After students expressed their concerns to administration following the death of George Floyd and other recent acts of police violence, American University’s School of Education (AU SOE) pledged to do their part to create an antiracist campus.
To go beyond “performative action,” the school analyzed their hiring practices and curriculum while faculty members participated in self-interrogation workshops.
“A student sent me an email saying, ‘we are not okay,’” said Dr. Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy, dean of AU’s SOE. “I understood that because I wasn’t okay either. We were looking at what we should do. We could put out a statement. We could talk about how we are committed to social justice and issues of equity, which we have always been. But it required more. We felt that we had to do more.”
In the context of teaching, Dr. Traci Dennis, chair of the university’s SOE’s Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), defined antiracist pedagogy as “building ideologies, literacies and capacities that will support the development of a critical framework for recognizing and counteracting racist constructions of reality as they affect individuals as well as institutions.”
As part of promoting change within the hiring process, the list of candidates are also reviewed by the DEI committee.
“It’s a more intentional step around ensuring that we are bringing aboard diverse candidates and candidates that have the same vision around inclusiveness and antiracism,” said Holcomb-McCoy. “So, this is our way of building the antiracist community.”
The results are impressive. Out of eight newly hired faculty, three are Black males. Additionally, SOE hired a Black male postdoctoral scholar whose research looks at Black academic identity development of students and social media.
