(sourced from President’s Blog August 14)
This weekend was a difficult and painful one for all of us committed to a more equitable and inclusive society — to those of us who believe in justice and equity. There should be no question whatsoever that those white supremacists who marched across the University of Virginia campus and gathered across Charlottesville hold views that are anathema to our values, and that their actions were beneath contempt.
The pain, and yes anger, evoked by what happened is intensified for those of us who live, work or study on college campuses. It is no coincidence that they chose a campus for their march, for they know that universities are diverse, vibrant communities, which are striving to become even more inclusive and are committed to building a better world for all humanity.
My own reactions are impossible to fully describe, for they are very personal. The images of the Klan, Nazis and neo-Nazis brought me back to the horror of almost 40 years ago to another Saturday morning when people from these same groups murdered my own brother, Cesar, then 25. My heart aches at the loss of the young woman, Heather Heyer, who was killed and the two state police offers, H. Jay Cullen and Berke M.M. Bates, who died in the line of duty, as well as for their families and loved ones and the many who were injured. This will be with them forever and I can only hope that together with the pain, they find strength and inspiration.
I recall a late night conversation with my brother, in which he talked about “the struggle.” He did not view justice as an endpoint, or a goal with a clear finish line. Justice, he said, was a constant work-in-progress. You pushed the boulder up the hill, it would slide back, and you would have to push again. You needed to stay vigilant.
We are at a time in our country’s history where we must put our shoulder to that boulder, for it is sliding back down with a momentum many of us thought was impossible in this day and age. We must recommit to equity and inclusion — for all. But even in our grief and anger, it is important to remember the words of Martin Luther King, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
I do not have a road map forward, but I do know that we must find that way together. When our hearts are heavy, we find comfort in the collective embrace of community.
Resources for:
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Faculty & Staff
“It is not — and could never be — the sole responsibility of one person, one office or one initiative to solve these systemic and complex issues. It will take an ongoing and sustained effort from all of us.” — President Ana Mari Cauce
Since the launch of the Race & Equity Initiative in 2015, we have taken action and made progress — efforts featured in a new provost report.
While it’s important to note progress — and especially the hard work of many of you across our three campuses — it’s equally important to avoid complacency. We have a long way to go, further than any one initiative or one leader can take us.
UW colleagues, like those featured in this report (web/pdf), are leading the way in areas from recruiting and retaining a diverse faculty to transforming the curriculum to address bias to creating new tools for accountability around equity.
The president, Race & Equity Initiative co-chairs Ed Taylor and Rickey Hall, and I hope you will join us in this work — recognizing the progress made in the last few years while keeping our eyes on the horizon, taking action and holding ourselves accountable to continue working toward a more equitable and just university community.
Gerald J. Baldasty
Provost & Executive Vice President
Professor, Communication
Adjunct Professor, American Ethnic Studies; Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies
This publication is part of a series about transformative trends and issues in higher education. These reports aim to highlight examples of people or programs working on important topics and engage the wider UW community in the discussion. We welcome you to join the conversation by emailing us your comments to edtrends@uw.edu. Many thanks to those who have shared your ideas in response to previous reports.
Updates
For Students, By Students
Undergraduate and graduate students on all three campuses have a new opportunity to secure funding for Race and Equity Initiative events they create that align with the initiative’s goals. Applications are reviewed by their peers — student leaders on the R&EI Steering Committee. The first student-supported and produced event was last October’s UW Racial Justice Organizing and Caucus (pictured). Learn more.
President Blog Posts
UW President Ana Mari Cauce often remarks on equity efforts and issues using her blog. Here are some of the blog posts that speak directly to the equity work that is taking place on campus.
•Standing Together
•Responding to Those Hateful Flyers
•Transgender Rights are Human Rights
•A Safe and Welcoming Place for All
•Subscribe or revisit the full blog on the Office of the President website
Speech and Counter-Speech at the UW
What does the First Amendment mean in the context of a public university? Nadine Strossen (New York Law School), Michele Storms (ACLU-Washington) and Ron Collins (UW School of Law) examined this question and other issues at the Speech and Counter-Speech: Rights & Responsibilities event in January. Watch a video of their discussion.
