If the people interviewing you don’t understand your answers and it seems that you will become the “DEI expert” or “DEI fixer” of the department, is that a place where you want to work/teach? Will those colleagues have any capacity to help you continue growing as an inclusive, equitable educator?
I've been on several hiring committees, but at my blue-state university asking about DEI is not a formal thing. Instead we ask "How do you approach teaching under-prepared students", which is actually our particular DEI concern (low SES students, first gen students).
What we're looking for is this: "Last year when I taught x, students in demographic b struggled with c aspect of the course. Reflecting on this, I adjusted my pedagogy to do x instead of y, and the next semester students did much better on course objective z".
There are indeed cases where adjusting pedagogy can remove a barrier for a particular demographic group. One long-recognized example is that girls and women benefit from collaborative work, while boys and men benefit from competitions. Making sure there are elements of both in a course is helpful. This is all on the average of course, since there are plenty of men who collaborate enthusiastically and plenty of women who enjoy competition. Other demographics are also not monolithic in terms of what they benefit from most and what is off-putting to them.
There are also cases where what's needed is not so much a different teaching modality as a quick and encouraging pipeline to tutoring or other academic support, when the problem is not so much an unhelpful teaching method as it is weak predecessor skills.
I think this is the key. Looking at the mission statements of the university and the department may be a way for OP to tailor their examples to what the committee is looking for. Many times we all mean different things when we say “inclusive teaching” or “fostering diversity”
I love the specificity of that. One of my frustrations, that I hear from BIPOC faculty, is how often students of color are lumped together and, in a way, tokenized with DEI questions and interviews. I am all for DEI initiatives, but it seems as if we haven't fully figured it out.
Or, why not make a comment on my application materials where I talk specifically about DEI in my pedagogy? I am very specific there - why not make a conversation?
"students of color are lumped together . . ."
Bingo. Assuming that any particular pedagogicaly alternative will be helpful to all Black students, or all Latino/a students, or all first-gen students, is pretty clueless.
At least In first round interviews we usually have a set of predetermined questions that we have to ask each candidate. For this round, there is less conversation in first round interviews and we can’t stray from that set of predetermined questions. Each candidate has to get the same questions in the same order and we can’t really make comments on their answers, we just take notes. The second round interviews are when we can get more into specifics. Were your unresponsive faculty in a first round or a second round interview?
Next time try flipping the question onto them.
When you’re given 5-10 minutes at the end of interviews, ask for specific practices or initiatives that the faculty in this department are pursuing to meaningfully address DEIA issues and build a more inclusive campus.
It keeps them on their toes and makes you look genuinely concerned and interested in the topic.
I almost did that when I was asked what my philosophy and experience in with the recruitment of BIPOC students. Like, what are YOU doing and then let's talk about it.
I think you're right in your 2nd to last paragraph - these interviewers likely aren't doing any thing different than they were 10 years ago but expect you to have some secret sauce to magically fix their departmental issues. I just chaired a search committee and your answers to these questions would have been just fine and not harmed your candidacy.
The "How do you engage with students of color?" question is kind of ridiculous, in my opinion, but I'm not surprised they ask some variant of this. I think the best answers are already in line with what you are proposing / doing - inclusive practices that engage URM students also effectively engage all students.
FWIW, once you are hired these departments will likely do zero follow-through on DEI issues when it comes to reappointment and tenure decisions, except as a cudgel to beat you with if they don't like you for other reasons. I know that's cynical, but it has been my experience in academia.
I guess my question would be 'who do you mean when you say 'inclusive'?' Because when I hear that term, in my student population I think inclusive means things like different socioeconomic backgrounds (so not presuming everyone went to camp over the summer, etc) and neurodivergence (we have a LOT of autistic/adhd). When they say diversity, do they mean diversity of thought, where you'll think about how to engage both Muslim and Christian students as well as atheists? Do they mean diversity like Trump vs Biden supporters? Without them giving you a clear definition of what those terms meant in the demographic of that college, it's not your fault you could not formulate a satisfactory answer. They don't seem to know it themselves!
I agree with you, but the majority don’t. They simply mean people who aren’t white. I’ve become so disgusted and disappointed by the poverty of actual thought by these chowderheaded ‘experts’ that at work when I hear DEI, I walk the other way. I’m starting to think that I’m not as alone as I thought I was.
I would break these down into data points: don’t just say you expanded your book list, talk about how you included these books in a discussion. For instance, as someone who teaches literature, I talk about how I used textiles, e.g. the AIDS memorial quilt and Black story quilts, to display how there are many different forms of telling stories which move beyond the traditional text.
Not answering your question, and probably not helpful: In my state, talking about DEI stuff with applicants or asking for this sort of stuff is now illegal for state schools. As an off the charts progressive, It is strange to agree with the Republicans, who pushed this for reasons that I probably disagree with in part.
The fact that you have been told “swapping out your reading list with BIPOC authors is the bare minimum”, (And honestly, “grading holistically“ Sounds pretty sketchy And rife with potential bias in practice.) is one of the reasons I am glad for this change. In my college, the people pushing for these DEI practices Most vocally are embarrassingly sloppy thinkers, to put it nicely. When the Republicans started trying to stamp out DEI practices in the state schools, I found myself thinking, “ No surprise, what did you expect.” Weirdly, it is the same DEI advocates who claimed that conservatives are anti-science And trying to dumb down America. Rant over.
Question for you and anyone else: Among progressive types, Has Sentiment changed in the past year on what I And apparently others see as Performative and Intellectually bankrupt Aspects of DEI advocacy in a higher education? My comment would’ve been nuked here a couple of years ago.
Progressive here. Yes a lot of us are done with it (primarily the younger faculty), but, at least in my institution, everyone is terrified to say it out loud or advocate for any different approach. for fear of being labeled "anti DEI" which is a great way to ensure you never see tenure. I understand why the push for DEI was needed. I understand that there are students who have been raised on a very narrow world view and are in desperate need of encounters with different perspectives and people who don't look and live like them. All of those things are still true. But many well intentioned DEI initiatives have turned performative and are often spaces of white people virtue signaling and out-DEI-ing each other. I am friends with Black faculty members who have shared that they are just *done* being lectured by their white colleagues that they should feel a certain way or share their experiences in a certain way. (One highly respected colleague just took an industry job for this reason. She was doing phenomenal research and well known in her field but at our institution, every other week, she was asked to come speak about something from a "Black perspective.") Our students are done with the tokenism (fun fact: got dinged on an observation for not asking the disabled student in my class how people like her feel about something. Absolutely not. Will not tokenize a student to check a DEI box) - and yes, they do notice. I am personally done with being asked how everything links back to DEI in every single meeting and feeling pressure to say the "right" buzzwords versus *actually* practicing DEI in my classroom. I absolutely believe that this comes from a well intentioned place and that doing nothing probably isn't ideal either but I'm shocked to find myself agreeing with conservative friends on this one. The groupthink, virtue signaling, and performative nature that has become what were once well-intentioned DEI initiatives are just out of control.
I think a lot of people feel this way but when so much of higher ed is political, absolutely nobody without a hell of a lot of job security is going to be the one to say it. I think it will continue for quite a while in most places.
I was legitimately done when a very influential member of my field called me and a bunch of people out for not reposting some article she shared and calling us all racists for it who aren't "doing the work." When she posted that article I was volunteering to keep racist protestors from getting too near students who were receiving NAACP scholarships that day, outside, downtown, when the police said they couldn't spare anybody. :( Action being less valued than empty freaking posts online is stupid.
It was actually terrifying, she has a lot of power. I also didn't want to post online about protecting my students because it could invite more harassment for them. I've backed off being nationally involved in general because it is exhausting to keep up with whatever everyone is pissed off at.
> (fun fact: got dinged on an observation for not asking the disabled student in my class how people like her feel about something.
Always fun when, in an effort to create an inclusive environment, the powers that be actually think it's a good idea to *single out* the people that are different...
So many people were weaponizing DEI for ladder-climbing or building their personal brand, especially on social media. Then they would cannibalize each other for not being DEI-enough.
