22:37.310]You change the culture, you change everything else.
[00:22:40.620]So for us, this concept of an equity-serving institution,
[00:22:44.040]what it means is not that we're serving students,
[00:22:46.880]it means we're serving our equity,
[00:22:48.760]the concept, the rubric of what is equity.
[00:22:51.320]So that means that we're focused on the structural.
[00:22:53.630]That means we're taking everything apart right now.
[00:22:55.770]So why is that going to work?
[00:22:57.793]It's gonna work because right now it's organically coming
[00:23:00.740]from the bottom, if you will,
[00:23:02.210]and it's also organically coming from the top.
[00:23:04.810]And what I mean by the top,
[00:23:06.090]it's not just our strategy.
[00:23:07.410]It's also the resources.
[00:23:09.060]That is the most powerful thing that I'm seeing
[00:23:10.840]here at CU Denver.
[00:23:11.730]It's not just that we have great words.
[00:23:13.670]All of us have great strategies,
[00:23:15.430]but if your CFO is not saying we're going to reallocate
[00:23:19.420]and reimagine how every dollar is spent
[00:23:22.110]through an equity lens and an equity mindset,
[00:23:24.740]that's a mind shift.
[00:23:26.220]That gets us to the concept of culture.
[00:23:28.250]So that's where we're moving right now is towards, again,
[00:23:31.120]this HSI, ESI, AANAPISI.
[00:23:34.520]But on those two, you can think of those
[00:23:37.020]as two of the horses that are driving the larger cart,
[00:23:39.680]which is the equity-serving institution.
[00:23:41.810]And on those, we're focusing now on the student
[00:23:44.670]and the faculty and staff experience,
[00:23:47.160]but we're focusing it on this concept of service.
[00:23:50.040]And that I think is the biggest thing
[00:23:51.760]for us to sort of consider, is how may we serve?
[00:23:56.090]That is a powerful thing for an educator to say.
[00:23:59.150]How may we serve you, as opposed to you're here
[00:24:01.850]to do something for us.
[00:24:03.530]And that's an ethos.
[00:24:05.630]So at the end of the day, I used to be in the military.
[00:24:08.460]I worked for a military academy.
[00:24:10.530]What I learned throughout this process
[00:24:12.600]is that character matters.
[00:24:14.660]And if this is about character,
[00:24:17.020]then it's embedded in the culture.
[00:24:18.480]If it's not about character, then it's a flavor of the day.
[00:24:23.120]No, that's really great, Antonio.
[00:24:24.830]So this notion of thinking
[00:24:26.810]about what are the type of conversations
[00:24:30.480]that we're having with our colleagues?
[00:24:32.410]What does engagement look like?
[00:24:33.880]So that you can move culture,
[00:24:36.370]that you can also get to outcomes that you're seeking.
[00:24:39.343]So I'm curious maybe from you, Georgina,
[00:24:43.300]what have been some of the conversations
[00:24:45.280]that you're having at your institution
[00:24:47.280]as it pertains to equity?
[00:24:53.600]Thank you.
[00:24:54.433]Antonio, as a fellow veteran,
[00:24:55.840]your words are resonating with me.
[00:24:57.770](Georgina and Antonia laugh)
[00:24:58.603]So I appreciate everything that you said.
[00:25:01.830]I think it's interesting.
[00:25:03.920]And this is a bit of a tangent side note
[00:25:06.670]that often the term service gets derided.
[00:25:10.330]It gets sort of pushed to the side
[00:25:12.090]and people can actually become offended.
[00:25:13.900]I've used the word and had people say,
[00:25:15.617]"Well, I'm not here to serve."
[00:25:17.010]And I just really can't think of any reason
[00:25:19.200]why we're all not.
[00:25:20.410]We're all here to serve.
[00:25:22.050]That's the reason we're put on this planet. (laughs)
[00:25:24.686]So, that really resonated with me.
[00:25:28.150]As we're looking at equity,
[00:25:30.330]one of the things that we're trying to do,
[00:25:32.070]and while I appreciate the term shared governance,
[00:25:36.510]at times it can be a sort of a term
[00:25:38.970]that we fling into the conversation
[00:25:41.972](laughs) and just to ensure it's there,
[00:25:46.370]but how do we really enact that?
[00:25:48.380]And we're seeing a lot in the national headlines,
[00:25:51.410]particularly from faculty who feel
[00:25:52.980]that there has been a real diminishment
[00:25:54.600]of shared governance.
[00:25:55.840]And so I think that's something that we need
[00:25:57.650]to be attentive to.
[00:25:58.770]We need to ensure that there are spaces
[00:26:01.900]so that everyone's voice is at the table.
[00:26:04.010]And that also includes the voice of students.
[00:26:07.270]And I think that there has to be a balance
[00:26:09.760]between how we address student needs
[00:26:12.240]and how we assess student needs specifically,
[00:26:14.980]but students absolutely have to be part
[00:26:17.510]of this conversation.
[00:26:19.360]And I say that in part,
[00:26:20.780]because I think that for many of my colleagues,
[00:26:24.220]there's a tendency to look at the student experience
[00:26:27.760]through their own lens of experience.
[00:26:30.230]And if the past year or two has taught us anything,
[00:26:33.320]it's that the world has changed.
[00:26:35.760]And as we look at the impact of technology
[00:26:38.460]and specifically social media,
[00:26:40.400]it is a completely different world.
[00:26:42.440]And this not the world that I came of age in,
[00:26:46.220]and I think that's really important.
[00:26:48.020]And so we need our students (computer chimes)
[00:26:50.090]and younger members of our faculty and staff,
[00:26:52.330]for that reason as well, to be part of the conversation,
[00:26:55.760]to inform us about how equity is being defined,
[00:26:59.290]because it is seen differently now
[00:27:02.143]than it may once have been. (computer chimes)
[00:27:03.910]And that's important to keep in mind.
[00:27:05.570]So, we are actually meeting with different student groups.