Schools and Colleges Spotlight
Steps to Excellence: School of Dentistry Focuses on Diversity and Inclusion
Equity and excellence go hand-in-hand at the School of Dentistry. Learn more about its diversity committee and how the school is planning for a better tomorrow with leadership trainings, curriculum changes, recruitment and inclusion.
New Course Shines Light on Environmental (In)Justice
A new course in the College of the Environment offers students a chance to dive deep into issues of environmental injustice. “Decolonizing the Environmental Discourse” encourages students to explore the perspectives of the people and communities most affected by environmental practices, policies and hazards. Learn more.
Trainings for Staff
More than 450 UW community members participated in last spring’s pilot series of racial equity trainings. Based on demand, the series has been relaunched through spring 2017 for sessions across all three campuses with expert trainers Rosetta Lee, Scott Winn, Maketa Wilborn and Robin DeAngelo. Learn more.
By Glenn Hare
The Flint water crisis, the Dakota Access Pipeline protest and the BP Oil Spill were just a few of the environmental topics studied in a new course in the University of Washington’s College of the Environment. “Decolonizing the Environmental Discourse” examined environmental injustice from the point of view of decolonization. Jessica Hernandez and Isabel Carrera, two masters level students in the college, developed the class that explored the perspectives of the people and communities most affected by environmental practices, policies and hazards.
Offered for the first time during the winter quarter, the class featured numerous guest speakers from diverse academic disciplines and cultural backgrounds. They presented case studies and shared their personal experiences with food insecurity, health and education disparities as well as civil and environmental conflicts and other relevant topics. “I wanted the students to experience these situations from authentic firsthand accounts, from people who lived them,” says Hernandez who taught the class.
With an emphasis on indigenous frameworks and social science research methods, the class critically linked social justice and the natural sciences. But getting the new course approved wasn’t easy. “We faced lots of college politics and bureaucratic red tape,” Hernandez says.
However, she received moral and financial backing from Kristiina Vogt, a professor ecosystem management in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, and Gino Aisenberg, an associate dean in the Graduate School. With their encouragement at aid, the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences offered, promoted and provided additional support to make the course successful.
“One of the reason, I supported the pursuit of this class was that I saw Jessica’s abilities to be a leader in this area. She will have an impact in changing our approach to environmental injustice,” says Vogt.
Vanessa Sanchez
Student, College of the Environment
After the spill
Hernandez has experienced environmental injustice in her lifetime as well. A native of Southern California, she grew up in South Central Los Angeles and suffered from asthma for most of her childhood. “Our neighborhood was surrounded by oil and gas refineries. Air pollutions was a constant hazard,” she says.
After completing a degree in Ocean Engineering and Oceanography from the University of California at Berkeley, she worked as a research assistant in a federally funded laboratory on the Louisiana Gulf Coast. “This was not long after the BP/Deep Water Horizon oil spill,” she explains. While analyzing the damage caused by the 200 million gallons crude oil spill, Hernandez witnessed the inequities faced by the United Houma Nation, the state’s largest Native American tribe. “They received absolutely no compensation. While large-scale fishing, tourism, and other commercial interests received huge settlements for their damages, the Houma—who rely on local fishing and shrimping as a way of life—received nothing,” says Hernandez, whose own indigenous heritage is Ch’orti’, Zapotec and Yucateco. She decided there that researching the environment was enough.
She wanted to change it. But how?
Hernandez then moved Arkansas and taught remedial science and math. Here again, she saw unequal treatment. This time in the form of underfunded schools and low performing students living in economically depressed areas. “With little education and few job prospects most students were trapped in poverty or wound up in prison,” Hernandez explains.
Still searching, she eventually made her way to the UW, where she’s a dual master’s candidate in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs and in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. She will pursue a doctoral degree starting in the fall quarter. While her plans about the future are still a work in progress, Hernandez long-term goal is to establish an organization that works for the people and environmental justice. “I’d like to establish an organization that brings individuals from affected communities to share their stories and find solutions for their communities. It would work from the bottom-up grassroots, rather than top-down,” she says.