I’m younger and progressive. Like others commenting here I see a need for DEI and advocacy. However I’m also seeing some pretty potent backlash among older and more conservative colleagues and students to the point where I’d say they’ve become less tolerant in reaction to these initiatives. Is that on them, sure, but I think the way it has been implemented has alienated folks and if it’s not reaching a wider group of people is it really accomplishing what it set out to do?
Edit, not reaching
I’ve seen this too at the school I’m leaving (not because of this—I’m moving from adjunct to TT). The department is predominantly progressive and the various DEI initiatives and conversations are essentially alienating anyone (mostly students) who aren’t radically progressive. In other words, moderately progressive views get attacked and create more division. It feels like “the work” has become more about winning than accepting the complex reality of gray areas, small victories, and accepting inevitabilities of difference.
The mistake was in combining, under the banner of DEI, some really essential practices like tracking the numbers of marginalized facutly/students and planning specific outreach activities that will cast a wider net for new faculty/students, versus purely performative stuff. Inclusive teaching practices come somewhere in the middle; everyone subscribes to the concept, but their effectiveness can't be measured. And I will add that the idea that every student must have an educational exerience that is tailored to their identity, at all times, is wishful thinking and might not even be a good thing for the student. Most students can feel included and their background respected even in a class that has to cover material that is foreign to them, if the teaching is good.
Thank you for explaining decolonization below. It's a use of the word that I was not familiar with. (I didn't see your comment in time and now that thread is locked, so am thanking you here.)
Yes and no. I think many of us still want to support all students in succeeding and are committed to a range of practices and strategies to do that. I don't assume all faculty and admin share that commitment, so there will continue to be DEI advocacy of all shapes and sizes ranging from the informed and intentional to the performative and bankrupt. That's the case in any social setting, including on the anti-DEI side. But to your point, I do think the wheat is being separated from the chaf in the DEI space in terms of the underlying arguments and logic and that's a good thing overall. I think most faculty want their students to succeed but need strategies and tactics conveyed in meaningful and sound ways that make sense to them and the DEI apparatuses at most places have not taken that seriously. So at least among what you'd probably call the DEI advocacy folks, I do see a new sentiment in better making the case, engaging with patience and good faith, and trying to keep our eye on the prize which is student success, better universities where faculty can do their work in healthy environments, and hopefully a better society overall.
**Edit: spelling
I know of a few institutions (mostly smaller ones) where they are saying “yikes, let’s take a breather, we may have gone about this in the wrong way in order to quickly fit into a trend.” I know of one SLAC that fired their DEI person (who they hired two years ago in a very rushed manger to appease mostly faculty sentiment) because the person is simply not very good at their job. Apparently there were a lot of reservations about this person among the hiring committee from the start, but they hired her anyway because faculty was demanding someone, anyone.
So, yes, I see recalibration happening.
>Has Sentiment changed in the past year on what I And apparently others see as Performative and Intellectually bankrupt Aspects of DEI advocacy in a higher education? My comment would’ve been nuked here a couple of years ago.
Yes, to at least some degree. The main reason is that some of the DEI efforts have gone off the rails to such a degree that it's literally impossible to pretend that the emperor is wearing clothes anymore. These are the ones that are discussed and ridiculed in the media, and rightly so. The problem, of course, is that sensible, defensible efforts to improve DEI get thrown out with the bathwater containing the sensational performative nonsense. Do you want to increase the diversity of the faculty in your department? Then make sure to advertise the opening with minority professional organizations, at minority-serving educational institutions, and so forth, in addition to your normal recruitment channels. Perfectly reasonable actions to take. But then to make your finalists defend themselves in front of some kind of quasi- (or overtly) adversarial DEI Inquisition during their interview so that you can verify they buy into the correct Groupthink? Not reasonable, and must stop immediately. Sounds to me that OP's experience was more along the lines of the stuff that needs to stop.
Thank you for all of your thoughts on this issue. Honest question: what is the purpose of advertising in minority specific outlets. I have shared several searches now. Been on several searches. Like most places, posting in these specific outlets has been discussed and happened. how is that different than the other performative Empty gestures? Who won earth is seriously relying only on minority specific outlets for job advertisements? I bet nobody, and if they did, that strikes me as being pretty weird. Explanations I’ve heard is that it signals a commitment to DEI. But that seems like a pretty empty gesture. Thoughts?
>how is that different than the other performative Empty gestures? Who won earth is seriously relying only on minority specific outlets for job advertisements?
Of all the nonsense that goes on in academic hiring, this doesn't seem performative to me at all. It actually strikes me as pretty concrete. If I want to hire a chemist, then I could post my job announcement to Nature, but the overwhelming majority of scientists on Nature aren't chemists. If I want to increase my candidate pool of Hispanic chemists, then I could post my job ad to the American Chemical Society. Almost everyone there is a chemist, but comparatively few are Hispanic chemists. So if I want to increase the applicant pool of Hispanic chemists, I think I'd get the most bang for my buck by submitting the job ad to a professional society enriched in that demographic.
Almost certainly, nobody relies on one single outlet when trying to find jobs. Nevertheless, this type of thing is a numbers game. The more you get your announcement out there, in spaces where it's likely to be seen by candidates you're interested in, the better chance you'll have of actually landing such a candidate.
Of course, all this is merely an effort to get qualified candidates to actually apply. Once the applications are submitted, may the best candidate win, regardless of demographic characteristics.
Interesting, thank you for all that. In my Field there are maybe three, For example, higher ed jobs or Chronicle, but really one primary location for all job ads. If any job seeker is not paying attention to those, there is something wrong with their approach And would suggest they Very disconnected from how things work.
I'll bite. The thought process, at least from my view, is that there is a sizeable amount of research that has documented how students with all sorts of minortized identities are, at best dismissed and made invisible in classroom spaces by instructors and at worst harmed in psychological and emotional ways as they have to interact with instructors who are poorly or never trained on how to teach a wide range of learners. So the premise of asking these questions, in general, I think is sound.
Like with most things the implementation and execution sits on a spectrum and it sounds like you have experienced committees who are poorly or not trained themselves and as a result may not be grounded in the research and logic of the question, just the sound bits and performance - and that's also frustrating.
That said, I would recommend the following:
* Review the definitions they have for those terms either within the unit, the school, or the university DEI site. If they don't have definitions (which most units don't), be clear in your preliminary response about how you're currently thinking about those terms (bonus if you can speak to what scholarship in your discipline or from other fields informs that thinking) and then continue to provide the examples you shared but done so in a way that connects to your definition. If they do have a definition, tracing your practices to their formulation of things could help close the gap.
* I think your answer could also benefit from some more introspection about whether and how you remain committed to learning about yourself in relation to others and your students. Even the way you say "I was told simply swapping xyz" suggests that your journey to learn this is still externally driven and that may be coming across subtlety that this is more of an annoying box to check then something that is personally important to you in terms of creating the best learning environment for all students. I doubt this is true for you because you're trying to figure this out in good faith (I think) and I commend that, but I'm just saying that is how you may be coming across if none of your answers narrate your own journey and areas where you've grown or still have to grow.
* To be more concrete, the nit I could also pick with your response is that going from lectures to say a flipped classroom or balancing reading with other media is absolutely sound pedagogy on the one hand. But you can still have assignments or implement those methods in ways that are marginalizing to some students or that are done in ways that convey that some scholars and scholarship is the norm when there are different perspectives. For example, if you're mean to all right handed students in the context of different teaching methods, then the diverse methods are irrelevant. You say that you treat students of color with humanity, but what does that mean? How is that operationalized? How do you hold yourself accountable to that commitment? If you're active in this subreddit, you can easily see that it would be unwise to assume that all professors share an understanding of what a student's humaness means, much less how to act accordingly and whether they are okay with being held accountable to when that sense is broken. So expecting that to be a sufficient response, even setting aside the committee's performative DEI stuff, I think potentially just highlights some capacity for you to be more detailed and specific while still trying to convey what seems like your very student centered approach.
