-: So, thank you all so much again for joining us.
We are now entering in our second half
of State of Diversity 2021,
and I would like to now introduce our panelists.
The session will be led by our Vice Chancellor
in a conversation on diversity,
equity, inclusion across universities,
and especially ways that it can help to shape
the work that we do here at Nebraska.
But before I begin, I will say that we will have
a session or a section here where we will have
an opening for people in our audience
that's here with us live,
but also if you're with us virtually to submit questions
via the chat feature.
Just a note, we may not be able to get
to all of your questions.
We try to frame these in a way
that we solicit it beforehand.
We'll try our best to get to questions,
but we are trying to allocate some time today
so we can get to some of the panelists' questions
for our audience as well.
So with that being said, let me introduce our panelists.
So we have with us today four leaders
across universities across the nation.
Our first panelist is Dr. Amer Ahmed.
He currently serves as Vice Provost
for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Faculty
in the Higher Education and Student Affairs Administration
program in the College of Education and Social Services
at the University of Vermont.
He has keynoted prominent conferences,
including the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity,
also known as NCORE, White Privilege Conference
and the Society for Intercultural Education,
SIETAR Conference.
Our next panelist, Dr. Allison Davis-White Eyes,
currently serves as the Vice-President
of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
as well as Associate Faculty in Leadership Studies
at Fielding Graduate University.
Dr. Davis-White Eyes has over 30 years
of higher education experience that includes
admissions, academic advising, international education
and indigenous sovereignty.
Excuse me.
Our next panelist, Dr. Georgina Dodge,
was appointed the Inaugural Vice President
for Diversity and Inclusion
at the University of Maryland in June, 2019.
Her teaching has included courses
in multi-racial and women's literatures,
and she later became the Director
of the Department of African American
and African Studies Community Extension Center.
Our final panelist is Antonio Farias.
He serves as the Vice Chancellor
for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,
responsible for driving and developing initiatives
that build on and advance CU Denver's
commitment to equity and justice.
Vice Chancellor Farias joined CU Denver
from the University of Florida,
where he served as its Inaugural Chief Diversity Officer
and Senior Advisor to the President.
Again, leading this discussion will be
our Vice Chancellor, Marco Barker.
Thank you.
-: So first let me offer my warm regards
to those of you who have stayed on
for our State of Diversity,
and then for those of you who are just joining us
for this portion of the segment
or the segment of the experience,
please welcome on my behalf of being here today.
I am just so thrilled to be able to be joining my colleagues
on the conversation.
We've had a chance to talk prior to today
and had a chance to relive and reflect
on what a year we've had.
This particular State of Diversity conversation,
as I was thinking about what might be the most salient
for our conversation today,
I thought about what our past year has looked like
and having this particular focus,
this notion of equity sort of stood out for me
and particularly how there is now greater attention
on racial equity.
And if we think about racial equity
and how that might be able to lead to inclusive practices,
that can absolutely address other forms
of inequity and oppression.
And so for today's panel,
we're gonna be talking about equity
and sort of expounding on that.
As Dr. Friday had mentioned,
we hope that you are formulating questions
for our esteemed panel.
And I know that I appreciate
their perspective and expertise,
and I know that you will as well.
So hello, colleagues, how are you doing?
-: Good morning. -: Good morning, Dr. Barker.
-: How are you doing? -: Oh, hi.
Yes, you're in Lincoln. (all laugh)
I hate that you're not here in person,
but we know that we are having to be cautious.
And so I'm glad that everyone's doing
fine this afternoon.
So we're gonna dive right in.
So I suspect like many of you at UNL,
we began utilizing an Inclusive Excellence Framework
when we started thinking about how we do this work
typically called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
And we thought about Inclusive Excellence
as a way to really create an inclusive
and equitable workplace learning environment
and living place for our students.
I'm very curious,
and you can share what frameworks you are using
at your institutions.
And then how has your framework shifted?
Again, I mentioned before last year
with this greater call for racial equity,
we started thinking more about,
does the Inclusive Excellence Framework work for us
and how might it look different?
So I'm just very curious about your frameworks
and have they evolved?
Have they shifted?
Are they re-imagined?
And maybe we'll start with Georgina.
-: Thank you.
First, let me say it is a pleasure to be here
with all of you.
I'm delighted that you were able to join us today.
And I am coming to you from the University of Maryland Park,
University of Maryland College Park,
let me say that correctly,
which is located on the ancestral lands
of the Piscataway people
as well as the site of a former plantation.
So equity is a huge word.
It's a huge word. (laughs)
And I don't want to pretend that we're all using
the same vocabulary.
So I do want to make a brief distinction
between the concept of equity and equality.
And many of you have probably seen
what is a well-known graphic that shows
the three people looking over the fence at the baseball game
and being given equal boxes that allow a couple of them
to see over the fence,
but the one who has the least height
is not able to see over the fence.
So equity is giving people what they need
in order to succeed.
And that's an important difference from equality
which is giving everyone equal treatment.
So I just wanted to make that distinction
to ensure we're on the same page from the outset.
At the University of Maryland,
we have been using a similar framework
of Inclusive Excellence.
And one of the shifts that we are seeing happen
is more of an emphasis on inclusion.
We're realizing how important it is
for people to feel included.
And there is so much research indicating
that feeling excluded actually has physical impact
on individuals and communities that can cause some,
a great deal of neurological harm.
And so we're really focusing on developing programs
(computer chimes) that focus on inclusion,
and I can talk more about one of those later.