Shared experiences
Interest in the “Decolonizing the Environmental Discourse” didn’t take long to spread around college and the campus. Undergraduate and graduate students registered. “I took the class because I felt it was important to study environmental justice from a societal lens. I felt I needed a class like this to balance my coursework,” says Sanchez, an Environmental Science and Resource Management major.
Shelby Cramer, Student in College of the Environment whose goal is to be an environmental educator in underserved communities or urban settings.
At the end of the quarter, a two-day public symposium took place that extended the conversation beyond the classroom. Students presented case studies ranging from plutonium production near Native American reservations to pesticide exposure on Nicaraguan banana farms to industrial pollution in East St. Louis to illegal logging and land acquisition in the Brazilian rainforest to the use of prisoners to clean oil spills.
“Understanding these situations for what they really are—environmental racism—has led me to critically view other environmental disasters in new ways,” says Jessica Bolano, a graduate student in environmental education. “If you think about the history of colonization, it is deep and permeates systems. Undoing it is not an easy task.”
This spring, Hernandez will teach “Decolonizing the Environmental Discourse.” And, again she’ll offer students a new lens to investigate the environmental justice, inspiring a shift in the environmental conversation. “I left this course more aware than I was before. I discovered how important it is to be an accomplice and not just an ally,” adds Cramer.
By Glenn Hare
Not long after the University of Washington launched the Race and Equity Initiative Joel Berg, the dean of the School of Dentistry, knew his colleagues needed to address diversity, inclusion and institutional bias head on. His concerns sharpened at the school’s annual Partners in Diversity event. “I knew then that we were preaching to the choir. The same people always attended. The awareness never went beyond the same group, and we needed to do more.”
That began some “soul searching” among the leadership, faculty, staff and student body. After several poignant conversations and intense workshops, a diversity roadmap was developed. Partly modeled after The University’s Diversity Blueprint, the School of Dentistry’s plan comprises six focus areas. Among them are a commitment to creating a welcoming climate; a drive towards a more diverse and inclusive body of students, faculty, and staff; a reduction of oral health disparities and a pledge to rich learning experiences both inside and outside of the classroom.
Once approved, the newly formed Diversity Committee established goals and began shepherding the plan throughout the School.
“From the beginning, our intent was to create a living document, not something to be filed away,” says Douglass Jackson, a clinical professor of dentistry who is helping lead the effort.
Among the early successes was the incorporation of a race and equity component to dental education. As a part of the school’s new curricular threads, the care of diverse populations is integrated throughout a student’s training, and the care for patients from underserved communities, senior citizens and the disabled is paramount.
Through numerous service-learning experiences, which take place in clinics, senior care facilities, the University’s Tent City, as well as across Washington State to places like Spokane and Skagit counties, students learn to value human difference and diversity. “They embrace community engagement,” adds Berg. “This generation comes to service easily.”
Berg is also proud of the way the staff has been involved. “The staff were early supporters,” he says.
The work continues as members of the Diversity Committee develop metrics for the faculty. This is a much harder challenge, explains Jackson. “We’re having conversations that most of our senior faculty have never had. We’re addressing core beliefs and biases – in what we hope are safe environments – to build trust and understanding.”
Jackson envisions a school where faculty teaching, research, and service happens through frameworks that include aspects of racial equity. The meetings, retreats and mentoring are ongoing, with discussions taking place at all levels. It is his job to illustrate how diversity, race and equity are assets to their work. He demonstrates success and helps facilitate collaboration between colleagues. “What we are experiencing is an evolution,” continues Jackson. ”Bringing these concerns to the forefront of someone’s work is a slow cultural shift.”
Both Jackson and Berg know the shift is worth the effort and valuable.
“This is our responsibility,” Berg says. “Future dentists must be highly skilled and deeply compassionate.”
Move over, Jackson knows these steps are milestones towards improvement. “In the School of Dentistry, we pride ourselves on excellence – whether as practitioners, researchers and teachers,” he says. “These are our steps towards being excellent citizens, and you can’t be excellent without diversity and inclusion.”
