Teaching Social Justice: "The curriculum is ourselves"

The following web-based resources highlight strategies for sustained and meaningful dialogues. The sites also serve as good gateways to additional resources on teaching social justice.

http://www.aacu-edu.org/peerreview/pr-fa01feature2.cfm

"Approaching Diversity: Some Classroom Strategies for Learning Communities." Peer Review Summer/Fall 2001: 3/4 & 4/1, 25-27.

This article, written by William Koolsbergen, a Humanities professor from LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York, includes several strategies for engaging in a discussion of diversity. Koolsbergen and his colleagues’ practice builds on ground rules developed by Lynne Weber Cannon. ("Fostering Positive Race, Class, and Gender Dynamics in the Classroom." Women's Studies Quarterly 1990:1 & 2: 126-134.)

LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York, describes itself as a diverse community that "strives to become a pluralistic community" as expressed in its Declaration of http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/stuinfo/info7c.asp

The student body http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/facts/page2.asp includes immigrants, refugees, asylees, parolees and foreign students: United States and Canada (4,124), Latin America and the Caribbean (4,053), Europe (843), Africa (287), Near and Middle East (297), and Far East and Oceania (1,792).
 
 

 http://www.lsa.umich.edu/mcs/ The Michigan Community Scholars Program (MCSP) brings together students and faculty who have a strong commitment to community, community service, and academic study. Through courses, social programs, study groups, and service projects, students strive to model an ideal community in terms of friendship, values, responsibility, diversity, social justice, celebration, collaboration, and caring. MCSP helps students make an easy transition from high school to college and prepares students for leadership roles on campus and in their future careers. MSCP students live and learn in Couzens Residence Hall. For a recent article on this program go to http://www.aacu-edu.org/aacu_news/November01/feature.htm
 
  http://www.diversityweb.org/Digest/W98/fostering.html

Intergroup dialogue programs are designed to foster positive intergroup conversations around issues of diversity, conflict, community, and social justice. A founding premise is that sustained and meaningful intergroup contact, dialogue, and education are necessary to address issues of conflict and to promote the creation of just, multicultural campus communities. Intergroup dialogues are defined as facilitated, face-to-face meetings between students from two or more social identity groups that have a history of conflict or potential conflict. Ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability, geographical origin, social class and other characteristics broadly define these groups. Examples include dialogues between Women and Men; Lesbians, Gay Men, Bisexual and Heterosexual People; White People and People of Color; Women of Color and White Women; Asians and Whites; Latinos/as and African Americans; American Indians and Whites; Christians, Muslims and Jews; Asian Americans and Latino/as; People with Disabilities and People without Disabilities. These meetings may be offered as part of the undergraduate curriculum or as co-curricular activities: "The main objectives of the intergroup dialogue process are to encourage self-reflective conversation and inquiry that break through the surface tension created by difference; clarify and address issues of potential conflict (e.g., interracial/interfaith relationships, affirmative action, social integration on campus); and challenge students to rethink many of their attitudes, assumptions, and political and social understandings through sharing of feelings and experiences, critical analysis of historical and sociological material, and consideration of alternative perspectives."

Most intergroup dialogue pedagogical models have been based on The University of Michigan’s Program on Intergroup Relations, Conflict, and Community (IGR), a social justice education program at their Ann Arbor campus http://www.umich.edu/~igrc/> and collaborative undertaking of the College of Literature, Science, and Arts and the Multicultural Portfolio under the Division of Student Affairs.

http://www.westernjustice.org/orgs.cfm - an online database developed by The Western Justice Center includes more than 1,500 professional associations, educational institutions and community organizations that provide training and resources in intergroup dialogue, cross-cultural collaboration, community-based mediation and other conflict resolution skills.