But another thing that we have seen shifted
after everything we've gone through,
through COVID, through anti-racism movements,
that have been ongoing for many, many years,
I don't want to pretend that they just started last summer,
Goodness knows, is this emphasis on,
even as we are focusing on EDI,
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion,
more of a focus on what's being referred to as JEDI.
Which is justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.
And I think that justice is a somewhat tricky word.
I'm not going to define it
because I think that it holds different meaning
for different peoples and communities.
But I think it's an important concept
that we need to embrace,
even as we're looking at how we can strive toward equity.
And I also just want to add in conclusion here
that equity is tricky.
Equity is tricky.
When we actually talk about giving each individual
or community what is needed for success,
that really calls into some question
how assets are distributed.
And we know that can be very challenging
because what that is calling for is change.
And Dr. Barker, I love it when you talked earlier
about moving the bar,
and how do we do the work differently?
I think that's a critically important question.
How do we do the work differently?
And to add to that question,
how do we do it differently in the face
of resistance to change?
-: No, that's great, Georgina.
I'm really curious, Amer, you are relatively new to Vermont,
so I'm very interested in sort of what was
the framework that was there,
I guess when you got there?
Have you introduced something different,
and has that even changed?
-: Yeah. Thank you.
And I want to acknowledge that the University of Vermont
is on the ancestral land of the Abenaki people
and we seek to be good stewards of the land
and respect the Abenaki peoples stewardship of the land.
An Inclusive Excellence Framework has been used
at University of Vermont prior to my arrival.
I think the major challenge has been
to systemically engage an Inclusive Excellence Framework
in which there's broad buy-in in terms
of implementation of strategic planning.
And so when I, shortly before I came,
they completed the prior cycle of planning.
And when I reviewed the plans of various areas
of the institution, they were all over the map.
Some were data-driven, some were not.
And the last Campus Climate Survey was conducted
after the start of that plan,
and the prior time it was conducted had not been
for many, many years prior to that.
So the last plan was not particularly baselined
in a data-driven manner.
And so that's something that we are embarking on now
as we're up for our three-year cycle
and we're up for another five-year cycle
of Inclusive Excellence and strategic planning.
And so we want those,
we want that baseline connected
to that over a longitudinal data
that we want to collect over time,
to be able to track progress as you seem to be doing
at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
But I do think that it's important to contextualize
as a person who worked at University of Michigan
for seven years.
I'm acutely aware of how we got from diversity
to talking about inclusion
and increasingly around equity and now justice.
Which is that serving in an institution
that went to defend affirmative action
and race-conscious admissions policies at the Supreme Court,
when I began to understand the rationale
for the defense of those policies by University of Michigan
at the Supreme Court,
they talked about the educational benefit
for all around diversity.
And it connoted the sense that there,
the assumption of inclusion, right?
That compositional diversity in of itself
creates academic excellence.
And we know that's not the case,
because if you have a group of diverse individuals
of all different kinds of backgrounds in the classroom,
if you don't have an equitable
and inclusive background environment,
you can't harness the diversity of those identities
and experiences and backgrounds
as a resource for learning in a meaningful way,
because there's all sorts of historical and climate factors
that silence different voices and perspectives
and sends the implicit message that certain perspectives
and background are valued and some are not.
And so this journey to talking about Inclusive Excellence,
as necessary for us to be able to get that
to academic excellence, I think is incredibly important.
And then we have increasingly in our work understood
that you really can't have inclusion without equity.
And then the piece around justice, I think,
speaks to the historical (computer chimes)
base systems of inequity that shape and influence
and impact our climate.
And if we go back to that University of Michigan case
around the case for diversity,
they specifically did not make
the historical argument around these pieces
because they thought they were going to lose
at the Supreme Court if they made that argument.
And so we have to be able to understand
why these terms exist and why they matter
and what happens when we think about certain aspects
of thinking about this work,
and not some other aspects of this work
and the implications of that.
-: Yeah. That's really interesting, Amer.
As you're talking about, and both of you and Georgina
talked about this notion of justice.
And justice is now becoming another term
that is getting connected
to equity, diversity and inclusion.
So how do we make sense out of all of that?
I'm really curious maybe from Allison,
can you share a little bit about...
So I'm gonna kind of move us from the...
Both of you are on the East Coast order to the West Coast.
So Allison, you spent some time in Oregon
and we know that context matters.
So very curious about the framework
and also even more curious about,
are there ways that you've connected justice and equity
in the work happening there?
-: This is a fantastic question.
So thank you.
And I'm dialing in right now from the homelands
of the Chumash people.
Fielding Graduate University is a distributed
learning model, but the headquarters are in Santa Barbara.
So I would just want to acknowledge the Chumash
who have given us this opportunity
to have this wonderful conversation that we're having today.
So as regards frameworks,
and especially when we're talking about equity,
I really cannot add too much more than my colleagues have
on this topic.
What I will say, though, about frameworks,
and you're right, Dr. Barker, context matters.
And so I think we all understand that no one framework
can just be placed over and transposed
upon another community or institution.
Frameworks are really dependent
upon the culture of your institution.
And as you probably all know,
there is no one size fits all framework
that can be transferred from one institution to the other.
One of the things that I will say,
having had the Oregon experience,
which very much was working towards Inclusive Excellence
and I think really came up with some working models
to address that and to address some of the equity issues,
was this challenge that you speak to around justice.
Justice for whom?
And justice determined by whom?
For what purpose and to what end?
And I think that's going to be a continuous
moving target throughout our country,
because as we all know, as we are standing presently,
the landscape shifts under our feet so ever slightly.
I think Dr. Ahmed talked about the court.