[00:27:09.910]We are collecting critical issues that each group is facing,
[00:27:13.850]so that we can begin addressing those,
[00:27:16.330]determining whose responsibility it is
[00:27:18.490]within the Administration.
[00:27:20.200]And even if we can't address,
[00:27:21.870]to at least have the conversation,
[00:27:24.750]because so much of what impacts students
[00:27:26.910]also impacts our faculty and staff.
[00:27:29.660]And that's something important we need to keep in mind.
[00:27:31.530]And this is part of the culture shift
[00:27:34.200]that needs to take place, is being in conversation.
[00:27:37.050]There may be some things that we don't feel
[00:27:39.030]that we can change at the present moment,
[00:27:40.620]but we need to at least be aware of that
[00:27:42.750]and have that acknowledgement and accountability.
[00:27:46.030]Yeah, absolutely.
[00:27:47.507]So I wanna build on this ideal about, again,
[00:27:51.450]going back to having the right conversations,
[00:27:53.910]having the right framing,
[00:27:55.250]who's engaged in those conversations?
[00:27:57.670]Maybe thinking about the topic of those conversations.
[00:28:00.560]So we know that we find ourselves
[00:28:03.200]in a very interesting time and place,
[00:28:07.925]whether we think about from last year to this year,
[00:28:12.350]how we're still grappling with the pandemic,
[00:28:15.470]how there are still again these calls
[00:28:17.430]for greater racial justice, greater equity,
[00:28:20.870]across a number of minoritized populations,
[00:28:24.350]even thinking about where we're located.
[00:28:26.260]So I think we've talked about context,
[00:28:27.940]and where you're positioned and located also matters.
[00:28:31.010]I think Antonio brought it up really well
[00:28:32.490]and even describing the community
[00:28:35.030]in which the institution is housed.
[00:28:36.940]So thinking about this again,
[00:28:38.250]this notion of time and place,
[00:28:39.960]and especially being in this pandemic
[00:28:44.048]where we are also more intently talking
[00:28:49.040]about racial equity in particular.
[00:28:50.520]So we have both the murders of Black
[00:28:54.420]and Brown folks last year,
[00:28:56.890]we also know that the pandemic brought out
[00:28:59.470]and highlighted a number of other inequities.
[00:29:02.030]Given all of this,
[00:29:04.010]and we've mentioned anti-racism as well,
[00:29:07.910]how do we continue having conversations on racial equity
[00:29:13.450]while also situating, acknowledging
[00:29:16.398]and addressing additional inequities?
[00:29:18.700]So I'm sort of, I'm going to give you
[00:29:20.320]sort of a tease.
[00:29:21.594]I'm sort of getting into intersectionality.
[00:29:22.650]So like, how do we solve all these world problems?
[00:29:27.400]Like, so how do we solve the problem (laughs)
[00:29:30.130]that is so massive?
[00:29:32.070]How do you approach it?
[00:29:32.990]And maybe we'll start with Amer.
[00:29:38.490]Thanks, Marco.
[00:29:39.730]And yes, an intersectional lens is critically important.
[00:29:43.370]And one of the things that I'm really trying to instill
[00:29:46.624]at University of Vermont is that we all have work to do.
[00:29:50.230]I think that as much as an anti-racism framework
[00:29:54.850]is incredibly important...
[00:29:56.930]It's what motivated me to come into the work.
[00:30:00.110]And early in my career, I saw a lot of resistance
[00:30:03.730]at predominately white institutions around that approach.
[00:30:07.580]And part of the reason why was
[00:30:10.970]that the unintentional implications of that
[00:30:15.820]when you lead with that, is the assumption
[00:30:19.530]that some people have work to do,
[00:30:20.990]and other people don't have work to do.
[00:30:23.880]And rather, I think what we're really trying
[00:30:27.040]to instill at University of Vermont
[00:30:28.280]is a skills and competency-based approach.
[00:30:31.280]That one are the core skills and competencies
[00:30:33.770]you need to develop to be able to be as effective
[00:30:36.640]as you possibly can with as many types of people
[00:30:39.770]as possible in a number of different contexts.
[00:30:43.080]And what that means is that when you encounter a difference
[00:30:46.450]that you are completely unfamiliar with,
[00:30:49.733]that you've worked on these core skills,
[00:30:53.210]you have reflected on how your position
[00:30:55.140]as related to your privileged identities,
[00:30:57.140]whatever they might be.
[00:30:58.110]For me, it's as a cisgendered male
[00:30:59.720]and able-bodied individual, and I have class privilege.
[00:31:02.770]There's all sorts of privileges that I have,
[00:31:04.810]while also being marginalized around race and religion,
[00:31:07.270]and other ways.
[00:31:09.570]That for us to be able to recognize
[00:31:11.990]that we all have that work to do.
[00:31:14.400]Because sometimes we think
[00:31:16.440]that because we've read white fragility
[00:31:19.180]or because we've read a particular,
[00:31:21.950]we've gotten learned around LGBTQ issues
[00:31:24.870]or whatever it might be,
[00:31:26.710]that those are somehow transferrable
[00:31:33.040]to learning and understanding how to engage
[00:31:36.010]all different kinds of difference.
[00:31:38.010]And what I've been really trying to instill
[00:31:40.290]is that that type of what I refer to
[00:31:43.890]as culture-specific knowledge is supplemental
[00:31:47.800]to those core skills and competencies
[00:31:50.320]that around how we navigate the complexity
[00:31:52.620]of similarities and differences,
[00:31:54.630]including those that we're completely unfamiliar with,
[00:31:57.970]because you can't know everything about everybody.
[00:32:00.695](laughs) Right?
[00:32:01.740]And so that's gonna start from a place of self-awareness,
[00:32:04.870]of who am I in my identities, my experience,
[00:32:07.830]my backgrounds, my privileges, my marginality,
[00:32:11.290]and cultivating that reference point
[00:32:14.460]to be able to understand who am I in relationship
[00:32:18.310]to what I'm encountering?
[00:32:20.010]To be able to recognize what's making me similar
[00:32:23.240]or different from someone else.