Sunny Kim worked in nonprofits for 10 years before returning to school for a Master in Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree. Despite a personal passion for diversity, Kim hadn’t anticipated putting a lot of energy into shaping the culture of the iSchool, because change at an institution its size could take years.
Kim was pleasantly surprised. Now an Information Diversity Ambassador (iDA), Kim is part of a group of volunteer undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. students who act as contacts for prospective students.
“What I’ve noticed about the iSchool is that they both value our feedback and incorporate it and then try to continue to check in as things develop as much as possible,” Kim says. “And that is really impressive to me. The iSchool backs up words with actions.”
Kim, along with other students, staff and faculty have volunteered for the iDEA project, which stands for iSchool diversity, equity and access. It is part of the UW’s Race and Equity Initiative, launched in spring 2015 by President Ana Mari Cauce.
“The challenge from the president was to address racial bias among units, as well as having people address their own bias. How we do that was left open, so we could be as innovative and creative as possible,” says Cynthia del Rosario (pictured), the iSchool’s diversity programs advisor for the past 10 years.
“The first step was to put a call out to our faculty, staff and students to submit ideas for integrating diversity events, workshops, courses that would be equitable for everyone,” says del Rosario. “We put a comprehensive plan together and submitted it for funding.”
The university offered an incentive in the form of matching grants to fund ideas across all units and campuses. The $15,000 awarded to the iSchool in 2016 is now going to fund a variety of workshops, seminars, and outreach efforts.
Impacting the Student Experience
One such effort was a workshop to help student group leaders examine race, bias and equity issues coming from their own UW student colleagues and learn how to recognize and react appropriately. Participants in these sessions went on to share their knowledge and skills through Bafa Bafa, a simulation exercise aimed to improve cross‐cultural competence by understanding the impact of culture on the behavior of people and organizations.
Brittney Hoy (pictured), president of Winfo (Women in Informatics) felt an immediate impact. In particular, her session explored the concept of privilege and helped her think about it in a new way.
“I’ve always known privilege and racism existed, but through these events I’m learning what it means and how to be more sensitive to people. Just because it isn’t happening to me doesn’t mean it isn’t happening to them.”
Many students feel this topic is particularly important at the iSchool because the knowledge they gain about bias and privilege is useful in their careers when serving the broader community. iSchool graduates work in a variety of organizational settings including libraries, nonprofits and the tech industry. Their diversity work will shape interactions with people and the products and services they build.
“I have that ability to create change and it feels really good to potentially change someone’s life,” says Royce Le, Informatics student and Director of Diversity Efforts for the Informatics student group (IUGA).
Le, who grew up in Federal Way, Washington, says his community did not have the resources for student clubs and technology. His long-term goal is to build a community center with the latest technologies and best teachers to show people how to use those technologies effectively.
In the meantime, he would like to bring his passion for diversity to the workplace. He plans to work as a designer in the tech industry. “My goal is to be cognizant of these things so when I build applications, I can incorporate it into their design and words — introduce concepts, but also actions.”
The iSchool Ph.D. program is sponsoring three workshops that lend practical skills to teaching and job searches. Topics include: how to be a teacher’s assistant in a diverse classroom; how to write a diversity statement that meaningfully articulates their personal experiences; and a research lightning round to help them handle constructive feedback from peers and faculty.
“Part of the touchy subject about race in America is just talking about it. So we wanted to create an atmosphere to help people understand how to do that,” says Verónica Guajardo, a Ph.D. candidate.
“For us to feel like this is a place where we can succeed, this is a place where we belong, integrating diversity at the iSchool will help with doctoral student retention, help us be happier, and will bring diverse ideas to the program,” says Guajardo.
Ph.D. students will also benefit from the writing retreats offered for faculty and doctoral students doing research in diversity. During the six-day retreats at the Whitely Center in Friday Harbor, mornings are aside for writing and afternoons for connecting, community‐building and mentoring.