So I know that recently, Dr. Emerson Sykes
was talking about Senate Bill 1775 in the state of Oklahoma.
So we have some interesting legal and policy challenges here
and all of these sort of connect around this term justice.
So what we have been doing both Edward and State University,
and I believe at Fielding.
I'm new, I've been there 18 days,
all of 18 days. (Dr. Barker laughs)
I think I pass you up Dr. Ahmed on being new.
But I think that it's going to take
a series of conversations around what exactly do
these terms mean.
And I think, Dr. Dodge, you said something very interesting,
is people bring their lens, their lived experience
and their own interpretation of these terms.
That's true.
But at the end of the day,
we are going to have to come to some general agreement
on what these terms mean.
And I believe that justice, which is a very contested term,
is going to be one of those conversations.
So, as I think about frameworks and as I think about DEI,
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,
and let's add justice because you're absolutely right,
that is the overarching umbrella here,
I have found that the conversations
that I am having currently in my new institution
are really shifting towards justice,
anti-racist, anti-oppressive and decolonial frameworks.
And this is going to be a very interesting conversation.
This is something that institutions will need
to do some deeper dives and deeper inquiries on.
-: Yeah, absolutely.
As you were talking, Allison,
I was thinking about just this notion about,
what are the right terms?
Are there particular terms?
Are we defining them all the same?
So I'm curious, Antonio, as we...
So we've heard a number of foci around justice,
decolonization, anti-oppressive frameworks,
anti-racist frameworks.
I'm curious, what are some of the terms
or focus that are emerging at your institution?
And then how are you ensuring that your entire university
understands those definitions?
-: Thank you. Great question.
And thank you colleagues for setting a great platform
and also to all our colleagues out in,
at the University of Nebraska.
And I send you a chili welcome (Dr. Barker laughs)
and good morning from the Mile High City at CU Denver,
which also resides on the historical lands
of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Ute people.
And more recently, because this is a new university.
We are an urban serving university that was created in 1953.
We also sit on the displaced Auraria Campus
or Auraria neighborhood,
which was predominantly a Latinex community,
which we're in dialogue right now about.
I really appreciate it.
I heard the land acknowledgement.
I thought it was incredibly powerful.
And I think all of us as land-grant universities
have a debt to pay.
I know the R word doesn't get used a lot,
but reparations right across all our communities
is something that we have to really deal with.
To answer the specificity of your question,
we also use the Inclusive Excellence model
here at CU Denver.
And we're using it in ways, we're using multiple models.
And again, I think that's the challenge that we all have.
And I see it as nesting dolls.
There isn't one model, there isn't one size that fits all.
The reality is that our universities are very complex.
They're all distributed networks.
And if you come in and you say,
and I've done this before at previous institutions,
where I've said, "Hey, Inclusive Excellence.
We've got this great body of real scholarship behind it.
Let's go with this model,"
and the faculty have vomited all over it.
And why is that? Because it was imposed.
Lessons learned in my 17 years as a chief diversity officer,
that when you, as an administrator, try to impose something,
no good deed goes unpunished.
So this goes back to the concept of shared governance,
which is what I really appreciate
about what Nebraska is doing,
bringing all of your shared governance entities together
into this process.
So for us, Inclusive Excellence has come out of,
organically out of various colleges and schools.
Particularly around what seated it
was the HHMI Inclusive Excellence Grant
that we've now had for nine years.
And that's created some really powerful changes.
As one specific example is we now have
an Inclusive Pedagogy Academy that about 70%
of our biology faculty have gone through.
Within five years, we have dropped the DWF numbers by 50%.
Now, if you were to tell faculty
that they needed to do this,
they would absolutely reject it.
Why did this work?
It was because it was faculty-led, faculty-funded,
and we gave it enough sort of nurturing water,
if you will, in order for it to grow.
What we're in discussions right now is
how do we scale that up?
Right now, we're using a framework
that doesn't exist right now.
And it's called becoming an equity-serving institution.
And what does that mean?
Lots of people, if you Google equity-serving institution,
you're not gonna find any.
And part of this is because when I arrived here,
we were in this push to become an HSI and an AANAPISI.
Hispanic-Serving Institution
and an Asian American and Native American
Pacific Islander-Serving Institution.
Now if you know anything about any
of these sort of terms,
you know that most HSIs and AANAPISIs,
what they do is they get the numbers,
and that's demography, that's luck.
That just happens to be where you're situated,
not necessarily strategic.
And then what we're doing is
where we're just running numbers.
We're saying we're 25% Hispanic,
therefore we must be an HSI.
That's not true.
That just means that we're enrolling humans.
We're not getting them out.
Well, I love your use of data
actually show progression.
And again, sometimes our communities are impatient
with that progression,
but understanding we do that our structures are futile,
literally futile, change is going to take time.
And what I did appreciate about what you said earlier
was that we need to focus on the culture
and not on the individual, which is really powerful.
CDOs do not change organizations.
Chancellors do not change organizations.
You change the culture, you change everything else.
So for us, this concept of an equity-serving institution,
what it means is not that we're serving students,
it means we're serving our equity,
the concept, the rubric of what is equity.
So that means that we're focused on the structural.
That means we're taking everything apart right now.
So why is that going to work?
It's gonna work because right now it's organically coming
from the bottom, if you will,
and it's also organically coming from the top.
And what I mean by the top,
it's not just our strategy.
It's also the resources.
That is the most powerful thing that I'm seeing
here at CU Denver.
It's not just that we have great words.