[00:32:25.310]One example, I use in some of my trainings
[00:32:27.360]is that many of us probably know people who have said,
[00:32:30.477]"I judge someone's character by whether or not
[00:32:33.174]they look me in the eye."
[00:32:34.740]Well, if someone comes from a background
[00:32:36.920]in which it would be totally inappropriate
[00:32:40.030]to look at their faculty member or across gender
[00:32:42.760]at someone in the eye, well,
[00:32:46.610]that student who would be subject to that faculty's power
[00:32:49.730]in that classroom would be in a really difficult situation
[00:32:53.920]if that faculty member has now made a judgment and decision
[00:32:58.000]about that person's character based on their eye contact.
[00:33:03.240]So there's a lot of subtle ways in which these inequity
[00:33:07.840]starts to function and operate
[00:33:09.890]when we haven't done the work
[00:33:11.800]around cultivating these skills and competencies
[00:33:15.350]and infusing them into our culture.
[00:33:19.460]And we don't develop a shared understanding
[00:33:21.750]of what are the skills and competencies
[00:33:23.570]we're trying to work on across the institution
[00:33:26.370]to get at that?
[00:33:28.240]And I think the pedagogy component is a huge component.
[00:33:31.930]Antonio, thank you for bringing that up.
[00:33:33.410]I think it's the hardest part of the work
[00:33:36.850]is how do we infuse this in the culture of our faculty?
[00:33:39.890]And I've been fortunate enough to have done
[00:33:43.030]a number of that work.
[00:33:43.910]We're definitely trying to go down that path,
[00:33:46.210]partially through the HHMI grant
[00:33:47.830]at University of Vermont as well.
[00:33:50.350]But I think we have to make that an imperative
[00:33:54.580]in how we go about doing the work going forward.
[00:33:57.560]No, that's great.
[00:33:59.710]So I'm really curious, Allison, so from your vantage point,
[00:34:04.810]how do you reconcile of how we address
[00:34:07.410]these many different forms
[00:34:09.030]of marginalization and oppression?
[00:34:12.580]Thank you for this question.
[00:34:13.960]And it's one we all grapple with,
[00:34:15.580]no matter what institution we're at.
[00:34:18.160]Here's where I think a clear understanding
[00:34:20.410]and demystification of critical race theory is so important.
[00:34:23.950]And I'm so glad Dr. Dodge is on this call.
[00:34:26.550]It is very sad really to see this theory
[00:34:29.500]be misunderstood and vilified
[00:34:31.120]without people having a clear understanding
[00:34:33.080]of how critical race theory does, in fact,
[00:34:36.140]speak to the conditions every one of us
[00:34:38.900]finds ourselves in regardless of affiliation.
[00:34:42.480]And I think central to the understanding
[00:34:44.470]of CRT is intersectionality.
[00:34:46.610]You've heard it here before,
[00:34:48.210]and it is here, I believe, that we can find the ways
[00:34:51.250]in which multiple identities
[00:34:53.190]and their relative positionality with various systems
[00:34:56.940]and subsystems interact with one another.
[00:35:00.760]It is really important that people understand this
[00:35:03.710]because this actually defines the structures
[00:35:07.050]that we all, each and every one of us, has to move in
[00:35:10.750]and navigate in.
[00:35:12.910]It's fascinating to me on this particular topic,
[00:35:15.610]in my conversations with CRT critics of intersectionality,
[00:35:18.900]I have found out what upsets them
[00:35:20.960]isn't necessarily the theory itself.
[00:35:24.770]What really upsets them is its implications,
[00:35:27.690]its uses and most importantly,
[00:35:31.100]their, the critics, perceived consequences.
[00:35:34.550]And I say perceived because I don't think
[00:35:36.990]that they have a clear understanding
[00:35:39.290]to have a perception that's really quite accurate.
[00:35:42.560]So to your question about,
[00:35:44.477]"Well, how do you get all of these competing voices
[00:35:48.885]in the room heard and needs honored?"
[00:35:52.850]A couple of things.
[00:35:54.660]As I said before, there is a shift happening
[00:35:57.650]and I know it's happening at Fielding where I am,
[00:36:00.350]and it was beginning to happen also
[00:36:01.830]at Oregon State University, of this shift, not away from,
[00:36:07.050]but I would say a shift towards that includes DEI,
[00:36:10.740]a shift towards anti-racist and anti-oppressive ways
[00:36:15.780]of understanding and pedagogies and methodologies.
[00:36:18.920]I think that's real important.
[00:36:19.940]Thank you, Dr. Ahmed.
[00:36:21.370]Pedagogy is so important.
[00:36:22.950]And really having that as sort of a base.
[00:36:26.320]When you move to an anti-racist
[00:36:29.650]or anti-oppressive framework,
[00:36:32.840]what you are doing is you're moving away
[00:36:35.180]from sort of these very binary Manichaean
[00:36:39.700]either-or conversations to the and conversation.
[00:36:44.560]So moving from the Tyranny of OR,
[00:36:48.850]and finding and discovering together the genius of the and.
[00:36:53.818]And that's not easy, that requires difficult conversations.
[00:36:57.360]There's a wonderful framework out of Cal Berkeley
[00:37:00.320]called Targeted Universalism,
[00:37:03.020]where it's really trying to explore what it means
[00:37:05.280]to do equity work from the and, not from the either-or,
[00:37:10.270]and they even call it Equity 2.0,
[00:37:14.240]and it's a very interesting framework.
[00:37:16.260]And it's one worth looking at.
[00:37:17.610]Again, I don't believe,
[00:37:18.610]and we've already agreed on this call,
[00:37:20.370]that there is no one framework that has all the answers
[00:37:22.980]that will fit every institution,
[00:37:24.960]but it is worth investigating and looking at
[00:37:28.240]and pondering and sharing with faculty.
[00:37:31.120]To that point, I want to make a comment,
[00:37:32.950]and this goes back to Antonio's comment about culture.
