Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Reading Lists and Online Resources

AAPF: The African American Policy Forum.

Click on the “Initiatives” tab for a variety of resources, such as videos, podcasts, workbooks, and more. Click on “Media” for videos, and “Blog” for discussion and additional resources. 

From the website: “Founded in 1996, The African American Policy Forum (AAPF) is an innovative think tank that connects academics, activists and policy-makers to promote efforts to dismantle structural inequality. We utilize new ideas and innovative perspectives to transform public discourse and policy. We promote frameworks and strategies that address a vision of racial justice that embraces the intersections of race, gender, class, and the array of barriers that disempower those who are marginalized in society. AAPF is dedicated to advancing and expanding racial justice, gender equality, and the indivisibility of all human rights, both in the U.S. and internationally.”

“Antiracist Resources for Your 2020-2021 Teaching.” Compiled by the MLA, June 2020. 

This website contains helpful resources under separate headings, such as “Assignments and Activities,” “Teaching Practice,” “Theory,” and more.

Facing History

This site provides a lesson plan on the killing of George Floyd.

Halley, Catherine. “Institutionalized Racism: A Syllabus.” JSTOR Daily, 31 May 2020.

This resources helps provide an understanding George Floyd’s death in the context of institutionalized racism. It includes links to many sources related to the following sub-headings:

• Racial (In)Justice: Putting Protest into Perspective
• Video Documentation & Police Brutality: Ethical Considerations
• Racial, Economic, and Educational Disparities Go Hand in Hand

Proulx, Natalie, and Katherine Schulten. “Teaching Ideas and Resources to Help Students Make Sense of the George Floyd Protests.” The New York Times, 3 June 2020 (updated 8 June). 

This page is part of the NYT’s The Learning Network. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you’ll see the separate sections, including Understanding Systemic Racism, The History of Policing in the United States, The Right to Protest, Looking for Leadership, The Role of the Media, Misinformation and Disinformation, Take Action and Take Care, and Additional Resources.

Smithsonian Digital Volunteers: Transcription Center. Smithsonian.  

The Smithsonian provides a potential course activity (and/or you may be interested to participate on your own): Learn about African-American history while transcribing it! From the website: “The African American story is central to our nation’s history. Collections documenting the contributions of African Americans in countless fields, along with the struggles and achievements inherent to their stories, can be found in the records of every Smithsonian museum. Help us make these collections more accessible through transcription. Browse projects below.” 

“Structural Racism and Police Violence.” SAGE Publishing.

Sage provides a menu of resources, including peer-reviewed articles, research-based tools for instructors to facilitate discussions, a collection of podcasts and webinars, and more. From the website: “The work of social and behavioral scientists is crucial in helping to dismantle mechanisms of discrimination, oppression, and violence and create a radically improved society. Here you’ll find a range of resources based on social and behavioral science for researchers, instructors, students, policymakers—as well as the general public— to help you educate, inform, research and learn.”

“Talking About Race.” National Museum of African-American History & Culture. 

These are helpful resources for educators–scroll to the bottom of the page for the “Talking About Race Topics.” Resources seem targeted to K-12 but can be adapted for our university setting.

Voices into Action. FAST, 2014 & 2018. 

FAST is a Canadian organization that stands for Fighting Anti-Semitism Together. Though based in Canada, the lessons cover a variety of social justice, prejudice, & human rights issues relevant to us in the U.S. as well. This is a program for educators at the secondary and college level, organized into different lessons and units with chapters containing lesson plans, videos, assignments, discussion questions, and more. 

“Becoming an Anti-racist Educator.” Wheaton College Center for Collaborative Teaching and Learning.

This page includes an action-oriented guide for educators to engage in practices of anti-racism. 

Carvalhaes, Cláudio. “Pedagogies of Cruelty.” Wabash Center, 20 May 2020.

This source discusses how learning connects to the cruelty of our times, which has become normalized. From the website: “The perversity of capitalism demands an education based on violence, terror, and cruelty. One that destroys any form of solidarity or empathy. We have to learn to see suffering, cruelty, and death as normal, and even inevitable presences in our times.”

Critical Practices for Anti-bias Education. Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, 2018.

This site links to each of the different chapters of the book (which you can access for free), and/or you can download a free PDF of the book. Targeted to K-12, but useful (and adaptable) for all levels.

Gálvez, Alyshia. “How I’ve Implemented an Anti-Racist Approach in My Teaching.” 10 June 2020. 

Gálvez, a Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at Lehman College/CUNY, discusses her process in developing her course, questions she asked herself, discussion of her anti-racist pedagogy. Includes links to many additional resources.

Gannon, Kevin. “The Progressive Stack and Standing for Inclusive Teaching.” The Tattooed Professor, 20 Oct 2017.

This page discusses inclusive teaching pedagogy and meaningful classroom discussions, focusing on the Progressive Stack methodology and its critics. From the author: “Put simply, the Progressive Stack is a method of ensuring that voices that are often submerged, discounted, or excluded from traditional classroom discussions get a chance to be heard.” Some links to other sources as well.

“Issue Topics Reading List.” Data and Diversity at UC Berkeley – Institute for Data Science. 