All of us have great strategies,
but if your CFO is not saying we're going to reallocate
and reimagine how every dollar is spent
through an equity lens and an equity mindset,
that's a mind shift.
That gets us to the concept of culture.
So that's where we're moving right now is towards, again,
this HSI, ESI, AANAPISI.
But on those two, you can think of those
as two of the horses that are driving the larger cart,
which is the equity-serving institution.
And on those, we're focusing now on the student
and the faculty and staff experience,
but we're focusing it on this concept of service.
And that I think is the biggest thing
for us to sort of consider, is how may we serve?
That is a powerful thing for an educator to say.
How may we serve you, as opposed to you're here
to do something for us.
And that's an ethos.
So at the end of the day, I used to be in the military.
I worked for a military academy.
What I learned throughout this process
is that character matters.
And if this is about character,
then it's embedded in the culture.
If it's not about character, then it's a flavor of the day.
-: No, that's really great, Antonio.
So this notion of thinking
about what are the type of conversations
that we're having with our colleagues?
What does engagement look like?
So that you can move culture,
that you can also get to outcomes that you're seeking.
So I'm curious maybe from you, Georgina,
what have been some of the conversations
that you're having at your institution
as it pertains to equity?
-: Thank you.
Antonio, as a fellow veteran,
your words are resonating with me.
(Georgina and Antonia laugh)
So I appreciate everything that you said.
I think it's interesting.
And this is a bit of a tangent side note
that often the term service gets derided.
It gets sort of pushed to the side
and people can actually become offended.
I've used the word and had people say,
"Well, I'm not here to serve."
And I just really can't think of any reason
why we're all not.
We're all here to serve.
That's the reason we're put on this planet. (laughs)
So, that really resonated with me.
As we're looking at equity,
one of the things that we're trying to do,
and while I appreciate the term shared governance,
at times it can be a sort of a term
that we fling into the conversation
(laughs) and just to ensure it's there,
but how do we really enact that?
And we're seeing a lot in the national headlines,
particularly from faculty who feel
that there has been a real diminishment
of shared governance.
And so I think that's something that we need
to be attentive to.
We need to ensure that there are spaces
so that everyone's voice is at the table.
And that also includes the voice of students.
And I think that there has to be a balance
between how we address student needs
and how we assess student needs specifically,
but students absolutely have to be part
of this conversation.
And I say that in part,
because I think that for many of my colleagues,
there's a tendency to look at the student experience
through their own lens of experience.
And if the past year or two has taught us anything,
it's that the world has changed.
And as we look at the impact of technology
and specifically social media,
it is a completely different world.
And this not the world that I came of age in,
and I think that's really important.
And so we need our students (computer chimes)
and younger members of our faculty and staff,
for that reason as well, to be part of the conversation,
to inform us about how equity is being defined,
because it is seen differently now
than it may once have been. (computer chimes)
And that's important to keep in mind.
So, we are actually meeting with different student groups.
We are collecting critical issues that each group is facing,
so that we can begin addressing those,
determining whose responsibility it is
within the Administration.
And even if we can't address,
to at least have the conversation,
because so much of what impacts students
also impacts our faculty and staff.
And that's something important we need to keep in mind.
And this is part of the culture shift
that needs to take place, is being in conversation.
There may be some things that we don't feel
that we can change at the present moment,
but we need to at least be aware of that
and have that acknowledgement and accountability.
-: Yeah, absolutely.
So I wanna build on this ideal about, again,
going back to having the right conversations,
having the right framing,
who's engaged in those conversations?
Maybe thinking about the topic of those conversations.
So we know that we find ourselves
in a very interesting time and place,
whether we think about from last year to this year,
how we're still grappling with the pandemic,
how there are still again these calls
for greater racial justice, greater equity,
across a number of minoritized populations,
even thinking about where we're located.
So I think we've talked about context,
and where you're positioned and located also matters.
I think Antonio brought it up really well
and even describing the community
in which the institution is housed.
So thinking about this again,
this notion of time and place,
and especially being in this pandemic
where we are also more intently talking
about racial equity in particular.
So we have both the murders of Black
and Brown folks last year,
we also know that the pandemic brought out
and highlighted a number of other inequities.
Given all of this,
and we've mentioned anti-racism as well,
how do we continue having conversations on racial equity
while also situating, acknowledging
and addressing additional inequities?
So I'm sort of, I'm going to give you
sort of a tease.
I'm sort of getting into intersectionality.
So like, how do we solve all these world problems?
Like, so how do we solve the problem (laughs)
that is so massive?
How do you approach it?
And maybe we'll start with Amer.
-: Thanks, Marco.
And yes, an intersectional lens is critically important.
And one of the things that I'm really trying to instill
at University of Vermont is that we all have work to do.
I think that as much as an anti-racism framework
is incredibly important...
It's what motivated me to come into the work.
And early in my career, I saw a lot of resistance
at predominately white institutions around that approach.
And part of the reason why was
that the unintentional implications of that
when you lead with that, is the assumption
that some people have work to do,
and other people don't have work to do.
And rather, I think what we're really trying
to instill at University of Vermont
is a skills and competency-based approach.
That one are the core skills and competencies
you need to develop to be able to be as effective
as you possibly can with as many types of people
as possible in a number of different contexts.
And what that means is that when you encounter a difference
that you are completely unfamiliar with,
that you've worked on these core skills,
you have reflected on how your position
as related to your privileged identities,
whatever they might be.
For me, it's as a cisgendered male
and able-bodied individual, and I have class privilege.
There's all sorts of privileges that I have,
while also being marginalized around race and religion,
and other ways.