“One of the things that is challenging for faculty and aspiring faculty is finding time to write. This will allow our Ph.D. students in particular to do more writing so that their CV is as good as it can be,” says Joseph Tennis, associate dean for faculty affairs.
Diversity in the Curriculum
Del Rosario is leading the effort in the iSchool to integrate diversity into the curriculum. This can take the form of a specific course, but the long-term goal is to have a diversity-related element in every course students take.
The strategy is to start by reviewing syllabi of faculty who are teaching core courses or highly enrolled electives in order to suggest ways to integrate diversity into course content, assignments and the structure of the classrooms. Faculty participate, along with invited alumni, UW colleagues and community professionals who have knowledge of the information field and expertise in diversity.
For the MLIS program, this resulted in additional courses.
“In a lot of MLIS courses, diversity is the backbone,” says Jin Ha Lee (pictured), MLIS chair. “One of the things we’ve added next year is a new social justice course, and we will be adding a 1-credit seminar on cultural competency this summer.”
It also makes practical sense. “Many of our students go to public institutions where they serve a very diverse group of people and we need to be careful and respectful about our interactions,” she said.
The iSchool also plans to create courses on diversity that could go beyond the iSchool to other UW employees.
iDiversity University, to debut this summer, will offer an online course, “Intro to iSchool Diversity” or “iDiversity 101,” designed to help people navigate the diversity conversations at the iSchool. Faculty, with a team of iSchool students, will develop several videos, supplemented with articles, websites, and other resources.
Building Skills for Staff and Faculty
Every year for the past six years, the iSchool has held a Diversity Summit (pictured at top). The event attracts 90‐100 students, faculty and staff, with themes that vary depending on current affairs.
Greg Taylor, founder of Community Connections Consulting and former UW vice provost, will facilitate the 2017 summit on the theme of Race, Bias and Dissonance. Taylor facilitated the student leadership workshop, a student services staff workshop, and faculty conversations about how to have hard but critical conversations about race, bias and true equity in the curriculum and classrooms.
An added program this year provided an opportunity for all staff and faculty to attend a retreat about tribal sovereignty. The iSchool was the first unit at the UW to do so. Mystique Hurtado, executive assistant in the Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs, led the session with support from iSchool alumnus Ross Braine, UW wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ (Intellectual House) Director and UW OMAD’s tribal liaison.
The tribal sovereignty retreat supports one of the strategic areas at the iSchool, Native North American Indigenous Knowledge. The UW iSchool is the first information school to honor the treaties of indigenous populations by having an information science program that studies and celebrates the intersection of information, technology, and Native communities.
Beyond the Classroom
Inclusivity means educating the broader community about the iSchool’s work. Two efforts are underway to reach out to immigrant parents and bring the school’s work to children in fun and innovative summer programs.
One of the challenges in the Informatics program is helping the families of students, many of them first-generation scholars, to understand the information field in ways that connect culturally to the community, describe career options, and highlight employers and the salary range of recent iSchool alumni.
To solve this problem, students decided to create one-page information brochures for parents whose first language is not English. The first set of brochures, translated by iSchool students, are in Vietnamese, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog, Korean and Somali.
The impact and effectiveness of the program will be monitored and more languages will be added as needed.
A summer camp, called Read-a-Rama, aims to improve attitudes about reading among children and their parents from underrepresented communities and to eliminate illiteracy altogether. Michelle Martin, Beverly Cleary Professor in Children’s and Youth Services, in partnership with Compass Housing Alliance and Gethsemane Lutheran Church, is leading the summer program, which utilizes children’s and young adult books as the springboard for program activities to teach kids to love books through fun, themed literacy immersion experiences.
Del Rosario summed up her approach in the iDEA project in this way: “We look for small wins – building diversity into your everyday behavior. Everybody wants immediate change — we want to increase diversity by 25 percent in one year — but that isn’t likely. When we change our culture by making authentic changes in individuals, we will see results over time.”