[00:37:37.670]In order for any of this to work,
[00:37:39.320]the institutional culture has to be one
[00:37:41.930]that's willing to embrace the difficult conversations.
[00:37:45.850]And I was just sharing with colleagues at Fielding
[00:37:49.350]that in order for us to advance our DEI efforts,
[00:37:52.920]we must set the table.
[00:37:55.770]We must set the table with an understanding
[00:37:58.590]of how we as a collective, as a collective community,
[00:38:02.040]are going to engage around these ever-emerging issues
[00:38:06.650]because this will continue to emerge.
[00:38:09.590]One of the frameworks that I really admire
[00:38:12.950]and am hoping to share with colleagues
[00:38:16.840]is a framework from the University of Oregon.
[00:38:18.910]My good colleague, Dr. Yvette Alex-Assensoh
[00:38:21.950]developed a framework that sets the table.
[00:38:25.000]And this framework is called LACE,
[00:38:27.770]love, authenticity, courage, and empathy.
[00:38:34.700]And she uses this framework
[00:38:36.270]as sort of the starting point for institutions
[00:38:40.730]to begin doing the very hard work
[00:38:44.030]of having the difficult conversations,
[00:38:46.690]of moving away from the Tyranny of the OR
[00:38:49.140]to find the genius of the AND,
[00:38:51.150]and figuring it out collectively
[00:38:53.920]how we are going to do that,
[00:38:55.410]how we are going to develop the mindset,
[00:38:58.080]a fluid pliable mindset that is open to newness.
[00:39:04.410]And I'll stop there.
[00:39:06.150]No, that was extremely powerful.
[00:39:08.670]So again, this notion of a strategy around LACE
[00:39:13.880]and the setting of the table.
[00:39:15.650]So for our last question, before we open it to the audience,
[00:39:18.490]so for those who are streaming, again,
[00:39:20.470]please, we hope that you are submitting your questions,
[00:39:23.300]and certainly for our live audience,
[00:39:25.240]who'll also have an opportunity to ask questions,
[00:39:28.010]I want to sort of build on this strategy.
[00:39:29.760]So I suspect we have a number of people who are gathered,
[00:39:32.900]who are tuning in, that want some sort of strategies,
[00:39:37.330]some sort of next step, some sort of direction.
[00:39:41.020]And so certainly I think LACE provides one
[00:39:43.820]as we think about that,
[00:39:45.420]but certainly open it to the other panelists.
[00:39:48.230]Are there strategies that you've seen be effective
[00:39:51.780]or that are promising that you've seen,
[00:39:53.680]whether it's at the individual level or across departments
[00:39:56.740]or offices that could be undertaken by our faculty,
[00:40:01.120]staff and students?
[00:40:02.530]And maybe we'll start with Amer.
[00:40:09.800]Yeah. So first of all,
[00:40:11.470]I'm just so thankful for what's been shared.
[00:40:14.050]And I just want to echo that the both-and
[00:40:18.080]versus the either-or, I think dualism is our enemy
[00:40:21.360]in this work.
[00:40:23.434]And we can't be in pursuit of academic excellence
[00:40:29.940]or educational excellence from a dualistic frame.
[00:40:34.130]We have to move into the complexity.
[00:40:36.080]So thank you for that.
[00:40:37.230]I'm so thankful for the way that that was framed.
[00:40:40.180]And actually I'm gonna pick up on some
[00:40:42.050]of what I was saying around the faculty work.
[00:40:44.120]So I've been fortunate to done some of that work
[00:40:49.150]with a number of institutions,
[00:40:51.430]but I served in the Institute for Teaching Excellence
[00:40:53.890]and Faculty Development at UMass Amherst,
[00:40:56.110]and one of the things that we did there
[00:40:57.410]that we are planning to do at University of Vermont,
[00:41:00.160]again, utilizing the HHMI grant
[00:41:02.760]is to build capacity amongst faculty who are invested
[00:41:06.580]in being inclusive educators in the classroom
[00:41:10.650]and being a resource for their colleagues,
[00:41:13.420]because the reality is that faculty listen to other faculty
[00:41:18.179](laughs) more than they listen to anybody else,
[00:41:19.500]or whoever they consider to be their peers.
[00:41:22.820]They're just more likely to be listening
[00:41:25.530]and to engage and approach their colleagues,
[00:41:28.470]who they consider to be their peers.
[00:41:30.660]And so part of how we infuse these skills into our culture
[00:41:37.130]is by having people more localized
[00:41:39.780]as resources for one another, (computer chimes)
[00:41:42.840]and it feel less dictatorial from some external force
[00:41:47.590]or factor for individual faculty,
[00:41:50.590]but rather something that's happening in their culture,
[00:41:54.090]in their environment that they are collectively shifting.
[00:41:59.060]And then part of that is going to be about their time.
[00:42:04.340]To what degree is there any incentive
[00:42:08.010]for them to commit their time to working with one another
[00:42:11.950]on cultivating a culture of inclusion equity
[00:42:19.940]in their best practices?
[00:42:22.860]And again, to what degree do they have the opportunity
[00:42:25.040]to have those conversations with their colleagues
[00:42:27.150]around where they're finding success,
[00:42:29.060]where they're finding challenges,
[00:42:31.420]and then getting around those challenges.
[00:42:34.890]Having the conversations in which it's okay
[00:42:37.180]to not have the answers.
[00:42:39.370]And I think this is particularly challenging
[00:42:42.760]in American higher education,
[00:42:45.310]because all the incentives are around knowing
[00:42:48.370]or the performance of knowing.
[00:42:50.120]There are very few incentives for not knowing.
[00:42:54.830]And we also know that this is typically weaponized
[00:42:57.810]against women, folks of color, (chuckles)
[00:43:00.880]visibly queer folks who are willing to step into the unknown
[00:43:05.750]in their pedagogy with students,
[00:43:08.720]bringing students more into the center
[00:43:10.330]in their pedagogy and so forth,
[00:43:12.878]but then penalized or not centering themselves
[00:43:17.320]in being the knower
[00:43:19.792]and engaging in what Paulo Freire refers
[00:43:22.150]in the banking deposit model of pedagogy.