That for us to be able to recognize
that we all have that work to do.
Because sometimes we think
that because we've read white fragility
or because we've read a particular,
we've gotten learned around LGBTQ issues
or whatever it might be,
that those are somehow transferrable
to learning and understanding how to engage
all different kinds of difference.
And what I've been really trying to instill
is that that type of what I refer to
as culture-specific knowledge is supplemental
to those core skills and competencies
that around how we navigate the complexity
of similarities and differences,
including those that we're completely unfamiliar with,
because you can't know everything about everybody.
(laughs) Right?
And so that's gonna start from a place of self-awareness,
of who am I in my identities, my experience,
my backgrounds, my privileges, my marginality,
and cultivating that reference point
to be able to understand who am I in relationship
to what I'm encountering?
To be able to recognize what's making me similar
or different from someone else.
One example, I use in some of my trainings
is that many of us probably know people who have said,
"I judge someone's character by whether or not
they look me in the eye."
Well, if someone comes from a background
in which it would be totally inappropriate
to look at their faculty member or across gender
at someone in the eye, well,
that student who would be subject to that faculty's power
in that classroom would be in a really difficult situation
if that faculty member has now made a judgment and decision
about that person's character based on their eye contact.
So there's a lot of subtle ways in which these inequity
starts to function and operate
when we haven't done the work
around cultivating these skills and competencies
and infusing them into our culture.
And we don't develop a shared understanding
of what are the skills and competencies
we're trying to work on across the institution
to get at that?
And I think the pedagogy component is a huge component.
Antonio, thank you for bringing that up.
I think it's the hardest part of the work
is how do we infuse this in the culture of our faculty?
And I've been fortunate enough to have done
a number of that work.
We're definitely trying to go down that path,
partially through the HHMI grant
at University of Vermont as well.
But I think we have to make that an imperative
in how we go about doing the work going forward.
-: No, that's great.
So I'm really curious, Allison, so from your vantage point,
how do you reconcile of how we address
these many different forms
of marginalization and oppression?
-: Thank you for this question.
And it's one we all grapple with,
no matter what institution we're at.
Here's where I think a clear understanding
and demystification of critical race theory is so important.
And I'm so glad Dr. Dodge is on this call.
It is very sad really to see this theory
be misunderstood and vilified
without people having a clear understanding
of how critical race theory does, in fact,
speak to the conditions every one of us
finds ourselves in regardless of affiliation.
And I think central to the understanding
of CRT is intersectionality.
You've heard it here before,
and it is here, I believe, that we can find the ways
in which multiple identities
and their relative positionality with various systems
and subsystems interact with one another.
It is really important that people understand this
because this actually defines the structures
that we all, each and every one of us, has to move in
and navigate in.
It's fascinating to me on this particular topic,
in my conversations with CRT critics of intersectionality,
I have found out what upsets them
isn't necessarily the theory itself.
What really upsets them is its implications,
its uses and most importantly,
their, the critics, perceived consequences.
And I say perceived because I don't think
that they have a clear understanding
to have a perception that's really quite accurate.
So to your question about,
"Well, how do you get all of these competing voices
in the room heard and needs honored?"
A couple of things.
As I said before, there is a shift happening
and I know it's happening at Fielding where I am,
and it was beginning to happen also
at Oregon State University, of this shift, not away from,
but I would say a shift towards that includes DEI,
a shift towards anti-racist and anti-oppressive ways
of understanding and pedagogies and methodologies.
I think that's real important.
Thank you, Dr. Ahmed.
Pedagogy is so important.
And really having that as sort of a base.
When you move to an anti-racist
or anti-oppressive framework,
what you are doing is you're moving away
from sort of these very binary Manichaean
either-or conversations to the and conversation.
So moving from the Tyranny of OR,
and finding and discovering together the genius of the and.
And that's not easy, that requires difficult conversations.
There's a wonderful framework out of Cal Berkeley
called Targeted Universalism,
where it's really trying to explore what it means
to do equity work from the and, not from the either-or,
and they even call it Equity 2.0,
and it's a very interesting framework.
And it's one worth looking at.
Again, I don't believe,
and we've already agreed on this call,
that there is no one framework that has all the answers
that will fit every institution,
but it is worth investigating and looking at
and pondering and sharing with faculty.
To that point, I want to make a comment,
and this goes back to Antonio's comment about culture.
In order for any of this to work,
the institutional culture has to be one
that's willing to embrace the difficult conversations.
And I was just sharing with colleagues at Fielding
that in order for us to advance our DEI efforts,
we must set the table.
We must set the table with an understanding
of how we as a collective, as a collective community,
are going to engage around these ever-emerging issues
because this will continue to emerge.
One of the frameworks that I really admire
and am hoping to share with colleagues
is a framework from the University of Oregon.
My good colleague, Dr. Yvette Alex-Assensoh
developed a framework that sets the table.
And this framework is called LACE,
love, authenticity, courage, and empathy.
And she uses this framework
as sort of the starting point for institutions
to begin doing the very hard work
of having the difficult conversations,
of moving away from the Tyranny of the OR
to find the genius of the AND,
and figuring it out collectively
how we are going to do that,
how we are going to develop the mindset,
a fluid pliable mindset that is open to newness.
And I'll stop there.
-: No, that was extremely powerful.
So again, this notion of a strategy around LACE
and the setting of the table.
So for our last question, before we open it to the audience,
so for those who are streaming, again,
please, we hope that you are submitting your questions,
and certainly for our live audience,
who'll also have an opportunity to ask questions,
I want to sort of build on this strategy.