* Similarly, for instance, if I have readings about basket weaving written by all left handed people and then I change it to some readings by left handed people and some podcasts by left handed people all about basket weaving, sure my delivery style changed but how much did my underlying content or who the content is created by diversify? And if I am in a field where left handed people have gotten the over abundance of attention and credit and basket weaving is the norm but there are right handed people who have important things to say, and also increasingly under water quilting is an important concept, you telling me that you use diverse teaching styles says little about your attention to what's conveyed by those teaching styles. So I would just clarify that within your diverse teaching methods, you also pay attention to who and what is being taught, what era those concepts are from, the different ways the concepts are taught about, debates about the concept, and the implications of those concepts for different people and geographys. You're right that it's not just about swapping authors but what I just shared goes far beyond that, where swapping authors is part of a series of diversifying decisions that speak to different aspects of what will resonate with students. So sagin, even if you think it's best to keep all left handed scholars, at least spending time to debate and talk about what that might mean for right handed students and their communities, demostrates additional insight into your thinking.
* Regarding the inclusion part, what if I didn't ask you "how's that inclusive" and rather asked a combination of the following: how would you respond: what statements do you use on your syllabus? How do those statements convey your philosophy and expectations around an inclusive environment? How do you build your classroom community in both formal and informal ways? Why is this important to you? What have you seen work well or poorly and what changes have you made? Do you learn students names? If so, how and why is that important to you? How accessible and responsive are you to students? Why is being accessible and responsive important? How do you setup your classroom? How is your weekly classroom setup reflective of different learners and the type of learning environment you desire? How do you provide feedback that encourages students? How do you invite and navigate student feedback of you, especially criticism? For students with different identities and backgrounds, how do you think through ways to vary your teaching (your response here about it assuming theatre knowledge is good). How familiar are you with campus supports for students and how willing or what experiences do you have connecting students with those resources beyond what's minammou required for faculty? My point with all those questions is that there's no secret sauce to inclusion and it requires a ton of inputs and even with good faith efforts on all those things and more, a student may still not feel like they belong because of what's going on in their residence hall or in a student club. So I think the thinking is trying to speak to your awareness of the complexity and what you try to do but also acknowledging that it takes a whole community, department, university to support students and that you recognize the classroom is a major factor but it's only a part so you also want to keep working to understand the ecosystem of the student universe to best support them. Because what you don't want is for a student to be having great experiences in all parts of the university except for your class and for that to be the reason that they leave or transfer. So how do you recognize that helping them feel connected to you and your class is a series of intentional choices by you that is always being monitored by you and updated as you get to know students and yourself.
I hope this helps and best of luck to you! Edit: formatting and spelling.
I really like your response. Also, DEI(B) means different things to different people. Most agree it includes race/ethnicity. But gender, sexual orientation, class, and ability are in there too. Specifying which group the specific pedagogy, assessment and grading criteria, and/or student centered learning is targeted could help people understand how your answer fits the question.
Also, you can start your response with, “well, as the current research shows, just adding readings and representations of non-dominant groups alone isn’t effective. So what I do is…” End your response with feedback you’ve received from students and/or presentations you’ve done.
I love this answer.
I would just add that it may be helpful to think about inclusiveness and diversity through the lens of accessibility. What really helped me think through my inclusive learning approaches was reading about Universal Design for Learning - even if you don't follow everything, I find the principle behind it very sound, that making changes to include someone does not harm others' learning and can improve everyone's learning (e.g. having learning materials in more than one format or medium). Hogan and Sathy's book "Inclusive Teaching" is really helpful as well in thinking about this principle on a diversity level, without focusing only on racial inclusion - there's a shorter summary of their ideas online on The Chronicle of Higher Education website.
I wonder if it could also help to be more explicit about who is benefitting from certain practices. OP talks about not assuming people have seen a play. I think that's a great practice, and it specifically helps students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. That could be worth underlining.
Or even showing an understanding of some common barriers that suggests that they've read some literature around inclusive pedagogy, and are doing these interventions with those barriers in mind.
I can be more specific about that, but I also do not want to make the binary that those who come from middle/upper-class families are more aware of, in my case, theatre. Which is not the case.
> I think your answer could also benefit from some more introspection about whether and how you remain committed to learning about yourself in relation to others and your students. Even the way you say "I was told simply swapping xyz" suggests that your journey to learn this is still externally driven
thoughtcrime
Lol, maybe. But I wasn't trying to charge this in bad faith. I think good faith people are trying to figure this stuff out. It's difficult and confusing. I get that being told hey do this and then you do it and you still don't get the outcome you want is frustrating. I'm also suggesting that it can come across as not having thought through something for ones self (not saying OP hasn't) if one's response is effectively "XYZ group of people told me this is what I should do". All I'm saying and I think OP is there, is that they add some more insight into their thinking. "I learned in XYZ training that just swapping authors is the bare minimum, as I've continued to hone my stance and understanding on the topic and issue, I've also done A with outcomes BC, I've done D, with outcomes Eand F, and I've done G, with outcomes H and I. In the midst of making and implementing these changes, I've learned MNO about myself and something that I've delved more deeply into is QRS, which is a continued growth area for me and something I'm looking forward to collaborating with colleagues and the teaching and learning resources of the university to continue to develop"
My hypothetical response gets at the introspection part and hopefully that sheds more light and moves away from the thought crime framing to a good faith conversation about how to improve ones teaching and how one presents oneself in interview settings.
No that's fine; I think you had a thoughtful response. It's just funny to me that, for those who are not "converted" to the POV that these DEI interventions actually help, that these kinds of conversations can sound like a caricature of an "interview" with a commissar.
You don't control the pipeline of students enrolling in your courses. How will you create diversity? Seems like an unfair question.
I'm in STEM. If you can do calculus, then congrats, we welcome you. Most people can't. It doesn't matter to the bean counters.
This is something I think about a lot. Unless you're involved in outreach/recruitment/admissions, the students in class have already been filtered by who applied, who was admitted, and who ended up in your department. How do you play the hand you've been dealt is the question.
I'll never walk into an interview saying, "Hi, hire me and I'll fix all your diversity problems!" What I will say is that I want students from less-traditional backgrounds to know about and take advantage of opportunities to do research, apply to summer programs, and go to grad school. First-gen students and those from non-traditional backgrounds are much less likely to know about and take advantage of those opportunities.
I think the key is to be more specific. I was on a hiring committee this spring and we asked a similar question (though the term diversity can’t be used anymore in our state so we used other words instead). What we valued as a committee was specific examples instead of a long list of things you do. The more personal you can make it the better.
Mostly made up Example for the purpose of this comment:
“The college I work at has a lot of first generation college students. I had one student ask me what office hours were. That was when I realized a lot of terms we use in our syllabi aren’t exactly obvious to all students. Students who have parents who went to college may have someone to go to with questions, but first generation students may not. I now provide an explanation of words like this on the first day of class. I explain what office hours are for, email etiquette, and what I mean when I say I don’t respond to emails outside of business hours. I have a lot of students thank me now because nobody ever explained this to them before.”
This is interesting. I do something similar but never connected it to DEI pedagogy. I also talk about the writing center, writing guides, contact information for our subject-specific librarian, etc. But I did not do it for first-generation college students; some of my most unaware students come from upper economic backgrounds. But I can reposition this "101" time into DEI initiatives.
I don’t think it’s necessarily about reframing exactly what I said, but finding something in your teaching that’s easy enough to summarize well in the context of an interview that’s personal and specific. I have my own example of inclusivity that I give in real interviews that includes personal anecdotes and how this impacts my teaching. I won’t share that here because it’s personal and specific enough that it may dox me. The one I gave above is a mostly made up scenario.
This was my response. To me, those are basic "good pedagogy", which is important but isn't really a full answer to the question.
Good pedagogy is inclusive pedagogy, but creating an inclusive environment goes beyond just using good pedagogy.
The answers also come across (in the detail given in the OP) as very generic rather than some more specific, detailed examples of how you implement those things in a classroom.
Exactly. They need to use these as invitations to talk about their teaching practices and how they are effective across multiple angles, not just a generic reply.
When I ask these questions, I am thinking about how, for example, we have a lot of English language learners in our classes, and I want to know whether the candidate will obsess over their grammar or find ways to help them participate. I'm thinking about how we have students with disabilities and wondering if the candidate has experience with accessible design. I'm thinking about how we have Black students and queer students who absolutely want to read Black and queer authors and don't care if that's passe in some pedagogy circles. I'm thinking about how we have white students who sometimes say and write ignorant things (e.g. "racism was never a problem in the [overwhelmingly white] town I grew up in!") and I'm curious how the candidate responds to such statements.
