Welcome to the Blog!

This is the inaugural post of the "Teaching for Inclusion: Difficult Dialogues" blog. Why "Teaching for Inclusion"? Why "Difficult Dialogues"? Perhaps a little background is in order...

Part One: Teaching for Inclusion

In 1997, the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ("Carolina") published a handbook for faculty entitled Teaching for Inclusion: Diversity in the College Classroom. The stated purpose of this handbook was to help Carolina faculty to adjust to emerging student demographics.

As the authors of this volume noted in their introduction, since the late 1970's Carolina had witnessed a steady diversification of its student body by race, gender, ethnicity, and religion. This change reflected national trends such as the struggles for civil and women's rights; it also reflected Congressional desire to tinker with the broader social fabric through legislation: the Immigration Act of 1965 increased the number of foreign nationals from Africa and Asia immigrating to the U.S. One consequence of the Act was the gradual infusion of American society with individuals and families whose cultures differed in significant respects from those of their European predecessors.

The new demographic diversity on campus was not merely cosmetic: race, gender, ethnicity, and religion are all potential reservoirs of personal identity--and potent ones at that. The relative homogeneity that had characterized previous student populations was being replaced, and the visible shift to student bodies with "multicultural" representation was accompanied by a momentous shift in outlook: one that called into question prior assumptions about what it means to be an American.

For prior generations (schooled under the conditions of the prevailing racial, cultural, ethnic, and religious homogeneity), the assertion that the U.S. is "one nation, indivisible" seemed uncontroversial. America's entrance into two European "World Wars" and its emergence from them as a victorious nation in an international system served to underscore the "self-evidence" of this claim.

But when, in the middle of the 20th century, minority populations within the United States began to clamor for rights and recognition equal to those enjoyed by members of the homogeneous majority, they brought to light social tensions that had been long submerged beneath public assertions of national unity and identity. The resulting political upheavals that characterized much of U.S. history in the latter half of the 20th century are evidence of the adjustments that all Americans have had to make in order to achieve a more inclusive vision of what it means to be an American.

The cohorts of students that arrived on campus in the 1990's better reflected the increasing diversity of the country's evolving social and cultural fabric than at any time previously; at the same moment, faculty were embracing the new vision of inclusiveness and even beginning to advocate for the expansion of this "heterogeneous" vision. Sexual orientation, physical ability (including learning styles), and political commitments acquired unprecedented distinctiveness as they were transformed into recognized markers of personal identity.

As a consequence, one's identity as an American became extended, as it were; in some cases, it actually became "hyphenated" as such terms as "African-American" and "Asian-American" became increasingly common. Likewise, personal attributes or tendencies such as same-sex attraction became essentialized: one does not simply experience same-sex or heterosexual attraction, one is a particular kind of person (Gay, Bi, Straight, etc.).

The late 20th century advent of a multicultural vision of what it means to be an American-- what I shall henceforth term "identity politics"--has not gone uncontested. It has its strong advocates, strong opponents, and many who find themselves caught in the middle. CTL's role in these changing times is to build upon what it accomplished with Teaching for Inclusion: providing faculty with effective ways to negotiate the socio-political climate that they inhabit, along with their students, in the classroom.

Part Two: 9/11 and the Difficult Dialogues Initiative

The tragic events of September 11, 2001 demonstrated, most dramatically, what can happen when identity politics turn lethal. Of course, this was not the first time that identity politics had fueled violence in the U.S. (the 1995 bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City is a recent example). But 9/11 has seemed to many Americans to be in a category of its own: the spectacular magnitude of the crime and the fact that the perpetrators were not U.S. citizens combined to create a heady brew of resurgent nationalism throughout the country.

As many observers have noted, one potential casualty of the new nationalistic mood is academic freedom; for where such sentiments prevail, loyalty to the state is sometimes construed to be sufficient reason to preempt criticism of the government--despite Constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech.

In an effort to help academics cope with this new era, the Ford Foundation launched, in the spring of 2005, what it calls the "Difficult Dialogues Initiative" (DDI). DDI is designed to promote both pluralism and academic freedom on college campuses across the United States. Carolina was one of twenty-seven institutions selected to participate in this program. This blog has been created to make visible the connection between CTL, its publications and programs, and the implementation of the Ford Foundation's Difficult Dialogues Initiative at Carolina.

It is hoped that the new partnership between CTL and the DDI will equip educators to be pro-active and turn the potential for classroom conflict into opportunities for stimulating conversations that further the educational mission of the university.

How best to do this? There are no doubt multiple approaches one can take. Having spent several years in the classroom teaching courses in Islamic Studies (a fertile field for controversy!) and, at the same time, reviewing the burgeoning literature on this topic, I have come to view questions of identity (and its complement, difference) as being related, in complex ways, to concerns about justice. As anyone who has read a Platonic dialogue can attest, however, conversations about justice often burden their participants with "Socratic imponderables."

Is this such a bad thing? Yes and no. Ed Neal, CTL's Director of Faculty Development, is fond of noting that "Socrates was not a content-provider." In other words, as with any pedagogy that legitimately looks to Socrates as its model, students are likely to emerge from the classroom with more questions than answers.

This can be a frustrating experience for students who take comfort in the clarity that identity politics (where every person is endowed with a clear sense of "who they are") tends to provide. If students arrive at the university expecting to encounter a "frustration free" learning experience, a Socratic education is liable to prove disappointing.

In an increasingly multicultural landscape, students have been encouraged to consider the ways in which they differ from one another, and to think about justice in terms of honoring those differences and preserving their integrity. This is a very valuable exercise and no doubt one that makes an important contribution to every student's apprehension of what may constitute justice.

The hidden cost of such an approach lies in the potential for students to conclude that identity markers such as race, gender, ethnicity, and religion impose unbridgeable gaps between groups of people.

The challenge of teaching for inclusion while, at the same time, engaging students in the difficult dialogues to which such inclusion gives rise is the new pedagogy that we have been bequeathed by our particular location in history. It is a pedagogy in the making, a work in progress. This blog will diary the continuing efforts of Carolina's Center for Teaching and Learning to assist faculty to make this new pedagogy a reality in their classrooms.

Recommended Reading:

Gaddy, Barbara B., T. William Hall, Robert J. Marzano, School Wars: Resolving Our Conflicts Over Religion and Values, San Francisco: Jossy-Bass Publishers, 1996.

Nash, Robert J., DeMethra LaSha Bradley, Arthur W. Chickering, How to Talk About Hot Topics on Campus: From Polarization to Moral Conversation, San Francisco: Jossy-Bass Publishers, 2008.

Press, Gerald A., Plato: A Guide for the Perplexed, London & New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007.

Teaching What You're Not: Identity Politics in Higher Education, edited by Katherine J. Mayberry, New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Note: School Wars, How to Talk About Hot Topics, and Teaching What You're Not, are all available to Carolina faculty at CTL's library.