So I suspect we have a number of people who are gathered,
who are tuning in, that want some sort of strategies,
some sort of next step, some sort of direction.
And so certainly I think LACE provides one
as we think about that,
but certainly open it to the other panelists.
Are there strategies that you've seen be effective
or that are promising that you've seen,
whether it's at the individual level or across departments
or offices that could be undertaken by our faculty,
staff and students?
And maybe we'll start with Amer.
-: Yeah. So first of all,
I'm just so thankful for what's been shared.
And I just want to echo that the both-and
versus the either-or, I think dualism is our enemy
in this work.
And we can't be in pursuit of academic excellence
or educational excellence from a dualistic frame.
We have to move into the complexity.
So thank you for that.
I'm so thankful for the way that that was framed.
And actually I'm gonna pick up on some
of what I was saying around the faculty work.
So I've been fortunate to done some of that work
with a number of institutions,
but I served in the Institute for Teaching Excellence
and Faculty Development at UMass Amherst,
and one of the things that we did there
that we are planning to do at University of Vermont,
again, utilizing the HHMI grant
is to build capacity amongst faculty who are invested
in being inclusive educators in the classroom
and being a resource for their colleagues,
because the reality is that faculty listen to other faculty
(laughs) more than they listen to anybody else,
or whoever they consider to be their peers.
They're just more likely to be listening
and to engage and approach their colleagues,
who they consider to be their peers.
And so part of how we infuse these skills into our culture
is by having people more localized
as resources for one another, (computer chimes)
and it feel less dictatorial from some external force
or factor for individual faculty,
but rather something that's happening in their culture,
in their environment that they are collectively shifting.
And then part of that is going to be about their time.
To what degree is there any incentive
for them to commit their time to working with one another
on cultivating a culture of inclusion equity
in their best practices?
And again, to what degree do they have the opportunity
to have those conversations with their colleagues
around where they're finding success,
where they're finding challenges,
and then getting around those challenges.
Having the conversations in which it's okay
to not have the answers.
And I think this is particularly challenging
in American higher education,
because all the incentives are around knowing
or the performance of knowing.
There are very few incentives for not knowing.
And we also know that this is typically weaponized
against women, folks of color, (chuckles)
visibly queer folks who are willing to step into the unknown
in their pedagogy with students,
bringing students more into the center
in their pedagogy and so forth,
but then penalized or not centering themselves
in being the knower
and engaging in what Paulo Freire refers
in the banking deposit model of pedagogy.
And so we have to be able to shift our culture
and what we value about what we think
teaching and learning is in a higher educational context.
Is it downloading our content knowledge and expertise,
or are we centering the learning?
And that who we are in the classroom is a resource
for learning to get us to a different place.
And that our pedagogy is a key
unlocking that academic excellence
through inclusion and equity.
But it has to be infused at the grassroots level
as Antonio said, for us to be able to get anywhere on that.
-: Yeah, I can imagine
that our Center for Transformative Teaching
is absolutely tapping their hands
around that particular answer.
And maybe for the last word, Georgina,
are there strategies that our staff or students
might be able to take to move this work ahead?
-: Absolutely because it takes the entire campus.
I mean, that's, I think my colleagues
have said all of this so beautifully.
Even as we talk about coming together
to do this equity work,
it really evolves around the concept of linked fate.
We are all connected, and goodness knows,
you would think that over the past couple of years,
we would really have come to have realized that.
And there was a lot of great research
that has been out there over the years.
John Powell has been doing work on this for years
about this concept of linked fate.
Instead we get pitted against each other
and there's the whole belief that it's a zero-sum game,
that somehow if you gain, I'm going to lose.
And we need to find ways to diminish that sentiment.
Again, it comes back to duality as well.
It's either-or rather than the both-and.
But I think one of the ways
in which we are focusing on this,
and this is still, this is a new program,
and so I just want to throw it into the conversation
because I find it interesting,
is that we're really focusing on inclusion.
And by that, I mean, how can you as a member
of the campus community be inclusive?
And you as an individual, but also you as a unit.
What are you doing?
And so when our new president started on last July,
he launched an initiative called TerrapinSTRONG
where the terrapins where the turtles or the terrapins
and TerrapinSTRONG is about building your inclusion muscles.
And we've rolled it out as an onboarding program,
so that all incoming students, faculty and staff
complete the onboarding to learn what it is to be inclusive,
to learn what it is to be a terrapin.
And it includes modules on the history of the university
and not just the rah rah go terrapins good history,
but the bad history, the history of segregation,
more recent history of a murder that occurred on our campus.
So we're really delving into some of the realities
of what it is to be here at Maryland
so that people can then situate themselves
within an inclusion framework.
There are exercises to determine what you can do
to become more inclusive.
And the onboarding for everyone who enters the university
is just the first portal,
it's the first door that people go through
because from there, the colleges are developing
their own forms of onboarding and inclusion,
because we know that there are different conversations
that need to be had within different disciplines.
And Amer, you're absolutely right.
This has to be located within the pedagogy, ultimately,
and that's where we are pushing this.
How can the colleges actually inculcate this
into what they're teaching?
And again, it's relatively new, we're just starting.
There were incentives given,
colleges could apply for funds to do further development
of their own TerrapinSTRONG onboarding.
And I think it's going to have a slow
but continuous impact on our campus.
And really lead us toward more inclusive
and equitable models, both across the university,
as well as within the colleges and the academic units.
-: No, that's great.
Thank you so much.
And at this time, we're going to open it for questions.
If there are either questions in the room
or questions that are online,
Jerri Harner is going to be helping
to manage this process for us.
