Strategic Priorities
Racial Justice and Equity
"Racial justice is the systematic fair treatment of people of all races, resulting in equitable opportunities and outcomes for all. Racial justice — or racial equity — goes beyond “anti-racism.” It is not just the absence of discrimination and inequities, but also the presence of deliberate systems and supports to achieve and sustain racial equity through proactive and preventative measures."
At Barnard the work of DEI centers racial justice and equity. Each semester we will commit to offering workshops and collaborations that give members of the Barnard community the tools they need to uphold racial equity in their departments and in their academic experience.
Monday Assembly for Racial Justice
This summer students, faculty and staff began a community practice of assembling each Monday Morning to learn and commit each week to enacting racial justice. After a brief pause, we will resume our practice on September 21st from 1-2 pm. For more information on the assemblies please email: diversitycouncil@Barnard.edu or check the MyBarnard portal for a link to the assembly.
Fall Workshops
Identity Development as Pathways to Institutional Equity| Ife Lenard, MSW, EdM, Strategic Coach & Educator| Every other Tuesday from 4-5
Staff and students will enrich their learning and perspective with generalist frameworks and skills that contribute to anti-oppressive practices from the classroom and beyond. As an iterative process of developing self-awareness, collective learning and practice skills, Ife Lenard has a unique ability to nurture, challenge, encourage and stretch themselves throughout their experiences with her. She will supportively guide them to:
- understand their identity and the historical undercurrents of its development,
- highlight the experiences and harm of cultural assimilation, acculturation and identity tensions,
- internalize and enrich their identity with an association and appreciation of their worth, beauty and scholarship,
- increase their capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's fragility,
- deepen perspective regarding others lived experiences,
- become aware of a host of common emotions around brave conversations, and
- handle and build authentic, interpersonal relationships with others with different lived experiences -judiciously and empathetically- as part of a continuum of one’s racial identity development and overall Barnard College experiential journey.
Center for Engaged Pedagogy | Institute on Anti-Racism | Academic Year 2020-202
Title: Antiracism in and beyond the classroom
Over the course of AY 2020-2021, the Center for Engaged Pedagogy will host an institute on antiracism that is directed toward faculty. In this institute, which meets three times per semester (or six times in total), we will work together to identify how racism permeates higher education and how to actively dismantle it. The institute will apply practical, conceptual, and historical lenses to the subject of antiracism while constructing a space for collaborative learning and strategizing. For example, participants will critically consider the ways they are positioned and perceived within the classroom in light of the role of white supremacy and racism in higher education, their discipline, and course design and content. They also will develop strategies and recommendations to address the complex ways racial hierarchies materialize in the different forms of labor that make the campus run and in the historical development of different disciplines. Throughout the institute, participants will read excerpts of foundational theories of race and racism, connect this scholarship to their own teaching through reflection and discussion with colleagues, and create and adapt antiracist strategies to design their courses, facilitate difficult discussions, and deliver content and assessment.
At the Center, we envision this institute less as a series of self-contained sessions and more as the formation of a learning community that is dedicated to exploring the topic and practices of antiracism over a sustained period of time. It is open to any faculty member who would like to participate, from those who see the critical analysis and deconstruction of racism as a foundation of their teaching to those who are in the early stages of reflecting on their readings, assignments, and teaching and assessment strategies. Given that this institute is not only conceived as the formation of a community but also designed to facilitate sessions that build upon each other, participants will need to commit to attending all of the institute meetings over the course of the year. We may need to cap the number of participants based on interest and capacity.
Schedule:
Sessions will include: (1) Aims of the Institute (2) Antiracism, Positionality, and Pedagogical Practices (3) Antiracism and/as Course & Curriculum Design (4) Antiracism and/as Institutional (?) Labor (5) Antiracism, Disciplinarity, and Institutions (6) Antiracism Now
Commitment:
Fall 2020: 3 virtual 2-hour meetings
Spring 2020: 3 virtual (or in-person) 2-hour meetings
With assigned texts between meetings
If you are interested please fill out this form by Friday September 18th and we will follow-up with dates and additional information
Community Engagement
Barnard has a long history of engagement with the range of communities in NYC. Through Community Impact at Columbia, Barnard students have committed to a range of volunteer and service learning projects in Harlem and Morningside Heights. DEI @ Barnard is rooted in the belief that at the core of liberal education is a mission to learn across differences and engage locally with a sense of mutuality, public responsibility and cultural humility. Through collaborations with a range of departments at Barnard we are working to facilitate a culture of sustained community engagement.
Current Projects
ThirdSpace@
What could another world look like?
This academic year 2020-2021, learn from visionaries on the front lines of imagining it, and then ask yourself, “What can I do right now, with what I have and where I am?”
After all, Barnard students don’t wait around when it comes to taking action — and in ThirdSpace@, a two-part, virtual co-curricular program (SPARK + BUILD), you can do that wherever you’ll be this year, whether that’s on campus or off. ThirdSpace@ brings together the support of your peers, experienced guides, and Barnard’s Athena Center for Leadership, Office of the VP of DEI, and Center for Engaged Pedagogy.
Student Groups and Opportunities
Well-Being
Well-being is a central concern of the work of equity and inclusion at Barnard. DEI works closely with the Feel Well, Do Well initiative to ensure that as a community we practice wellness through diverse approaches. DEI also collaborates with the Center for Engaged Pedagogy to infuse well-being into academic life through initiatives such as Fail Forward dinners and workshops for faculty on how experiences of marginalization impact the well-being of underrepresented students.
Trans@Barnard
Supporting transgender and nonbinary students
In order to assist transgender and nonbinary members of the campus community with navigating the policies and practices of Barnard, we are committed to developing Barnard specific resources and supports. Check back here soon for a Barnard specific resource guide for transgender and nonbinary students. Multicultural Affairs in the Office of Undergraduate Student Life on Columbia's campus also has many supports available to Barnard students for Transgender and nonbinary students.
Inclusion Grant Projects
- The BOLD Conference
The second annual BOLD Conference convened on Friday, Feb. 21. This all-day, student-led event, funded through the inclusion grant, focused on facilitating conversations between faculty, staff, and students to continue strengthening teaching and learning at Barnard. The conference offered an exciting opportunity for participants to discuss questions, share concerns, and brainstorm suggestions regarding the academic experience. This event was supported by the Center for Engaged Pedagogy and the Council on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. We extend our thanks to all who participated and worked to make it happen. - The Love Space Demands
Members of the Shange Magic Project received $5,000 for their idea The Love Space Demands: Sharing the Words of Ntozake Shange in the Barnard Library, which will support the installation of excerpts from the work of Ntozake Shange ’70 on walls around the Milstein Center. - Storytelling Workshop
Jo-Ann Pratts of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Mark Nomadiou of the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies received $5,000 to partner with the TMI Project, a nonprofit that leads sessions of the Storytelling Workshop to help storytellers use “radically candid, true personal narratives. - Activist Archive
Gustie Owens ’22 and Radhika “Rads” Mehta CC’22 received $2,000 to launch the Activist Archive, a web-based extension of their Butler Banner Project, to help students research archival information on historical campus activism, as well as plan their own movements.