I would add that if the candidate is unable to say "Black" or "gay" or "disability" or "ELL" or the like when discussing their approach to inclusivity, then I would probably question their ability to lead students in a productive discussion of Huck Finn or The Great Gatsby or Beloved.
You may also find the AEA Blog about DEI can give you some insightful talking points. [https://actorsequity.org/resources/diversity/diversityblog/](https://actorsequity.org/resources/diversity/diversityblog/)
Based on the ways I've seen internal observers evaluate classrooms at my school, I think a good addition could be to talk a bit about your personal process for determining what to change/when in response to your students. I've noticed observers seem to remark on things like "did you call on equal numbers of male vs female students", "did students of color seem to be participating and engaging at equal rates", "during group work, did you spend equal times with all the groups" etc. So if you don't talk about it already, you might add some wordsmithing about what type of thing you keep an eye out for in the classroom, how you try to safeguard against bias disproportionately affecting disadvantaged students, and what you might change if/when you notice a problem.
Could you start with “my learning on this subject suggests that simply expanding materials to include BIPOC notables in my field is a far as most people go. To that end, I consider it simply a first step” (then go on to say what you’ve been saying).
Since they likely think that first part of the extent of it, they might actually learn some best practices themselves.
I hate these questions because my real answers would probably get me eliminated from running for the job (bodily standing between Black students who were painting over all the pro-Trump, n-words, etc. stuff that was painted all over our campus the day after Trump was elected to protect them from administration and police; backing the Black Student Alliance in lawsuits against the administration; all but buying a baseball bat to protect a black student from a Chinese prof who kept sexually harassing her.....the list goes on). It pisses me off because I'm not exactly sure what people want with this answer. People who are actually doing the damn anti-racist work are going to be seen as troublemakers in largely white institutions, so you have to somehow come up with examples that are less meaningful that will make admins happy. It's freaking gross.
I would say highlight moments where you showed success in helping BIPOC students succeed. For example, collaborative, decolonizing research - creative works. One on one examples. Going to bat for students of color with admin. Or designing courses that place Latine studnets at the center and fostered growth (a Latine student lead or actor Im the real world). It’s about showing success for and with students. In many ways you’re being asked how you’re going to help decolonize the field that has privileged white scholars. It’s less about young person fix this and more about young person how are you going to help us make these spaces not oppressive. How have you shown this is a core aspect of your teaching and not an afterthought? I get that it probably feels unfair as you’re competing against BIPOC candidates who are undoubtedly doing great mentorship with students by nature of the student to faculty ratio in regards to race 1;10 white faculty to white students. 1:176 Latine faculty to Latine students. The reality is that a professor job is a highly in demand job and compositional diversity is a necessary priority for the demographic shift in America. You’re going to have to be truly excellent to get even the worst tenure track job, and while it may seem unfair, just like a person with rich parents is allowed more time to grow in college as they don’t have to work, BIPOC grad students and faculty have more opportunity to develop excellent mentorship skills with BIPOC students due to lived experience. So, you say you’ve treated people in a humanist fashion, prove it with examples of interacting with people, not course content, or show the impact of this course content on students (excerpts from evals etc..) You need to connect the dots, and frankly, if you honestly read your output and say it’s not enough, you are not even close to competing with BIPOC candidates in student mentorship, get off the job market and make sure you’re building that part of your resume by doing service work with BIPOC students at any level of education. Yes, work with trans, lgbtqia, and impoverished students is also important and should be highlighted, and the largest disparities in academia is the construction of a racist system that masquerades as anti racist. So, it’s a question of showing the evidence that you’re excellent and ready to mentor students who face racism all the time. This is the job. Honestly, changing course content or teaching to diverse learners is the bare minimum these days, so those answers are not impressive when compared to a BIPOC grad student who was honored with an award by the Black Student Alliance. So, the real question is how have you successfully contributed to the decolonization of our academic space.
Thanks for the link. I think it's a stretch to label our current academy a "colonized space" because another civilization's educational system (indeed the entire civilization) was wiped out centuries earlier. If an army flattens your house and another person builds a different house nearby, generations later, your house has not been invaded, however immoral it was for your house to have been destroyed. Even the College of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco seems to have been built new and was not a takeover of a Mayan, Aztec, or Inca school. But this is merely a semantic point. I see where you are coming from. Thank you.
I wondered about your use of "decolonization" when talking about higher ed. You answered my question. I wasn't persuaded that it was the right term, but I understood why you used it. I thanked you for answering my question. That's it. (Edit to remove words that might unintentionally seem inflammatory, because I truly am not arguing with you. Hope my edits succeed.)
I'm not the OP, and I do not seek your advice. I am just a person who was reading the discussion and was puzzled by your use of the word "decolonization," which seemed inapt. That's why I asked you about it. Directly. I accepted your answer, and thanked you for it.
Not sure why you felt the need to write another 1000+ words about my faulty assumptions and insufficiently direct question wording and logic chopping and what you hope we agree is part of our job and whatever else, but reddit is a perfectly ok place to express your opinion, so why not?
In this instance, decolonizing does not mean that a Eurocentric institution replaced an earlier one. It just means that today's academic spaces center Eurocentric traditions and do not make space for traditions that are non-Eurocentric. That is a debatable paradigm, but it is one that is current in some disciplines, at least by some people.
Even If I take away the debatable use, it literally doesn’t change my advice. If people want to get a job working with BIPOC students, you will need to show you’ve been successful at doing this. You want to teach stats, you have to know stats. Those who have experience are better job candidates. Those who don’t, aren’t. I feel this hate of DEI on here, but honestly, I’m a bit frustrated because my advice is on point. My rhetoric sucks, and watch out for logical chopping. Let’s stay focused on why this person isn’t getting hired, not my shitty rhetoric. .
No offense, but your answers are pretty sub-par and "basic". Why don't you try connecting more to the DEI question instead of just giving patent basic answers? Think about it critically- share something personal. It could be that your answers aren't coming off as genuine or authentic.
Flip the conversation back on the deaprtment.
Are we talking BA Acting or BFA Acting?
Straight Acting Concentration or Musical Theatre?
Are the students just granted admission or must they audition?
What are the DEI Expectations/Criteria for those auditions?
What is the current makeup of the department?
With respect to interviewing strategy, you might be talking too much about the nuts and bolts instead of truly signaling your alignment with DEI values.
The talk about how you cannot assume every student has read a play so you start at square one is truly excellent. That is one of the best ways of including that I know of. I have to assume that the people interviewing you do not understand what DEI really means.
For people like that you have to give them the basic stuff, since they are ignorant. For example, if this is an acting class, do students get to work on material that looks like them? Very often, BIPOC students graduate without ever playing a character written for someone of their own ethnicity.
Simple stuff, like learning to pronounce students names properly, using examples in class that all students can relate to, (for example, talking about playing outside rather than "in your backyard.") Just simple stuff that many of us do by instinct. It is still worth mentioning, because some people interviewing are not evaluating on principles but rather on a check-list of practices.
Sometimes if you do not reference the low-hanging fruit people do not think you know what you are doing.
Also, you say you talk about a variety of learners, but it sounds like you are talking about learning styles. You might want to say that you are doing that because students come from many different types of schools that taught them differently. Again, because not everyone interviewing you is knowledgeable.
[удалено]
"To celebrate our important and valued Muslim allies in the most dignified manner possible, we're setting up an all-day RaMcDonalds!!"
What type of racism?
If the people interviewing you don’t understand your answers and it seems that you will become the “DEI expert” or “DEI fixer” of the department, is that a place where you want to work/teach? Will those colleagues have any capacity to help you continue growing as an inclusive, equitable educator?
Yet, I am desperate for a job.
That’s fair. If you do take a job at such a place, it would be smart to keep looking for a job that will help you grow.
I've been on several hiring committees, but at my blue-state university asking about DEI is not a formal thing. Instead we ask "How do you approach teaching under-prepared students", which is actually our particular DEI concern (low SES students, first gen students). What we're looking for is this: "Last year when I taught x, students in demographic b struggled with c aspect of the course. Reflecting on this, I adjusted my pedagogy to do x instead of y, and the next semester students did much better on course objective z".