And just by the way,
one of the people that Dr. Dodge mentioned was John Powell.
If you've not had a chance,
Mayor Baird actually invited John Powell
to a city conversation in Lincoln.
He was joined by Dr. Jeannette Jones
as well as Professor Anna Shavers.
A really great conversation about inclusion and belonging.
So if you've not seen that, I think it's on YouTube.
And so just a really another framework
that can really inform your practice.
So with that, I think we have a question online.
Jerri: Yes. We have a question online.
Thank you all for your incredibly powerful words
you've shared here today.
Can you please, Dr. Davis-White Eyes repeat
what LACE stands for?
-: Yes. I most certainly can.
LACE, L-A-C-E is an acronym
for love, authenticity, courage and empathy.
And this is a model at the University of Oregon,
my good colleague, Dr. Yvette Alex-Assensoh
who's the vice president
for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion there, has used that,
and I always say, to sort of set the table, if you will,
for the campus to understand what it is going to take
to advance any DEI initiatives on campus.
And it's really going to take building that culture
as Antonio spoke to, and it starts there.
It really starts there.
And I just wanted to give a plug for Targeted Universalism.
That is also Dr. John Powell.
So definitely.
-: (laughs) Wonderful.
Jerri: Thank you.
Our next question.
How can educational institutions help shape local,
state and federal policies for DEI
without getting into partisan rhetoric?
-: Wow, that's a really great question. (laughs)
Which colleague wants-
-: I'll- -: To take this one?
-: (laughs) I know this is treacherous waters,
(Dr. Barker laughs) but I do want
to step into this because I do strongly feel
like we've over conflated
this work with right/left US politics,
Enfranchisement is, and once humanity isn't,
should not be up for political debate.
I think that that is the foundation of us as human beings
understanding who we are in relationship to one another,
and then certainly in the educational environment
for us to be able to benefit.
And again, I go back to the AAC
and use articulating higher education
as a public good for advancing of the democratic enterprise.
And that that is not a political left or right component.
And they've been very clear that Inclusive Excellence
is an integral pillar of our ability
to advance higher education as a public good.
And so, should we have robust debate over how we get there?
Absolutely, in many ways, (computer chimes)
that's the purpose of the public square
and the role of academic engagement
in the higher educational setting,
but I think the over conflation of it,
that you have to have a specific set of politics
and a certain specific set of answers.
Because the reality is that we're trying
to co-create something that has never existed
before in human history.
We've never had this many kinds of people
living together in community equitably and justly
in the history of human beings.
So the idea that any of us has the right answer exactly.
And so instead it's about the process
and how do we commit ourselves to that process?
Fr me, it's about working towards what Dr. King
refers to as Beloved Community,
and really just understanding that we have to be
willing to learn, to grow, to make mistakes along the way.
How do we heal from the mistakes that are made
from the process?
So I encourage us to be thinking
about restorative approaches to how we deal with harm,
because it's inevitable.
But then how do we find a way to go forward?
And then can we look to examples in the world,
like in Rwanda, like in South Africa,
the truth and reconciliation
and other places on the planet in which human beings
have found ways to be able to move
through incredibly horrific realities
that human beings have subjected one another to?
Then one kind of corollary to this
is that I think we really have to start
connecting the work of DEI in higher education
to conversations around global education.
And when we make references to decolonization,
that we understand that that's a global phenomenon
that has occurred.
And when we look at the pandemic and the inequities
that for us to only look at the inequities
in the United States, while we're living on a planet
in which some people have access to the vaccine,
no matter how people feel about it,
where at other parts of the planet,
people do not have access to that.
We have to be able to get to that,
let's get back to the both-and.
We have to be able to hold both of those things
in order for us to be able to confront
the tremendous challenges that we face
on our planet right now.
And if we put artificial boundaries
around how we're willing to look
at equity and inclusion issues,
then we automatically restrict our ability
to be able to see the relationship and connections
between these issues in our world today.
-: Well said.
I wanted to do (man mumbles)
a quick check-in if there's a question
from the live audience.
A question from the live audience?
Okay.
Jerri: The next online question.
Equity itself is still a very contested term.
Justice, even more so, especially when coupled with social.
Does this play into your planning on introducing justice
into your frameworks?
-: So maybe I'll take a stab at that.
I think one of my colleagues said it earlier,
there are many on-ramps onto this journey that we're on,
and if we see it as that as opposed to a destination,
that somehow you get to a level of wokeness
and therefore you're there.
I think it was Amer who said that we all need
to consistently do the work.
So for me, I use this concept that Dolly Chugh coined,
she's an NYU psychologist.
She talks about being good-ish.
And a lot of the reason why we don't change
is because we all think of ourselves as good people.
Serial killers, Nazis.
They all think of themselves as good people.
So if you start with words that trigger
sort of a sense of that somehow you're judging,
and some of us are guilty of coming at people
in a really incredibly hard way
that keep them from getting on to those on-ramps,
that if you use, like, I use...
One of the actual really practical tools that I use
is the Intercultural Development Continuum.
It's called the IDI.
And it shows you. It's a self-assessment.
It's looking in the mirror
and it gives you a real self-assessment.
It's research-based, so you can argue
with the 150 PhD documents that have been
sort of created around it.
And it tells you where you are on the journey.
Whether you're in denial, whether you're in polarization,
whether you're in universalism.
Whether you're in acceptance
or whether you're in adaptation..
And even if you get there to adaptation,
you still have to do a lot more work.
So this concept of goodish gets us away from the,
"Are you calling me a racist?