[00:43:24.850]And so we have to be able to shift our culture
[00:43:29.180]and what we value about what we think
[00:43:33.680]teaching and learning is in a higher educational context.
[00:43:37.950]Is it downloading our content knowledge and expertise,
[00:43:42.550]or are we centering the learning?
[00:43:44.930]And that who we are in the classroom is a resource
[00:43:48.240]for learning to get us to a different place.
[00:43:50.557]And that our pedagogy is a key
[00:43:53.420]unlocking that academic excellence
[00:43:55.600]through inclusion and equity.
[00:43:58.650]But it has to be infused at the grassroots level
[00:44:01.850]as Antonio said, for us to be able to get anywhere on that.
[00:44:06.090]Yeah, I can imagine
[00:44:06.923]that our Center for Transformative Teaching
[00:44:08.600]is absolutely tapping their hands
[00:44:11.020]around that particular answer.
[00:44:13.490]And maybe for the last word, Georgina,
[00:44:15.680]are there strategies that our staff or students
[00:44:19.050]might be able to take to move this work ahead?
[00:44:23.520]Absolutely because it takes the entire campus.
[00:44:26.050]I mean, that's, I think my colleagues
[00:44:28.760]have said all of this so beautifully.
[00:44:30.900]Even as we talk about coming together
[00:44:32.810]to do this equity work,
[00:44:34.460]it really evolves around the concept of linked fate.
[00:44:38.840]We are all connected, and goodness knows,
[00:44:41.560]you would think that over the past couple of years,
[00:44:43.570]we would really have come to have realized that.
[00:44:45.980]And there was a lot of great research
[00:44:47.570]that has been out there over the years.
[00:44:48.960]John Powell has been doing work on this for years
[00:44:50.980]about this concept of linked fate.
[00:44:52.900]Instead we get pitted against each other
[00:44:55.190]and there's the whole belief that it's a zero-sum game,
[00:44:58.660]that somehow if you gain, I'm going to lose.
[00:45:00.920]And we need to find ways to diminish that sentiment.
[00:45:03.930]Again, it comes back to duality as well.
[00:45:06.690]It's either-or rather than the both-and.
[00:45:11.300]But I think one of the ways
[00:45:12.500]in which we are focusing on this,
[00:45:14.060]and this is still, this is a new program,
[00:45:16.810]and so I just want to throw it into the conversation
[00:45:18.970]because I find it interesting,
[00:45:20.520]is that we're really focusing on inclusion.
[00:45:23.470]And by that, I mean, how can you as a member
[00:45:25.930]of the campus community be inclusive?
[00:45:28.630]And you as an individual, but also you as a unit.
[00:45:31.510]What are you doing?
[00:45:32.910]And so when our new president started on last July,
[00:45:36.350]he launched an initiative called TerrapinSTRONG
[00:45:39.121]where the terrapins where the turtles or the terrapins
[00:45:41.810]and TerrapinSTRONG is about building your inclusion muscles.
[00:45:46.560]And we've rolled it out as an onboarding program,
[00:45:49.650]so that all incoming students, faculty and staff
[00:45:53.280]complete the onboarding to learn what it is to be inclusive,
[00:45:57.470]to learn what it is to be a terrapin.
[00:46:00.550]And it includes modules on the history of the university
[00:46:03.530]and not just the rah rah go terrapins good history,
[00:46:06.430]but the bad history, the history of segregation,
[00:46:09.400]more recent history of a murder that occurred on our campus.
[00:46:13.690]So we're really delving into some of the realities
[00:46:17.160]of what it is to be here at Maryland
[00:46:19.570]so that people can then situate themselves
[00:46:22.310]within an inclusion framework.
[00:46:24.630]There are exercises to determine what you can do
[00:46:27.550]to become more inclusive.
[00:46:29.730]And the onboarding for everyone who enters the university
[00:46:34.490]is just the first portal,
[00:46:36.310]it's the first door that people go through
[00:46:39.050]because from there, the colleges are developing
[00:46:42.040]their own forms of onboarding and inclusion,
[00:46:45.310]because we know that there are different conversations
[00:46:48.060]that need to be had within different disciplines.
[00:46:50.610]And Amer, you're absolutely right.
[00:46:52.290]This has to be located within the pedagogy, ultimately,
[00:46:55.840]and that's where we are pushing this.
[00:46:57.950]How can the colleges actually inculcate this
[00:47:01.230]into what they're teaching?
[00:47:03.050]And again, it's relatively new, we're just starting.
[00:47:06.410]There were incentives given,
[00:47:07.760]colleges could apply for funds to do further development
[00:47:11.180]of their own TerrapinSTRONG onboarding.
[00:47:13.590]And I think it's going to have a slow
[00:47:16.770]but continuous impact on our campus.
[00:47:19.750]And really lead us toward more inclusive
[00:47:22.810]and equitable models, both across the university,
[00:47:26.150]as well as within the colleges and the academic units.
[00:47:30.400]No, that's great.
[00:47:31.233]Thank you so much.
[00:47:32.310]And at this time, we're going to open it for questions.
[00:47:35.130]If there are either questions in the room
[00:47:37.420]or questions that are online,
[00:47:40.100]Jerri Harner is going to be helping
[00:47:42.210]to manage this process for us.
[00:47:44.700]And just by the way,
[00:47:46.040]one of the people that Dr. Dodge mentioned was John Powell.
[00:47:49.260]If you've not had a chance,
[00:47:50.740]Mayor Baird actually invited John Powell
[00:47:53.700]to a city conversation in Lincoln.
[00:47:56.050]He was joined by Dr. Jeannette Jones
[00:47:58.820]as well as Professor Anna Shavers.
[00:48:00.980]A really great conversation about inclusion and belonging.
[00:48:04.420]So if you've not seen that, I think it's on YouTube.
[00:48:06.820]And so just a really another framework
[00:48:10.080]that can really inform your practice.