There are indeed cases where adjusting pedagogy can remove a barrier for a particular demographic group. One long-recognized example is that girls and women benefit from collaborative work, while boys and men benefit from competitions. Making sure there are elements of both in a course is helpful. This is all on the average of course, since there are plenty of men who collaborate enthusiastically and plenty of women who enjoy competition. Other demographics are also not monolithic in terms of what they benefit from most and what is off-putting to them. There are also cases where what's needed is not so much a different teaching modality as a quick and encouraging pipeline to tutoring or other academic support, when the problem is not so much an unhelpful teaching method as it is weak predecessor skills.
I think this is the key. Looking at the mission statements of the university and the department may be a way for OP to tailor their examples to what the committee is looking for. Many times we all mean different things when we say “inclusive teaching” or “fostering diversity”
I love the specificity of that. One of my frustrations, that I hear from BIPOC faculty, is how often students of color are lumped together and, in a way, tokenized with DEI questions and interviews. I am all for DEI initiatives, but it seems as if we haven't fully figured it out. Or, why not make a comment on my application materials where I talk specifically about DEI in my pedagogy? I am very specific there - why not make a conversation?
"students of color are lumped together . . ." Bingo. Assuming that any particular pedagogicaly alternative will be helpful to all Black students, or all Latino/a students, or all first-gen students, is pretty clueless.
At least In first round interviews we usually have a set of predetermined questions that we have to ask each candidate. For this round, there is less conversation in first round interviews and we can’t stray from that set of predetermined questions. Each candidate has to get the same questions in the same order and we can’t really make comments on their answers, we just take notes. The second round interviews are when we can get more into specifics. Were your unresponsive faculty in a first round or a second round interview?
Next time try flipping the question onto them. When you’re given 5-10 minutes at the end of interviews, ask for specific practices or initiatives that the faculty in this department are pursuing to meaningfully address DEIA issues and build a more inclusive campus. It keeps them on their toes and makes you look genuinely concerned and interested in the topic.
I almost did that when I was asked what my philosophy and experience in with the recruitment of BIPOC students. Like, what are YOU doing and then let's talk about it.
I think you're right in your 2nd to last paragraph - these interviewers likely aren't doing any thing different than they were 10 years ago but expect you to have some secret sauce to magically fix their departmental issues. I just chaired a search committee and your answers to these questions would have been just fine and not harmed your candidacy. The "How do you engage with students of color?" question is kind of ridiculous, in my opinion, but I'm not surprised they ask some variant of this. I think the best answers are already in line with what you are proposing / doing - inclusive practices that engage URM students also effectively engage all students. FWIW, once you are hired these departments will likely do zero follow-through on DEI issues when it comes to reappointment and tenure decisions, except as a cudgel to beat you with if they don't like you for other reasons. I know that's cynical, but it has been my experience in academia.
I guess my question would be 'who do you mean when you say 'inclusive'?' Because when I hear that term, in my student population I think inclusive means things like different socioeconomic backgrounds (so not presuming everyone went to camp over the summer, etc) and neurodivergence (we have a LOT of autistic/adhd). When they say diversity, do they mean diversity of thought, where you'll think about how to engage both Muslim and Christian students as well as atheists? Do they mean diversity like Trump vs Biden supporters? Without them giving you a clear definition of what those terms meant in the demographic of that college, it's not your fault you could not formulate a satisfactory answer. They don't seem to know it themselves!
I agree with you, but the majority don’t. They simply mean people who aren’t white. I’ve become so disgusted and disappointed by the poverty of actual thought by these chowderheaded ‘experts’ that at work when I hear DEI, I walk the other way. I’m starting to think that I’m not as alone as I thought I was.
I would break these down into data points: don’t just say you expanded your book list, talk about how you included these books in a discussion. For instance, as someone who teaches literature, I talk about how I used textiles, e.g. the AIDS memorial quilt and Black story quilts, to display how there are many different forms of telling stories which move beyond the traditional text.
Not answering your question, and probably not helpful: In my state, talking about DEI stuff with applicants or asking for this sort of stuff is now illegal for state schools. As an off the charts progressive, It is strange to agree with the Republicans, who pushed this for reasons that I probably disagree with in part. The fact that you have been told “swapping out your reading list with BIPOC authors is the bare minimum”, (And honestly, “grading holistically“ Sounds pretty sketchy And rife with potential bias in practice.) is one of the reasons I am glad for this change. In my college, the people pushing for these DEI practices Most vocally are embarrassingly sloppy thinkers, to put it nicely. When the Republicans started trying to stamp out DEI practices in the state schools, I found myself thinking, “ No surprise, what did you expect.” Weirdly, it is the same DEI advocates who claimed that conservatives are anti-science And trying to dumb down America. Rant over.
I was going to make the same comment, but you said it all. Kudos.
Question for you and anyone else: Among progressive types, Has Sentiment changed in the past year on what I And apparently others see as Performative and Intellectually bankrupt Aspects of DEI advocacy in a higher education? My comment would’ve been nuked here a couple of years ago.
Progressive here. Yes a lot of us are done with it (primarily the younger faculty), but, at least in my institution, everyone is terrified to say it out loud or advocate for any different approach. for fear of being labeled "anti DEI" which is a great way to ensure you never see tenure. I understand why the push for DEI was needed. I understand that there are students who have been raised on a very narrow world view and are in desperate need of encounters with different perspectives and people who don't look and live like them. All of those things are still true. But many well intentioned DEI initiatives have turned performative and are often spaces of white people virtue signaling and out-DEI-ing each other. I am friends with Black faculty members who have shared that they are just *done* being lectured by their white colleagues that they should feel a certain way or share their experiences in a certain way. (One highly respected colleague just took an industry job for this reason. She was doing phenomenal research and well known in her field but at our institution, every other week, she was asked to come speak about something from a "Black perspective.") Our students are done with the tokenism (fun fact: got dinged on an observation for not asking the disabled student in my class how people like her feel about something. Absolutely not. Will not tokenize a student to check a DEI box) - and yes, they do notice. I am personally done with being asked how everything links back to DEI in every single meeting and feeling pressure to say the "right" buzzwords versus *actually* practicing DEI in my classroom. I absolutely believe that this comes from a well intentioned place and that doing nothing probably isn't ideal either but I'm shocked to find myself agreeing with conservative friends on this one. The groupthink, virtue signaling, and performative nature that has become what were once well-intentioned DEI initiatives are just out of control. I think a lot of people feel this way but when so much of higher ed is political, absolutely nobody without a hell of a lot of job security is going to be the one to say it. I think it will continue for quite a while in most places.
I was legitimately done when a very influential member of my field called me and a bunch of people out for not reposting some article she shared and calling us all racists for it who aren't "doing the work." When she posted that article I was volunteering to keep racist protestors from getting too near students who were receiving NAACP scholarships that day, outside, downtown, when the police said they couldn't spare anybody. :( Action being less valued than empty freaking posts online is stupid.
This must have been a truly absurd experience. Cheers to you for doing the real work.
It was actually terrifying, she has a lot of power. I also didn't want to post online about protecting my students because it could invite more harassment for them. I've backed off being nationally involved in general because it is exhausting to keep up with whatever everyone is pissed off at.
> (fun fact: got dinged on an observation for not asking the disabled student in my class how people like her feel about something. Always fun when, in an effort to create an inclusive environment, the powers that be actually think it's a good idea to *single out* the people that are different...
Help your disabled students feel more included by engaging in microaggressions toward them!
So many people were weaponizing DEI for ladder-climbing or building their personal brand, especially on social media. Then they would cannibalize each other for not being DEI-enough.
I’m younger and progressive. Like others commenting here I see a need for DEI and advocacy. However I’m also seeing some pretty potent backlash among older and more conservative colleagues and students to the point where I’d say they’ve become less tolerant in reaction to these initiatives. Is that on them, sure, but I think the way it has been implemented has alienated folks and if it’s not reaching a wider group of people is it really accomplishing what it set out to do? Edit, not reaching
I’ve seen this too at the school I’m leaving (not because of this—I’m moving from adjunct to TT). The department is predominantly progressive and the various DEI initiatives and conversations are essentially alienating anyone (mostly students) who aren’t radically progressive. In other words, moderately progressive views get attacked and create more division. It feels like “the work” has become more about winning than accepting the complex reality of gray areas, small victories, and accepting inevitabilities of difference.