On January 10, 2017 the Race & Equity Initiative hosted three renowned educators and lawyers for a discussion about First Amendment rights and the meaning of free speech in the context of higher education. UWTV captured the discussion on video. Please feel free to use and distribute for educational purposes.
https://youtu.be/UfGs7slIxUA
Ana Mari Cauce
The work of a university like ours — preserving, advancing and creating knowledge, as well as serving our public mission — is especially critical in these times of uncertainty and rapid change. A healthy democracy, founded on inalienable freedoms and a commitment to the common good, doesn’t simply materialize. It is the product of critical thinking, evidence-based argument, reasoned dialogue and the free and open exchange of ideas. These tenets and values are central to our University’s fundamental purpose, ones we must model and teach. Sixty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote that “the function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically,” but to that assertion he added the caveat that, “Intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.
The UW must create and nurture the conditions for learning and character to develop and bloom. This happens best in an environment that is free of xenophobia, bigotry and harassment. It happens when all members of our community feel included, knowing they can make a contribution regardless of their area of study or scholarship, or their social, political or religious views. Put simply:
No matter who you are, where you’re from, whom you love, where or whether you worship, or any other aspect of your identity, we welcome your contributions to helping the University of Washington maintain its commitment to access and excellence, to building a better and more equitable future, and creating a world of good.
I am deeply aware of — and share — the concerns that recent events have raised for our community about the safety, security and freedom of many, especially, but not exclusively, our international students, whether on visas or green cards; undocumented students; immigrants; Muslims; and LGBTQ people. We are committed to and working on providing support to those individuals who are directly affected by any changes in national policy as well as to our broader community. You are not alone and we value the richness of perspectives and the expertise you bring. In the sidebar, you will find links to a wide array of University resources and support networks where you can find information as well as help and guidance.
We are also working together with other universities and professional associations including ACE, APLU and the AAU, of which we’re members, to call for sound and reasonable policies that enable international students and scholars to continue to contribute to our country’s and the world’s intellectual, cultural and economic vitality.
In just the last few days, I observed breakthrough scientific work with life-saving potential carried out by a Muslim immigrant from Syria; received medical treatment from one of our doctors who immigrated here from India; worked side by side on developing strategies for student support with staff members who were African American, lesbian and gay; and worked with both Republicans and Democrats in Olympia on important issues affecting higher education. This is what inclusion and pluralism look like, and these and countless other interactions inform my work and make our University better.
This is a dynamic and tumultuous time, with new policies, potential policies and rumors about policies coming at us on an almost daily basis. I do not anticipate sending out a University-wide email responding to every change in policy, or every unsettling event, but you can find updates here on my blog and on the Federal Relations blog. UW Today also remains an outstanding source of information on the range of teaching, research and service that takes place every day at our University.
And don’t forget to make the time to enjoy each other and the many energizing events and activities throughout all our campuses. It is the life-affirming moments that we spend together that will help us better deal with the stresses and strains that are part of our daily life, but that are magnified with uncertainty and change.
The principles at the heart of our UW community are enduring and we will uphold them steadfastly. I invite and encourage you to stay engaged, to stand together as a University and honor the values that make the University of Washington great.
See full message, including additional resources, on the Office of the President’s Blog.
The University of Washington’s Diversity Blueprint articulates the tri-campus community’s aspirations for becoming a truly inclusive and equitable environment for learning, research, service, and outreach.
The Diversity Blueprint begins with the University of Washington’s Diversity Council, a body composed of faculty, staff, and students from across all academic and administrative units, which is charged with advising the Vice President for Minority Affairs and Diversity and Chief Diversity Officer on campus diversity issues. In 2010, the Diversity Council responded to the campus community’s calls for the creation of a comprehensive plan that would guide the University of Washington toward achieving its stated goals for diversity and inclusion. In the spirit of those calls, a Diversity Blueprint was developed to challenge the University to live up to its mission of valuing diverse perspectives, creating a welcoming learning environment for all students, and promoting broad access and equal opportunity.
On January 10, 2017 the Race & Equity Initiative hosted three renowned educators and lawyers for a discussion about First Amendment rights and the meaning of free speech in the context of higher education. UWTV captured the discussion on video. Please feel free to use and distribute for educational purposes.
https://youtu.be/UfGs7slIxUA