[00:48:11.560]So with that, I think we have a question online.
[00:48:15.719]Yes. We have a question online.
[00:48:17.490]Thank you all for your incredibly powerful words
[00:48:20.610]you've shared here today.
[00:48:22.460]Can you please, Dr. Davis-White Eyes repeat
[00:48:25.420]what LACE stands for?
[00:48:30.410]Yes. I most certainly can.
[00:48:32.950]LACE, L-A-C-E is an acronym
[00:48:37.090]for love, authenticity, courage and empathy.
[00:48:43.110]And this is a model at the University of Oregon,
[00:48:46.290]my good colleague, Dr. Yvette Alex-Assensoh
[00:48:49.570]who's the vice president
[00:48:50.910]for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion there, has used that,
[00:48:54.210]and I always say, to sort of set the table, if you will,
[00:48:57.700]for the campus to understand what it is going to take
[00:49:03.340]to advance any DEI initiatives on campus.
[00:49:07.950]And it's really going to take building that culture
[00:49:09.640]as Antonio spoke to, and it starts there.
[00:49:13.890]It really starts there.
[00:49:15.690]And I just wanted to give a plug for Targeted Universalism.
[00:49:19.350]That is also Dr. John Powell.
[00:49:21.510]So definitely.
[00:49:24.711](laughs) Wonderful.
[00:49:25.670]Thank you.
[00:49:26.940]Our next question.
[00:49:28.680]How can educational institutions help shape local,
[00:49:33.440]state and federal policies for DEI
[00:49:37.580]without getting into partisan rhetoric?
[00:49:42.770]Wow, that's a really great question. (laughs)
[00:49:46.600]Which colleague wants-
[00:49:47.520]I'll- To take this one?
[00:49:49.323](laughs) I know this is treacherous waters,
[00:49:51.861](Dr. Barker laughs) but I do want
[00:49:52.750]to step into this because I do strongly feel
[00:49:54.960]like we've over conflated
[00:49:57.680]this work with right/left US politics,
[00:50:06.540]Enfranchisement is, and once humanity isn't,
[00:50:13.310]should not be up for political debate.
[00:50:17.040]I think that that is the foundation of us as human beings
[00:50:22.570]understanding who we are in relationship to one another,
[00:50:25.310]and then certainly in the educational environment
[00:50:27.880]for us to be able to benefit.
[00:50:31.070]And again, I go back to the AAC
[00:50:32.730]and use articulating higher education
[00:50:37.540]as a public good for advancing of the democratic enterprise.
[00:50:42.467]And that that is not a political left or right component.
[00:50:46.900]And they've been very clear that Inclusive Excellence
[00:50:49.290]is an integral pillar of our ability
[00:50:51.910]to advance higher education as a public good.
[00:50:57.080]And so, should we have robust debate over how we get there?
[00:51:03.500]Absolutely, in many ways, (computer chimes)
[00:51:06.020]that's the purpose of the public square
[00:51:09.590]and the role of academic engagement
[00:51:13.800]in the higher educational setting,
[00:51:15.470]but I think the over conflation of it,
[00:51:18.900]that you have to have a specific set of politics
[00:51:22.840]and a certain specific set of answers.
[00:51:25.520]Because the reality is that we're trying
[00:51:28.440]to co-create something that has never existed
[00:51:31.140]before in human history.
[00:51:32.630]We've never had this many kinds of people
[00:51:35.300]living together in community equitably and justly
[00:51:39.510]in the history of human beings.
[00:51:41.720]So the idea that any of us has the right answer exactly.
[00:51:46.630]And so instead it's about the process
[00:51:48.710]and how do we commit ourselves to that process?
[00:51:52.250]Fr me, it's about working towards what Dr. King
[00:51:54.940]refers to as Beloved Community,
[00:51:57.760]and really just understanding that we have to be
[00:52:01.790]willing to learn, to grow, to make mistakes along the way.
[00:52:07.310]How do we heal from the mistakes that are made
[00:52:09.590]from the process?
[00:52:10.423]So I encourage us to be thinking
[00:52:11.970]about restorative approaches to how we deal with harm,
[00:52:15.760]because it's inevitable.
[00:52:18.060]But then how do we find a way to go forward?
[00:52:21.800]And then can we look to examples in the world,
[00:52:25.620]like in Rwanda, like in South Africa,
[00:52:28.420]the truth and reconciliation
[00:52:29.890]and other places on the planet in which human beings
[00:52:32.910]have found ways to be able to move
[00:52:35.770]through incredibly horrific realities
[00:52:38.630]that human beings have subjected one another to?
[00:52:41.790]Then one kind of corollary to this
[00:52:43.580]is that I think we really have to start
[00:52:46.320]connecting the work of DEI in higher education
[00:52:49.160]to conversations around global education.
[00:52:53.449]And when we make references to decolonization,
[00:52:55.500]that we understand that that's a global phenomenon
[00:52:57.670]that has occurred.
[00:53:00.840]And when we look at the pandemic and the inequities
[00:53:04.410]that for us to only look at the inequities
[00:53:06.430]in the United States, while we're living on a planet
[00:53:09.250]in which some people have access to the vaccine,
[00:53:11.340]no matter how people feel about it,
[00:53:13.560]where at other parts of the planet,
[00:53:15.370]people do not have access to that.
[00:53:18.150]We have to be able to get to that,
[00:53:20.097]let's get back to the both-and.
[00:53:22.817]We have to be able to hold both of those things
[00:53:25.250]in order for us to be able to confront
[00:53:26.930]the tremendous challenges that we face
[00:53:28.870]on our planet right now.
[00:53:30.250]And if we put artificial boundaries
[00:53:32.310]around how we're willing to look
[00:53:33.710]at equity and inclusion issues,
[00:53:37.610]then we automatically restrict our ability
[00:53:40.480]to be able to see the relationship and connections
[00:53:42.410]between these issues in our world today.
[00:53:47.410]Well said.
[00:53:48.280]I wanted to do (man mumbles)
[00:53:49.130]a quick check-in if there's a question
[00:53:51.850]from the live audience.