Are you calling me a homophobe?
Are you calling me a sexist?"
And it says we all have work to do.
So if you can be good-ish
and understand that we are all fallible
now that gives you an entryway into it.
That I think is a powerful way
to sort of to get people to stop...
Because part of the issue that we have
is we keep talking to the same people
over and over again.
The same 10%.
The 10% that we can't, they're just gonna be who they are,
the world is flat,
and they're just gonna sail off the edge.
And then there's the 80% that are bystanders
and they don't want to get caught in the crossfire.
So allowing them an on-ramp and an understanding that,
"Listen, we've been..."
Again, these are feudal systems that we work in,
they don't change.
So they've been around for hundreds of years,
so expectation that you're gonna hire somebody,
or you're gonna have a strategy,
and all of a sudden, within three to five years,
you're gonna change the organization is ludicrous.
So a lot of it, when I talk to my DEI colleagues,
what we sometimes forget about is we have righteous work,
but if you don't understand organizational change,
if you haven't studied Ed Shine
Or Peter Senge was a little bit more on the woo woo side
or if you don't understand Victor Ray's work
around the racialized organization
and how you have to focus yourself
on what you can do (computer chimes)
at the mezzo level and at the individual level,
like some of my colleagues have said,
then you're always gonna go into defeatism.
And then you're always gonna sort of make an excuse
for why you can't change.
-: Great response.
And just for those who are not familiar
with the Intercultural Development Inventory,
we have a number of individuals who are certified
to be able to provide that.
So if you are interested,
you can always go to our website
and learn more about how to request someone
to engage you or your team in the IDI.
We have time for one more question.
Jerri: I wonder if any of the panelists
could talk about constructive, appropriate,
supportive roles for historically and predominantly
white institutions like ours
and efforts like truth, racial healing and transformation,
campus histories around slavery
or Indian school reconciliation projects?
-: Any of our panelists (laughs) want to?
-: Well, I'll jump in.
Maybe I'll break the ice and hopefully others will jump in.
First of all, this is a really important question,
especially if you're at a PWI,
and it's a difficult one to approach
because no matter what level of education
you try to engage in on your campus,
there is a long history that you're working against
(computer chimes) to change the narrative.
This doesn't mean when we say to change the narrative
to erase history.
When we change the narrative,
it's about bringing up the full, rich, complex,
yes, difficult history that our country has
and that our institutions have.
And so this is really one of the important first steps,
honestly, that a PWI can undertake.
So, my previous institution (computer chimes)
was Oregon State University, a land-grant institution.
And I think you heard it here about how important
that particular aspect is for a land grant,
because we know the history of land
in the United States and in Canada.
We know that there is an obligation.
We also know that we are on an indigenous land
and that education is a treaty right.
So there's a lot of complex layers
that need to be unpacked there.
And so for us at Oregon State University,
we, again, going to the word good-ish, I mean,
I don't think it was perfect.
We didn't quite arrive there at Wokeville,
but we were working towards that
by re-examining our history,
by engaging the whole community in that conversation.
That meant faculty, staff, students, and community members,
about the historical legacy of Oregon State University,
about our building names.
Many of your campuses probably engaged
in that exercise as well,
which brought up a lot of history
that some people knew, many did not.
Our work with tribal communities.
Really recognizing that tribal communities
are more than that.
That they are, in fact, nations.
Centering sovereignty
and government-to-government relationships
is another way towards truth, because that's a truth,
that's not an opinion, that's a fact, it's a truth,
towards understanding what needs to be healed.
(computer chimes)
We talked about reconciliation
and we had some members of our community who said,
"Some of these things can't be reconciled.
The wounds, the trauma are still ongoing."
We see this in the boarding school conversations today.
However, everyone agreed that working towards that
was worth the effort and certainly a noble cause.
And continuing dialogue and collaboration
and co-creation of what some of these opportunities
might yield for us.
Everything from educational opportunities
to research opportunities,
but they are done in partnership with reciprocity
and co-creation and cogeneration at the center.
And I will have to say for a land-grant university,
that's a huge shift.
And we're not at the promised land yet,
(Dr. Barker laughs) we have not arrived,
but we are on that journey together.
-: Thank you, Allison.
I would just add to that, that I think...
Again, I would encourage you, if you are able to attend
tomorrow's CEO Action session.
You will have a chance to hear from our co-leaders
who have been engaged on our journey
towards anti-racism and racial equity.
And part of one of their conversations
has been around really understanding the history.
Only a few months ago, the Omaha World-Herald announced
a partnership with UNL around looking
at the history of the land and the history of race
in Nebraska in particular,
and that being a partnership with the university.
And so our journey co-leaders have been very engaged
at the forefront of really developing this framework.
And so again, I hope that you have a chance
to attend tomorrow at noon
and be able to hear from them directly
on what that work has looked like.
I think it connects very well to this ideal
about how do we get at truth and reconciliation?
Absolutely.
Well, please join me in thanking our panelists today.
(audience applauds) This was just wonderful.
I have taken copious notes and hopefully you have as well.
Please know that our office will be following up
with everyone with additional resources
in both the announcements
that were shared earlier by Dr. Friday,
but also other resources that may be of interest to you.
You're always able to find us online at diversity.unl.edu.
You can also contact us directly at diversity@unl.edu,
and absolutely find us on social media as well.
I have just, again, thoroughly enjoyed
being able to connect with my colleagues
and certainly connect with all of you.
And so, as always, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion
are always here to be supportive
and to walk with you on this journey.
Everyone, please enjoy the rest of your day
and have a great rest of your week.