The mistake was in combining, under the banner of DEI, some really essential practices like tracking the numbers of marginalized facutly/students and planning specific outreach activities that will cast a wider net for new faculty/students, versus purely performative stuff. Inclusive teaching practices come somewhere in the middle; everyone subscribes to the concept, but their effectiveness can't be measured. And I will add that the idea that every student must have an educational exerience that is tailored to their identity, at all times, is wishful thinking and might not even be a good thing for the student. Most students can feel included and their background respected even in a class that has to cover material that is foreign to them, if the teaching is good.
Thank you for explaining decolonization below. It's a use of the word that I was not familiar with. (I didn't see your comment in time and now that thread is locked, so am thanking you here.)
Yes and no. I think many of us still want to support all students in succeeding and are committed to a range of practices and strategies to do that. I don't assume all faculty and admin share that commitment, so there will continue to be DEI advocacy of all shapes and sizes ranging from the informed and intentional to the performative and bankrupt. That's the case in any social setting, including on the anti-DEI side. But to your point, I do think the wheat is being separated from the chaf in the DEI space in terms of the underlying arguments and logic and that's a good thing overall. I think most faculty want their students to succeed but need strategies and tactics conveyed in meaningful and sound ways that make sense to them and the DEI apparatuses at most places have not taken that seriously. So at least among what you'd probably call the DEI advocacy folks, I do see a new sentiment in better making the case, engaging with patience and good faith, and trying to keep our eye on the prize which is student success, better universities where faculty can do their work in healthy environments, and hopefully a better society overall. **Edit: spelling
I know of a few institutions (mostly smaller ones) where they are saying “yikes, let’s take a breather, we may have gone about this in the wrong way in order to quickly fit into a trend.” I know of one SLAC that fired their DEI person (who they hired two years ago in a very rushed manger to appease mostly faculty sentiment) because the person is simply not very good at their job. Apparently there were a lot of reservations about this person among the hiring committee from the start, but they hired her anyway because faculty was demanding someone, anyone. So, yes, I see recalibration happening.
>Has Sentiment changed in the past year on what I And apparently others see as Performative and Intellectually bankrupt Aspects of DEI advocacy in a higher education? My comment would’ve been nuked here a couple of years ago. Yes, to at least some degree. The main reason is that some of the DEI efforts have gone off the rails to such a degree that it's literally impossible to pretend that the emperor is wearing clothes anymore. These are the ones that are discussed and ridiculed in the media, and rightly so. The problem, of course, is that sensible, defensible efforts to improve DEI get thrown out with the bathwater containing the sensational performative nonsense. Do you want to increase the diversity of the faculty in your department? Then make sure to advertise the opening with minority professional organizations, at minority-serving educational institutions, and so forth, in addition to your normal recruitment channels. Perfectly reasonable actions to take. But then to make your finalists defend themselves in front of some kind of quasi- (or overtly) adversarial DEI Inquisition during their interview so that you can verify they buy into the correct Groupthink? Not reasonable, and must stop immediately. Sounds to me that OP's experience was more along the lines of the stuff that needs to stop.
Thank you for all of your thoughts on this issue. Honest question: what is the purpose of advertising in minority specific outlets. I have shared several searches now. Been on several searches. Like most places, posting in these specific outlets has been discussed and happened. how is that different than the other performative Empty gestures? Who won earth is seriously relying only on minority specific outlets for job advertisements? I bet nobody, and if they did, that strikes me as being pretty weird. Explanations I’ve heard is that it signals a commitment to DEI. But that seems like a pretty empty gesture. Thoughts?
>how is that different than the other performative Empty gestures? Who won earth is seriously relying only on minority specific outlets for job advertisements? Of all the nonsense that goes on in academic hiring, this doesn't seem performative to me at all. It actually strikes me as pretty concrete. If I want to hire a chemist, then I could post my job announcement to Nature, but the overwhelming majority of scientists on Nature aren't chemists. If I want to increase my candidate pool of Hispanic chemists, then I could post my job ad to the American Chemical Society. Almost everyone there is a chemist, but comparatively few are Hispanic chemists. So if I want to increase the applicant pool of Hispanic chemists, I think I'd get the most bang for my buck by submitting the job ad to a professional society enriched in that demographic. Almost certainly, nobody relies on one single outlet when trying to find jobs. Nevertheless, this type of thing is a numbers game. The more you get your announcement out there, in spaces where it's likely to be seen by candidates you're interested in, the better chance you'll have of actually landing such a candidate. Of course, all this is merely an effort to get qualified candidates to actually apply. Once the applications are submitted, may the best candidate win, regardless of demographic characteristics.
Interesting, thank you for all that. In my Field there are maybe three, For example, higher ed jobs or Chronicle, but really one primary location for all job ads. If any job seeker is not paying attention to those, there is something wrong with their approach And would suggest they Very disconnected from how things work.
👏👏 One hundo
> it is the same DEI advocates who claimed that conservatives are anti-science And trying to dumb down America they're not wrong, not by a long shot.
I just, like, wanna teach my subject matter, man. To whoever wants to learn it?
So much this. I wish DEI proponents could see how much performative virtue signaling gets in the way of their stated goals.
The Dude abides, man.
I'll bite. The thought process, at least from my view, is that there is a sizeable amount of research that has documented how students with all sorts of minortized identities are, at best dismissed and made invisible in classroom spaces by instructors and at worst harmed in psychological and emotional ways as they have to interact with instructors who are poorly or never trained on how to teach a wide range of learners. So the premise of asking these questions, in general, I think is sound. Like with most things the implementation and execution sits on a spectrum and it sounds like you have experienced committees who are poorly or not trained themselves and as a result may not be grounded in the research and logic of the question, just the sound bits and performance - and that's also frustrating. That said, I would recommend the following: * Review the definitions they have for those terms either within the unit, the school, or the university DEI site. If they don't have definitions (which most units don't), be clear in your preliminary response about how you're currently thinking about those terms (bonus if you can speak to what scholarship in your discipline or from other fields informs that thinking) and then continue to provide the examples you shared but done so in a way that connects to your definition. If they do have a definition, tracing your practices to their formulation of things could help close the gap. * I think your answer could also benefit from some more introspection about whether and how you remain committed to learning about yourself in relation to others and your students. Even the way you say "I was told simply swapping xyz" suggests that your journey to learn this is still externally driven and that may be coming across subtlety that this is more of an annoying box to check then something that is personally important to you in terms of creating the best learning environment for all students. I doubt this is true for you because you're trying to figure this out in good faith (I think) and I commend that, but I'm just saying that is how you may be coming across if none of your answers narrate your own journey and areas where you've grown or still have to grow. * To be more concrete, the nit I could also pick with your response is that going from lectures to say a flipped classroom or balancing reading with other media is absolutely sound pedagogy on the one hand. But you can still have assignments or implement those methods in ways that are marginalizing to some students or that are done in ways that convey that some scholars and scholarship is the norm when there are different perspectives. For example, if you're mean to all right handed students in the context of different teaching methods, then the diverse methods are irrelevant. You say that you treat students of color with humanity, but what does that mean? How is that operationalized? How do you hold yourself accountable to that commitment? If you're active in this subreddit, you can easily see that it would be unwise to assume that all professors share an understanding of what a student's humaness means, much less how to act accordingly and whether they are okay with being held accountable to when that sense is broken. So expecting that to be a sufficient response, even setting aside the committee's performative DEI stuff, I think potentially just highlights some capacity for you to be more detailed and specific while still trying to convey what seems like your very student centered approach. * Similarly, for instance, if I have readings about basket weaving written by all left handed people and then I change it to some readings by left handed people and some podcasts by left handed people all about basket weaving, sure my delivery style changed but how much did my underlying content or who the content is created by diversify? And if I am in a field where left handed people have gotten the over abundance of attention and credit and basket weaving is the norm but there are right handed people who have important things to say, and also increasingly under water quilting is an important concept, you telling me that you use diverse teaching styles says little about your attention to what's conveyed by those teaching styles. So I would just clarify that within your diverse teaching methods, you also pay attention to who and what is being taught, what era those concepts are from, the different ways the concepts are taught about, debates about the concept, and the implications of those concepts for different people and geographys. You're right that it's not just about swapping authors but what I just shared goes far beyond that, where swapping authors is part of a series of diversifying decisions that speak to different aspects of what will resonate with students. So sagin, even if you think it's best to keep all left handed scholars, at least spending time to debate and talk about what that might mean for right handed students and their communities, demostrates additional insight into your thinking. * Regarding the inclusion part, what if I didn't ask you "how's that inclusive" and rather asked a combination of the following: how would you respond: what statements do you use on your syllabus? How do those statements convey your philosophy and expectations around an inclusive environment? How do you build your classroom community in both formal and informal ways? Why is this important to you? What have you seen work well or poorly and what changes have you made? Do you learn students names? If so, how and why is that important to you? How accessible and responsive are you to students? Why is being accessible and responsive important? How do you setup your classroom? How is your weekly classroom setup reflective of different learners and the type of learning environment you desire? How do you provide feedback that encourages students? How do you invite and navigate student feedback of you, especially criticism? For students with different identities and backgrounds, how do you think through ways to vary your teaching (your response here about it assuming theatre knowledge is good). How familiar are you with campus supports for students and how willing or what experiences do you have connecting students with those resources beyond what's minammou required for faculty? My point with all those questions is that there's no secret sauce to inclusion and it requires a ton of inputs and even with good faith efforts on all those things and more, a student may still not feel like they belong because of what's going on in their residence hall or in a student club. So I think the thinking is trying to speak to your awareness of the complexity and what you try to do but also acknowledging that it takes a whole community, department, university to support students and that you recognize the classroom is a major factor but it's only a part so you also want to keep working to understand the ecosystem of the student universe to best support them. Because what you don't want is for a student to be having great experiences in all parts of the university except for your class and for that to be the reason that they leave or transfer. So how do you recognize that helping them feel connected to you and your class is a series of intentional choices by you that is always being monitored by you and updated as you get to know students and yourself. I hope this helps and best of luck to you! Edit: formatting and spelling.