[00:53:56.329]A question from the live audience?
[00:54:02.020]Okay.
[00:54:05.000]The next online question.
[00:54:07.780]Equity itself is still a very contested term.
[00:54:12.350]Justice, even more so, especially when coupled with social.
[00:54:16.970]Does this play into your planning on introducing justice
[00:54:20.390]into your frameworks?
[00:54:25.610]So maybe I'll take a stab at that.
[00:54:30.670]I think one of my colleagues said it earlier,
[00:54:32.370]there are many on-ramps onto this journey that we're on,
[00:54:35.450]and if we see it as that as opposed to a destination,
[00:54:38.040]that somehow you get to a level of wokeness
[00:54:40.720]and therefore you're there.
[00:54:44.940]I think it was Amer who said that we all need
[00:54:47.460]to consistently do the work.
[00:54:50.370]So for me, I use this concept that Dolly Chugh coined,
[00:54:56.270]she's an NYU psychologist.
[00:54:58.140]She talks about being good-ish.
[00:55:00.230]And a lot of the reason why we don't change
[00:55:03.780]is because we all think of ourselves as good people.
[00:55:07.660]Serial killers, Nazis.
[00:55:09.510]They all think of themselves as good people.
[00:55:11.830]So if you start with words that trigger
[00:55:17.170]sort of a sense of that somehow you're judging,
[00:55:21.230]and some of us are guilty of coming at people
[00:55:24.410]in a really incredibly hard way
[00:55:26.430]that keep them from getting on to those on-ramps,
[00:55:29.300]that if you use, like, I use...
[00:55:30.980]One of the actual really practical tools that I use
[00:55:34.350]is the Intercultural Development Continuum.
[00:55:37.090]It's called the IDI.
[00:55:38.660]And it shows you. It's a self-assessment.
[00:55:40.890]It's looking in the mirror
[00:55:41.920]and it gives you a real self-assessment.
[00:55:44.100]It's research-based, so you can argue
[00:55:45.590]with the 150 PhD documents that have been
[00:55:49.640]sort of created around it.
[00:55:50.950]And it tells you where you are on the journey.
[00:55:52.460]Whether you're in denial, whether you're in polarization,
[00:55:54.780]whether you're in universalism.
[00:55:56.710]Whether you're in acceptance
[00:55:57.760]or whether you're in adaptation..
[00:55:59.420]And even if you get there to adaptation,
[00:56:01.500]you still have to do a lot more work.
[00:56:03.760]So this concept of goodish gets us away from the,
[00:56:06.847]"Are you calling me a racist?
[00:56:08.470]Are you calling me a homophobe?
[00:56:09.960]Are you calling me a sexist?"
[00:56:12.230]And it says we all have work to do.
[00:56:14.060]So if you can be good-ish
[00:56:15.970]and understand that we are all fallible
[00:56:18.350]now that gives you an entryway into it.
[00:56:20.850]That I think is a powerful way
[00:56:23.230]to sort of to get people to stop...
[00:56:25.570]Because part of the issue that we have
[00:56:27.150]is we keep talking to the same people
[00:56:29.180]over and over again.
[00:56:30.630]The same 10%.
[00:56:32.837]The 10% that we can't, they're just gonna be who they are,
[00:56:36.060]the world is flat,
[00:56:37.370]and they're just gonna sail off the edge.
[00:56:39.500]And then there's the 80% that are bystanders
[00:56:42.070]and they don't want to get caught in the crossfire.
[00:56:44.140]So allowing them an on-ramp and an understanding that,
[00:56:47.237]"Listen, we've been..."
[00:56:48.107]Again, these are feudal systems that we work in,
[00:56:50.740]they don't change.
[00:56:52.300]So they've been around for hundreds of years,
[00:56:54.470]so expectation that you're gonna hire somebody,
[00:56:57.840]or you're gonna have a strategy,
[00:56:58.960]and all of a sudden, within three to five years,
[00:57:01.500]you're gonna change the organization is ludicrous.
[00:57:05.080]So a lot of it, when I talk to my DEI colleagues,
[00:57:09.090]what we sometimes forget about is we have righteous work,
[00:57:12.800]but if you don't understand organizational change,
[00:57:15.400]if you haven't studied Ed Shine
[00:57:18.255]Or Peter Senge was a little bit more on the woo woo side
[00:57:21.560]or if you don't understand Victor Ray's work
[00:57:23.870]around the racialized organization
[00:57:25.890]and how you have to focus yourself
[00:57:28.330]on what you can do (computer chimes)
[00:57:29.320]at the mezzo level and at the individual level,
[00:57:31.480]like some of my colleagues have said,
[00:57:33.300]then you're always gonna go into defeatism.
[00:57:35.100]And then you're always gonna sort of make an excuse
[00:57:37.500]for why you can't change.
[00:57:41.840]Great response.
[00:57:42.673]And just for those who are not familiar
[00:57:44.540]with the Intercultural Development Inventory,
[00:57:46.330]we have a number of individuals who are certified
[00:57:49.490]to be able to provide that.
[00:57:50.730]So if you are interested,
[00:57:51.580]you can always go to our website
[00:57:53.350]and learn more about how to request someone
[00:57:55.580]to engage you or your team in the IDI.
[00:58:00.300]We have time for one more question.
[00:58:05.900]I wonder if any of the panelists
[00:58:08.040]could talk about constructive, appropriate,
[00:58:12.090]supportive roles for historically and predominantly
[00:58:15.150]white institutions like ours
[00:58:17.500]and efforts like truth, racial healing and transformation,
[00:58:22.240]campus histories around slavery
[00:58:24.470]or Indian school reconciliation projects?
[00:58:35.500]Any of our panelists (laughs) want to?
[00:58:38.860]Well, I'll jump in.
[00:58:40.120]Maybe I'll break the ice and hopefully others will jump in.
