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Broadening the Definition of Diversity

by Angela P. Dodson , March 27, 2009

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A new book examines the strategies of faculty to serve as “change agents,” encouraging diversity on campus.

 

Teaching a sociology class at Bowdoin College as a graduate student taught Dr. Winnifred R. Brown-Glaude a thing or two about diversity.

 

There, she introduced her students to “multiple perspectives” on the subject through readings. The student body of Bowdoin, a historic, small, liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine, is more than 70 percent White, according to the school’s Web site.

 

In the end, she says that 90 percent of the students “actually loved the class” and found the experience enriching. A small but vocal

minority did not.

 

“I also had a small percentage of students who pushed back,” says Brown-Glaude, now an assistant professor in the African-American studies department at the College of New Jersey. “They thought, ‘Oh, we shouldn’t be learning about women of color in this class. This kind of teaching … doesn’t belong here.’”

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Comments posted here may be reprinted in Diverse: Issues In Higher Education magazine, and may be edited for purposes of clarity and/or space.



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