Box of delight

This blog was kindly contributed by Kirstie-Anne Woodman, a recent International Relations graduate from the University of Birmingham. Kirstie-Anne is currently interning at a diversity and inclusion consultancy agency, Worth of Mouth Services.You can find Kirstie-Anne on LinkedIn.

It took me a long time to find a dissertation topic which invigorated me and I felt a true passion for. Then, by chance, I came across Nicola Rollock’s ‘Staying Power’ paper, a report on the career experiences of Black female professors in the UK. While reading, it hit me, I had never had, or even seen a Black professor at my university – let alone a Black female professor. This led me to think of all of my university experiences which had differed to those of my peers due to my Blackness. I read reports regarding the Black attainment gap, the Black drop-out rate and the need to decolonise curriculums. For the first time, feelings of otherness that I had felt throughout my entire university journey, were explained and quantified in academic terms. And so I wrote ‘Black Academic, White Space: The Insidious Legacy of Institutional Racism at Top-tier UK Universities’.

When I was asked to join The Scholarly Kitchen, it gave me pause – what exactly was I taking on, and what would it mean to be the “education chef”?  Literally, I knew I was joining a team responsible for serving the scholarly community; and, that I would be delivering educational content that helps to develop skills and habits necessary for career growth and professional development. However, as I began writing my first post, I realized that if I wanted to facilitate ongoing learning, more than just traditional “101” type articles would be required.  At times, I will also have to openly express my opinions on somewhat controversial topics as a dispassionate critic. Rick Anderson talked about the necessity of being able to separate passion from professional discourse as an obstacle he’d faced in his career. A barrier faced in my own career just so happens to coincide with one of those important but controversial topics in our industry, diversity.

“The most universal quality is diversity.” Michel de Montaigne, 1588.

This is not an editorial about compliance with equal opportunity legislation. It is about the true nature and value of human diversity. No matter whether it is a group of simple cells or a complex collection of people, what is vital to current and future health is its diversity. We have known about the importance of leveraging diversity since Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859. Here’s a key finding from his disruptive manifesto, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

In education, nothing is “neutral” when it comes to race. Lesson plans, edtech tools and learning environments either create more equity among students of different races, or more inequity.

That’s what scholar Ibram X. Kendi told EdSurge in an interview Nov. 30 during the 2020 virtual conference of the International Society for Technology in Education. (ISTE is the parent organization of EdSurge.)

Ibram X. Kendi, the bestselling author of books including “How to Be an Antiracist” and “Stamped from the Beginning,” is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, as well as the founder and director of the institution’s new Center for Antiracist Research.

These days “diversity” and “inclusion” are all the rage in progressive corporate cultures. As the line goes, “it is not only the right thing to do—it’s also good business.”

Most corporations do need more women, more LGBTQ folk, more people of color, more people with disabilities, and the list goes on. But we need talk about what most of us who have “made it” to that room don’t talk about in public—the cost to getting in the room and and what we have to pay to stay.