[00:58:43.240]First of all, this is a really important question,
[00:58:46.040]especially if you're at a PWI,
[00:58:49.099]and it's a difficult one to approach
[00:58:53.960]because no matter what level of education
[00:58:58.290]you try to engage in on your campus,
[00:59:00.740]there is a long history that you're working against
[00:59:03.660](computer chimes) to change the narrative.
[00:59:06.840]This doesn't mean when we say to change the narrative
[00:59:09.180]to erase history.
[00:59:10.800]When we change the narrative,
[00:59:12.180]it's about bringing up the full, rich, complex,
[00:59:16.630]yes, difficult history that our country has
[00:59:20.520]and that our institutions have.
[00:59:22.450]And so this is really one of the important first steps,
[00:59:26.840]honestly, that a PWI can undertake.
[00:59:30.170]So, my previous institution (computer chimes)
[00:59:34.860]was Oregon State University, a land-grant institution.
[00:59:37.820]And I think you heard it here about how important
[00:59:41.169]that particular aspect is for a land grant,
[00:59:45.200]because we know the history of land
[00:59:47.530]in the United States and in Canada.
[00:59:50.410]We know that there is an obligation.
[00:59:52.980]We also know that we are on an indigenous land
[00:59:56.060]and that education is a treaty right.
[01:00:00.100]So there's a lot of complex layers
[01:00:02.890]that need to be unpacked there.
[01:00:05.050]And so for us at Oregon State University,
[01:00:09.040]we, again, going to the word good-ish, I mean,
[01:00:12.380]I don't think it was perfect.
[01:00:13.440]We didn't quite arrive there at Wokeville,
[01:00:15.720]but we were working towards that
[01:00:18.150]by re-examining our history,
[01:00:20.890]by engaging the whole community in that conversation.
[01:00:24.360]That meant faculty, staff, students, and community members,
[01:00:29.880]about the historical legacy of Oregon State University,
[01:00:33.150]about our building names.
[01:00:34.840]Many of your campuses probably engaged
[01:00:37.070]in that exercise as well,
[01:00:39.100]which brought up a lot of history
[01:00:40.870]that some people knew, many did not.
[01:00:43.540]Our work with tribal communities.
[01:00:46.550]Really recognizing that tribal communities
[01:00:49.280]are more than that.
[01:00:50.660]That they are, in fact, nations.
[01:00:53.030]Centering sovereignty
[01:00:55.230]and government-to-government relationships
[01:00:57.920]is another way towards truth, because that's a truth,
[01:01:01.590]that's not an opinion, that's a fact, it's a truth,
[01:01:05.710]towards understanding what needs to be healed.
[01:01:09.941](computer chimes)
[01:01:10.774]We talked about reconciliation
[01:01:13.120]and we had some members of our community who said,
[01:01:15.577]"Some of these things can't be reconciled.
[01:01:18.650]The wounds, the trauma are still ongoing."
[01:01:21.210]We see this in the boarding school conversations today.
[01:01:24.270]However, everyone agreed that working towards that
[01:01:29.210]was worth the effort and certainly a noble cause.
[01:01:33.350]And continuing dialogue and collaboration
[01:01:36.590]and co-creation of what some of these opportunities
[01:01:41.560]might yield for us.
[01:01:42.760]Everything from educational opportunities
[01:01:45.200]to research opportunities,
[01:01:46.530]but they are done in partnership with reciprocity
[01:01:50.930]and co-creation and cogeneration at the center.
[01:01:55.120]And I will have to say for a land-grant university,
[01:01:58.690]that's a huge shift.
[01:02:00.610]And we're not at the promised land yet,
[01:02:03.639](Dr. Barker laughs) we have not arrived,
[01:02:05.510]but we are on that journey together.
[01:02:10.260]Thank you, Allison.
[01:02:11.093]I would just add to that, that I think...
[01:02:12.657]Again, I would encourage you, if you are able to attend
[01:02:15.520]tomorrow's CEO Action session.
[01:02:17.860]You will have a chance to hear from our co-leaders
[01:02:19.910]who have been engaged on our journey
[01:02:22.370]towards anti-racism and racial equity.
[01:02:24.450]And part of one of their conversations
[01:02:26.980]has been around really understanding the history.
[01:02:29.620]Only a few months ago, the Omaha World-Herald announced
[01:02:32.340]a partnership with UNL around looking
[01:02:35.380]at the history of the land and the history of race
[01:02:39.280]in Nebraska in particular,
[01:02:40.680]and that being a partnership with the university.
[01:02:42.400]And so our journey co-leaders have been very engaged
[01:02:47.380]at the forefront of really developing this framework.
[01:02:52.650]And so again, I hope that you have a chance
[01:02:54.590]to attend tomorrow at noon
[01:02:56.980]and be able to hear from them directly
[01:02:58.880]on what that work has looked like.
[01:03:00.620]I think it connects very well to this ideal
[01:03:02.670]about how do we get at truth and reconciliation?
[01:03:05.440]Absolutely.
[01:03:06.320]Well, please join me in thanking our panelists today.
[01:03:10.430](audience applauds) This was just wonderful.
[01:03:14.520]I have taken copious notes and hopefully you have as well.
[01:03:19.080]Please know that our office will be following up
[01:03:21.990]with everyone with additional resources
[01:03:25.720]in both the announcements
[01:03:26.940]that were shared earlier by Dr. Friday,
[01:03:28.660]but also other resources that may be of interest to you.
[01:03:32.170]You're always able to find us online at diversity.unl.edu.
[01:03:36.870]You can also contact us directly at diversity@unl.edu,
[01:03:41.930]and absolutely find us on social media as well.
[01:03:45.040]I have just, again, thoroughly enjoyed
[01:03:46.970]being able to connect with my colleagues
[01:03:49.600]and certainly connect with all of you.
[01:03:52.010]And so, as always, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion
[01:03:54.910]are always here to be supportive
[01:03:56.950]and to walk with you on this journey.
[01:03:59.690]Everyone, please enjoy the rest of your day
[01:04:01.610]and have a great rest of your week.

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

2021 State of Diversity Panel

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments