Bildner Family Foundation New Jersey Campus Diversity Initiative

Institute Seminars

Seminar One
The Boundaries of Belonging

This first seminar explored various circles of inclusion and exclusion that mark the edges of belonging. In what settings do we know we matter? In what settings do we know we are marginalized? And what are the consequences for identity and intellectual development in each of those contexts?

The readings begin with two poems that suggest both possibilities and the risks of doorways to new territories, with their challenge to reconcile who we have been with who we are becoming or are expected to be. Oppenheimer's prose description of Cavill, the divinity student, also suggests it is possible to embrace new identities in their multiplicities, even if seemingly contradictory multiplicities. Lisa Suhair Majaj's “Boundaries, border, horizons” records the journey of an Arab-American who says she seeks to transform contradictions “into a constant motion testing the lines that encircle and embrace me, protect and imprison me.”

Next, we also offer several influential theoretical models: intercultural sensitivity (Milton Bennett), racial identity development (William Cross), and cognitive development (Mary Field Belenky, et al and William Perry). Lee Knefelkamp has argued that linking these models can lead to more nuanced understandings about how different modes of learning are mediated by how we engage with difference and how we negotiate a more integrative sense of self. The implications for the classroom and the campus are profound.

The next section of the readings explores whiteness, turning to one of the important historians on the subject, David R. Roediger. In “All About Eve” from Colored White, Roediger challenges the popular notion that as the United States becomes multiracial, race will no longer matter. Two accompanying pieces, “White Advantage” and “Ten Myths About Race,” document ways that whiteness, however much it has altered in its definition over the centuries or however illogical in its biological foundations, has continued to be attached to power and privilege over others.

Finally, Lavina Dhingra Sankar's “Pro/(con)fessing otherness” puts the spotlight on the classroom dynamics when it is the faculty member at the front of the classroom whose multiracial and multicultural identity become part of the text for the semester.

Highlighting the importance of the work of the Bildner initiative, we end with a Muriel Rukeyser poem, “Myth,” which is a wry reminder that mis-recognition and failures in intercultural communication can have consequences.

Readings for Seminar One

Rich, Adrienne. 1962. “Prospective immigrants please note.”

Yee. 1995. “Little thoughts in America: To be the real me?” Our time: An anthology of writings by Asian American students from the University of Massachusetts Boston, 35.

Oppenheimer, Mark. 2001. “For divinity student, exception is the rule.” Online: www.njuls.org/conference2001article2.html. The National Union of Jewish LGBT Students.

Majaj, Lisa Suhair. 1994. (excerpts from:) “Boundaries, borders, horizons.” In C. Camper, ed. Miscegenation blues: Voices of mixed race women. Toronto: Sister Vision, 56-93.

Identity, Development and Intercultural Sensitivity Models:

Bennett, M.J. 1993. Towards ethnorelativism: A developmental model of intercultural sensitivity. In M. Paige (Ed.), Education for the intercultural experience. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.

Excerpts from William Cross, Jr. 1995. “The Psychology of Nigrescence: Revising the Cross Model,” in Joseph Ponterotto, et al., eds. Handbook of Multicultural Counseling. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Excerpts from Mary Field Belenky, Blythe McVicker Clinchy, Nancy Rule Goldberger, and Jill Mattuck Tarule. 1986. Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind. New York: Basic Books.

Roediger, David R. 2002. Chapter 1: All about Eve, critical white studies, and getting over whiteness. In Colored White. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 3-27.

“A Long History of Affirmative Action – For Whites.” 2003. Background material for the film, “Race the power of an illusion.” Online at: http://www.newsreel.org/films/race.htm. South Burlington, VT: California Newsreel.

“Ten things everyone should know about race.” 2003. Background material for the film, “Race the power of an illusion.” Online at: http://www.newsreel.org/films/race.htm. South Burlington, VT: California Newsreel.

Sankar, Lavina Dhingra. 1996. “Pro/ (con)fessing otherness: Trans(cending)national identities in the English classroom.” In Katherine J. Mayberry, ed. Teaching what you're not: Identity politics in higher education. New York: New York University Press.

Rukeyser, Muriel. 1985. “Myth.” In Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, eds. The Norton anthology of literature by women. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1787-1788.

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Seminar Two
Justice for Everyday Collective Life

Flowing from the first seminar focused primarily on individual identity development in the context of encounters with multiple differences, the second seminar explored how to build cohesive and just communities in the face of such a dynamic. These articles focus on our communal lives and the social structures through which they are enacted, especially academic institutions. If we are to promote the commitment to and capacity for equity and justice, how do our institutions do it?

Peter Nien-chu Kiang opens this seminar with his talk story poem about the emerging sense of collective consciousness possible through understanding our own power and its limits when not conjoined in a larger common struggle for justice. Maxine Greene's “Teaching for Social Justice” expands on Kiang's poem with her sweeping overview of the scholarship of social justice and its compelling call to educate for social justice, not merely as an intellectual exercise but as means of transforming the world into, as she puts it, “justice for everyday collective life.”

Beverly Daniel Tatum and Daryl G. Smith each offer concrete roadmaps for how to create climates of engagement on our college campuses and broad guiding principles for that difficult and exhilarating work. For Tatum, three principles are critical: affirming identity, building community, and cultivating community. Smith argues we need to understand the role of groups, the instructive value of conflict, and the importance of “mattering.”

Next, we turn to the greater visibility of religious pluralism and how it has too often been avoided, erased, and misunderstood. Diana Eck's landmark study, A New Religious America, focuses on how a formerly “Christian country” has become the most religiously diverse nation in the world. Her investigation of this transformation began in her Harvard course with an explorative teaching strategy that resulted in students' uncovering the unacknowledged religious diversity right in their own backyard--downtown Boston. Kazanjin, a Dean of Religious and Spiritual Live at Wellesley, then suggests some concrete ways institutionally to reorganize student life and learning to confront and understand this pluralism and its meanings in students' lives.

As in seminar one, we end seminar two in the middle of a classroom. While Joe Russo's in “Sharing Classroom Power” speaks from his experience in high schools and Linda Woodbridge in “The Centrifugal Classroom” speaks from her in a university, both offer practical pedagogical ways of making the everyday collective life of the classroom more equitable.

Readings for Seminar Two

Kiang, Peter Nien-chu. 1991. “A talk story poem for open dialogue III.” In Russell Leong, ed. Moving the image: Independent Asian Pacific American media arts. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Visual Communications, 259-263.

Greene, Maxine. 1998. Introduction: “Teaching for social justice.” In William Ayers, Jean Ann Hunt, and Therese Quinn, eds. Teaching for social justice, xxvii-xlvi.

Tatum, Beverly Daniel. “The ABC approach to creating climates of engagement on diverse campuses.” In Edgar F. Beckham, ed. Global collaborations: The role of higher education in diverse democracies. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 63-78.

Smith, Daryl G. 1996. “Community and group identity: Fostering mattering.” In S. Benally, J.J. Mock, and M. Odel, eds. Pathways to the multicultural community: Leadership, belonging, and involvement. Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, 94-100.

Eck, Diana L. 2001. “Introduction to a new America.” In A new religious America: How a “Christian country” has become the world's most religiously diverse nation. New York: Harper Collins, 1-25.

Kazanjin, Victor. 1999, spring. “Religious identity and intellectual development: Forging powerful learning communities.” Diversity Digest, 10-11.

Russo, Joe. 2001. “Sharing classroom power: Why we sit in the same room.” Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, 12:2, 25-39.

Woodbridge, Linda. 1994. “The Centrifugal Classroom.” In Sara Munson Deats and Lagretta Tallent Lenker, eds. Gender and Academe: Feminist Pedagogy and Politics. Boston: Rowman and Littlefield, 133-151.

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Plenary Session
Honing Your Message and Communication Your Successes
Debra Humphreys, Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs, AAC&U
Edgar F. Beckham, Senior Fellow, AAC&U

This hands-on plenary initiated the first step in what we hope will be an increasingly visible component in all the Bildner projects: the development of a strategic communications plan. Drawing on the lessons learned from the successful Public Information Project for the Ford Foundation's Campus Diversity Initiative as well as from general public communications practices, this session focused on assisting Bildner campuses in developing a clear message about your project, adapting it to different constituencies, and getting it placed in appropriate media outlets.

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