I really like your response. Also, DEI(B) means different things to different people. Most agree it includes race/ethnicity. But gender, sexual orientation, class, and ability are in there too. Specifying which group the specific pedagogy, assessment and grading criteria, and/or student centered learning is targeted could help people understand how your answer fits the question. Also, you can start your response with, “well, as the current research shows, just adding readings and representations of non-dominant groups alone isn’t effective. So what I do is…” End your response with feedback you’ve received from students and/or presentations you’ve done.
I love this answer. I would just add that it may be helpful to think about inclusiveness and diversity through the lens of accessibility. What really helped me think through my inclusive learning approaches was reading about Universal Design for Learning - even if you don't follow everything, I find the principle behind it very sound, that making changes to include someone does not harm others' learning and can improve everyone's learning (e.g. having learning materials in more than one format or medium). Hogan and Sathy's book "Inclusive Teaching" is really helpful as well in thinking about this principle on a diversity level, without focusing only on racial inclusion - there's a shorter summary of their ideas online on The Chronicle of Higher Education website.
I wonder if it could also help to be more explicit about who is benefitting from certain practices. OP talks about not assuming people have seen a play. I think that's a great practice, and it specifically helps students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. That could be worth underlining.
Or even showing an understanding of some common barriers that suggests that they've read some literature around inclusive pedagogy, and are doing these interventions with those barriers in mind.
I can be more specific about that, but I also do not want to make the binary that those who come from middle/upper-class families are more aware of, in my case, theatre. Which is not the case.
> I think your answer could also benefit from some more introspection about whether and how you remain committed to learning about yourself in relation to others and your students. Even the way you say "I was told simply swapping xyz" suggests that your journey to learn this is still externally driven thoughtcrime
Lol, maybe. But I wasn't trying to charge this in bad faith. I think good faith people are trying to figure this stuff out. It's difficult and confusing. I get that being told hey do this and then you do it and you still don't get the outcome you want is frustrating. I'm also suggesting that it can come across as not having thought through something for ones self (not saying OP hasn't) if one's response is effectively "XYZ group of people told me this is what I should do". All I'm saying and I think OP is there, is that they add some more insight into their thinking. "I learned in XYZ training that just swapping authors is the bare minimum, as I've continued to hone my stance and understanding on the topic and issue, I've also done A with outcomes BC, I've done D, with outcomes Eand F, and I've done G, with outcomes H and I. In the midst of making and implementing these changes, I've learned MNO about myself and something that I've delved more deeply into is QRS, which is a continued growth area for me and something I'm looking forward to collaborating with colleagues and the teaching and learning resources of the university to continue to develop" My hypothetical response gets at the introspection part and hopefully that sheds more light and moves away from the thought crime framing to a good faith conversation about how to improve ones teaching and how one presents oneself in interview settings.
No that's fine; I think you had a thoughtful response. It's just funny to me that, for those who are not "converted" to the POV that these DEI interventions actually help, that these kinds of conversations can sound like a caricature of an "interview" with a commissar.
>I often feel that I need to rapid fire say DEI terminology for 2 minutes to perform my "on board-ness" with DEI. Bingo
This is why DEI is going bye-bye. Most people don't even understand what it entails and those who "do" use it as a blunt instrument.
I’m convinced that there are no correct ways to answer.
You don't control the pipeline of students enrolling in your courses. How will you create diversity? Seems like an unfair question. I'm in STEM. If you can do calculus, then congrats, we welcome you. Most people can't. It doesn't matter to the bean counters.
This is something I think about a lot. Unless you're involved in outreach/recruitment/admissions, the students in class have already been filtered by who applied, who was admitted, and who ended up in your department. How do you play the hand you've been dealt is the question. I'll never walk into an interview saying, "Hi, hire me and I'll fix all your diversity problems!" What I will say is that I want students from less-traditional backgrounds to know about and take advantage of opportunities to do research, apply to summer programs, and go to grad school. First-gen students and those from non-traditional backgrounds are much less likely to know about and take advantage of those opportunities.
I have been asked about BIPOC recruitment in multiple interviews.
You're a content specialist. Someone else's job is to recruit.
It's actually very common in arts programing. We recruit like sports teams, just without their funding.
I think the key is to be more specific. I was on a hiring committee this spring and we asked a similar question (though the term diversity can’t be used anymore in our state so we used other words instead). What we valued as a committee was specific examples instead of a long list of things you do. The more personal you can make it the better. Mostly made up Example for the purpose of this comment: “The college I work at has a lot of first generation college students. I had one student ask me what office hours were. That was when I realized a lot of terms we use in our syllabi aren’t exactly obvious to all students. Students who have parents who went to college may have someone to go to with questions, but first generation students may not. I now provide an explanation of words like this on the first day of class. I explain what office hours are for, email etiquette, and what I mean when I say I don’t respond to emails outside of business hours. I have a lot of students thank me now because nobody ever explained this to them before.”
This is interesting. I do something similar but never connected it to DEI pedagogy. I also talk about the writing center, writing guides, contact information for our subject-specific librarian, etc. But I did not do it for first-generation college students; some of my most unaware students come from upper economic backgrounds. But I can reposition this "101" time into DEI initiatives.
I don’t think it’s necessarily about reframing exactly what I said, but finding something in your teaching that’s easy enough to summarize well in the context of an interview that’s personal and specific. I have my own example of inclusivity that I give in real interviews that includes personal anecdotes and how this impacts my teaching. I won’t share that here because it’s personal and specific enough that it may dox me. The one I gave above is a mostly made up scenario.
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This was my response. To me, those are basic "good pedagogy", which is important but isn't really a full answer to the question. Good pedagogy is inclusive pedagogy, but creating an inclusive environment goes beyond just using good pedagogy. The answers also come across (in the detail given in the OP) as very generic rather than some more specific, detailed examples of how you implement those things in a classroom.
Exactly. They need to use these as invitations to talk about their teaching practices and how they are effective across multiple angles, not just a generic reply.
