Professors receive grant to study social justice

Author: Jeanine Buzali

On Oct. 8, Kathy Skubikowski and a team of other professors received a cluster grant from the Mellon Foundation to start a project for faculty on social justice education, which is to be held simultaneously on the Denison, Furman, Middlebury, Scripps and Vassar campuses.

The project aims to assist the participating faculty to "collaboratively re-examine their own personal and professional perspectives, disciplinary content, course planning, and classroom practices," according to the Model Institutes for the project, written by Skubikowski.

A pamphlet produced at Harvard University by the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Research and the Harvard Office for Race Relations and Minority Affairs states, "Colleges and Universities are at a turning point...Teachers of many years are being asked to acknowledge and accept students with perspectives other than their own and to include in their syllabi material that [which] may be unfamiliar and uncomfortable."

The pamphlet also affirms, "All of us are asked to reexamine our own assumptions." Although this practice is already somewhat commonplace in many Middlebury classrooms, the goal is to expand and develop the idea that a faculty member's private and community life is not separate from his or her professional life.

The grant money will be used for faculty workshops on enriching courses and research to include social justice in the material and to express a diverse society, with secondary, undisclosed goals. It will also go toward helping faculty get the materials needed for these courses; however, its primary purpose will be to bring educational activities to campus.

The first of these activities will occur in J-Term - a nine-course cluster about social injustice. The term "social justice" has risen to express ideas beyond diversity and multiculturalism to address the interaction between difference and power within institutions, with the objective of transforming them so that power is readjusted and held not just by the privileged groups.

The goal is to make those few groups with privilege aware of the effects of social injustice so as to reinforce relationships between diverse groups.

The faculty members that wish to participate in activities funded by the grant must give their final decision by next week. Among those who have expressed some interest are Associate Professor of Spanish Miguel Fernandez, Associate Professor of Philosophy Heidi Grasswick, Assistant Professor of Music Jennifer Post and Associate Professor of Women's Studies Sujata Moorti. Also working on the program are Roman Graf, associate professor of German - currently on academic leave-- - and Tutor in Writing Catharine Wright.