When I ask these questions, I am thinking about how, for example, we have a lot of English language learners in our classes, and I want to know whether the candidate will obsess over their grammar or find ways to help them participate. I'm thinking about how we have students with disabilities and wondering if the candidate has experience with accessible design. I'm thinking about how we have Black students and queer students who absolutely want to read Black and queer authors and don't care if that's passe in some pedagogy circles. I'm thinking about how we have white students who sometimes say and write ignorant things (e.g. "racism was never a problem in the [overwhelmingly white] town I grew up in!") and I'm curious how the candidate responds to such statements. I would add that if the candidate is unable to say "Black" or "gay" or "disability" or "ELL" or the like when discussing their approach to inclusivity, then I would probably question their ability to lead students in a productive discussion of Huck Finn or The Great Gatsby or Beloved.
You may also find the AEA Blog about DEI can give you some insightful talking points. [https://actorsequity.org/resources/diversity/diversityblog/](https://actorsequity.org/resources/diversity/diversityblog/)
Based on the ways I've seen internal observers evaluate classrooms at my school, I think a good addition could be to talk a bit about your personal process for determining what to change/when in response to your students. I've noticed observers seem to remark on things like "did you call on equal numbers of male vs female students", "did students of color seem to be participating and engaging at equal rates", "during group work, did you spend equal times with all the groups" etc. So if you don't talk about it already, you might add some wordsmithing about what type of thing you keep an eye out for in the classroom, how you try to safeguard against bias disproportionately affecting disadvantaged students, and what you might change if/when you notice a problem.
Could you start with “my learning on this subject suggests that simply expanding materials to include BIPOC notables in my field is a far as most people go. To that end, I consider it simply a first step” (then go on to say what you’ve been saying). Since they likely think that first part of the extent of it, they might actually learn some best practices themselves.
Sometimes I’m glad we never really adopted the DEI statement and interview questions for applicants at my U.
DEI 🙄
I hate these questions because my real answers would probably get me eliminated from running for the job (bodily standing between Black students who were painting over all the pro-Trump, n-words, etc. stuff that was painted all over our campus the day after Trump was elected to protect them from administration and police; backing the Black Student Alliance in lawsuits against the administration; all but buying a baseball bat to protect a black student from a Chinese prof who kept sexually harassing her.....the list goes on). It pisses me off because I'm not exactly sure what people want with this answer. People who are actually doing the damn anti-racist work are going to be seen as troublemakers in largely white institutions, so you have to somehow come up with examples that are less meaningful that will make admins happy. It's freaking gross.
I would say highlight moments where you showed success in helping BIPOC students succeed. For example, collaborative, decolonizing research - creative works. One on one examples. Going to bat for students of color with admin. Or designing courses that place Latine studnets at the center and fostered growth (a Latine student lead or actor Im the real world). It’s about showing success for and with students. In many ways you’re being asked how you’re going to help decolonize the field that has privileged white scholars. It’s less about young person fix this and more about young person how are you going to help us make these spaces not oppressive. How have you shown this is a core aspect of your teaching and not an afterthought? I get that it probably feels unfair as you’re competing against BIPOC candidates who are undoubtedly doing great mentorship with students by nature of the student to faculty ratio in regards to race 1;10 white faculty to white students. 1:176 Latine faculty to Latine students. The reality is that a professor job is a highly in demand job and compositional diversity is a necessary priority for the demographic shift in America. You’re going to have to be truly excellent to get even the worst tenure track job, and while it may seem unfair, just like a person with rich parents is allowed more time to grow in college as they don’t have to work, BIPOC grad students and faculty have more opportunity to develop excellent mentorship skills with BIPOC students due to lived experience. So, you say you’ve treated people in a humanist fashion, prove it with examples of interacting with people, not course content, or show the impact of this course content on students (excerpts from evals etc..) You need to connect the dots, and frankly, if you honestly read your output and say it’s not enough, you are not even close to competing with BIPOC candidates in student mentorship, get off the job market and make sure you’re building that part of your resume by doing service work with BIPOC students at any level of education. Yes, work with trans, lgbtqia, and impoverished students is also important and should be highlighted, and the largest disparities in academia is the construction of a racist system that masquerades as anti racist. So, it’s a question of showing the evidence that you’re excellent and ready to mentor students who face racism all the time. This is the job. Honestly, changing course content or teaching to diverse learners is the bare minimum these days, so those answers are not impressive when compared to a BIPOC grad student who was honored with an award by the Black Student Alliance. So, the real question is how have you successfully contributed to the decolonization of our academic space.
>the decolonization of our academic space Was there a pre-existing academic space that was colonized? Sincere question.
Yes : https://www.proquest.com/docview/231708155?sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals
Thanks for the link. I think it's a stretch to label our current academy a "colonized space" because another civilization's educational system (indeed the entire civilization) was wiped out centuries earlier. If an army flattens your house and another person builds a different house nearby, generations later, your house has not been invaded, however immoral it was for your house to have been destroyed. Even the College of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco seems to have been built new and was not a takeover of a Mayan, Aztec, or Inca school. But this is merely a semantic point. I see where you are coming from. Thank you.
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I wondered about your use of "decolonization" when talking about higher ed. You answered my question. I wasn't persuaded that it was the right term, but I understood why you used it. I thanked you for answering my question. That's it. (Edit to remove words that might unintentionally seem inflammatory, because I truly am not arguing with you. Hope my edits succeed.)
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I'm not the OP, and I do not seek your advice. I am just a person who was reading the discussion and was puzzled by your use of the word "decolonization," which seemed inapt. That's why I asked you about it. Directly. I accepted your answer, and thanked you for it. Not sure why you felt the need to write another 1000+ words about my faulty assumptions and insufficiently direct question wording and logic chopping and what you hope we agree is part of our job and whatever else, but reddit is a perfectly ok place to express your opinion, so why not?
In this instance, decolonizing does not mean that a Eurocentric institution replaced an earlier one. It just means that today's academic spaces center Eurocentric traditions and do not make space for traditions that are non-Eurocentric. That is a debatable paradigm, but it is one that is current in some disciplines, at least by some people.
Even If I take away the debatable use, it literally doesn’t change my advice. If people want to get a job working with BIPOC students, you will need to show you’ve been successful at doing this. You want to teach stats, you have to know stats. Those who have experience are better job candidates. Those who don’t, aren’t. I feel this hate of DEI on here, but honestly, I’m a bit frustrated because my advice is on point. My rhetoric sucks, and watch out for logical chopping. Let’s stay focused on why this person isn’t getting hired, not my shitty rhetoric. .
No offense, but your answers are pretty sub-par and "basic". Why don't you try connecting more to the DEI question instead of just giving patent basic answers? Think about it critically- share something personal. It could be that your answers aren't coming off as genuine or authentic.
Flip the conversation back on the deaprtment. Are we talking BA Acting or BFA Acting? Straight Acting Concentration or Musical Theatre? Are the students just granted admission or must they audition? What are the DEI Expectations/Criteria for those auditions? What is the current makeup of the department?
These have been at SLCs, BFA programs, BA programs, and the gambit. I am rarely asked about production work, always teaching.
With respect to interviewing strategy, you might be talking too much about the nuts and bolts instead of truly signaling your alignment with DEI values.
The talk about how you cannot assume every student has read a play so you start at square one is truly excellent. That is one of the best ways of including that I know of. I have to assume that the people interviewing you do not understand what DEI really means. For people like that you have to give them the basic stuff, since they are ignorant. For example, if this is an acting class, do students get to work on material that looks like them? Very often, BIPOC students graduate without ever playing a character written for someone of their own ethnicity. Simple stuff, like learning to pronounce students names properly, using examples in class that all students can relate to, (for example, talking about playing outside rather than "in your backyard.") Just simple stuff that many of us do by instinct. It is still worth mentioning, because some people interviewing are not evaluating on principles but rather on a check-list of practices. Sometimes if you do not reference the low-hanging fruit people do not think you know what you are doing. Also, you say you talk about a variety of learners, but it sounds like you are talking about learning styles. You might want to say that you are doing that because students come from many different types of schools that taught them differently. Again, because not everyone interviewing you is knowledgeable.
All you have to do is frame the lecture around how white people are evil, and blame all of society's ills on systemic racism due to colonialism.