This reading list is included on the syllabus for this course on Data and Diversity at UCB. Includes readings divided into categories such as “Cognitive Bias,” “Stereotype Threat,” “Microaggressions and the Language of EID,” “Whiteness and White Privilege,” “Sexism, Classism, and More,” “Diversity and Science.” (The reading list ventures into areas beyond pedagogy and scholarship as well — some of these sources may also be useful for your own courses.)

Jacob, Meredith, et al. “Working Towards Antiracism and Culturally Responsive Teaching in Open Education.” 26 May 2020.

This source is a slide presentation on fair use, copyright, and open educational resources (OER) in connection equity in education. Found via the Hewlett Foundation on Twitter (@Hewlett_Found).

Muhammad, Gholdy. “Rethinking What Matters: Incorporating Anti-Racism into Teaching.” Language Magazine, 19 May 2020. 

In this article, the author suggests setting learning standards around identity in course planning and teaching, and includes questions for educators to ask themselves when planning instruction.

NCTE Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English. National Council of Teachers of English. 

This page includes a seemingly endless set of links to useful resources, categorized under the following sub-headings: Resources for Working with White Students, Resources for Understanding White Supremacy, Charlottesville-Specific Resources, Resources for Understanding Bias, Articles and Other Readings (including a list of recommended books for teachers and students); this blog entry on “There Is No Apolitical Classroom: Resources for Teaching in These Times” is particularly interesting. At the bottom of this page, you’ll see downloadable PDFs with guidelines for anti-racist language teachers and curricula. Click the headings at the top of the page for additional resources. This resource is targeted to English language teachers, but it is applicable to all of us with multilingual students in our classrooms.

Powell, Candice, et al. “A CRT-Informed Model to Enhance Experiences and Outcomes of Racially Minoritized Students.” Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, 9 Mar 2020.  

This article focuses on Critical Race Theory (CRT) to challenge power and oppression dynamics and address racial inequities in student experiences. 

Sathy, Viji and Kelly A. Hogan. “Want to Reach All of Your Students? Here’s How to Make Your Teaching More Inclusive.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 22 July 2019.

The authors offer theoretical and practical advice on teaching inclusively and minimizing inequities in the classroom to help more students succeed.

Sensoy, Özlem, and Robin DiAngelo. “Respect Differences? Challenging the Common Guidelines in Social Justice Education.” Democracy Education Journal, vol. 22, no. 2.

This article examines guidelines in social justice education, with a focus on responsiveness to power relations. The authors also offer alternative strategies.

Taylor, Sherria D., et al. “The Social Justice Syllabus Design Tool: A First Step in Doing Social Justice Pedagogy.” JCSCORE, vol. 5, no. 2, 2019.

This article discusses the Social Justice Syllabus Design Tool (SJSDT) as an approach to redesigning a course and achieving greater student engagement. 

Thompson, Debra. Syllabus: “Black Lives Matter and American Democracy.” 5 June 2020.

This syllabus for an upper-level political science course consists of three modules with readings and links to podcasts, videos, and more.

Undoing Racism. The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond.

This website includes programs, workshops, and resources for social transformation, created by community organizers and educators. From the website: “PISAB focuses on understanding what racism is, where it comes from, how it functions, why it persists and how it can be undone. Our workshops utilize a systemic approach that emphasizes learning from history, developing leadership, maintaining accountability to communities, creating networks, undoing internalized racial oppression and understanding the role of organizational gate keeping as a mechanism for perpetuating racism.”

Warren-Grice, April. “Show Don’t Tell: Decolonize Your Classroom, Syllabus, Rules, and Practices.” Liberated Genius, 13 Sep 2018.

This post offers ideas for being intentional about social justice when planning syllabi and helping students become more active partners in the learning process.

Ault, Stacey. “Ten Ways for Non-Black Academics to Value Black Lives.” Medium, 1st June 2020. 

This piece lists actionable steps to improve racial justice in higher ed and society as a whole.

Brazas, Clarice, and Charlie McGeehan. “What White Colleagues Need to Understand.” Teaching Tolerance, Spring 2020. 

This piece discusses the impact of white supremacy on educators. At the bottom of the page, there is a list of specific “recommendations”/actions for white educators.

Cite Black Women. 

From the website: “As Black women, we are often overlooked, sidelined and undervalued. Although we are intellectually prolific, we are rarely the ones that make up the canon. Recognizing this, Cite Black Women engages with social media, aesthetic representation (our t-shirts) and public dialogue to push people to critically rethink the politics of race gender and knowledge production.”

Jaschik, Scott, and James Thomas. “‘Diversity Regimes.’” Inside Higher Ed, 16 June 2020. 

In this interview, James Thomas, the author of Diversity Regimes: Why Talk Is Not Enough to Fix Racial Inequality at Universities, explains what a diversity regime is (a commitment to diversity that actually ends up reinforcing structural racial inequalities) and the value placed on speech and performance diversity over action and concrete changes. 

McCoy, Henrika. “The Life of a Black Academic: Tired and Terrorized.” Inside Higher Ed, 12 June 2020.

This op-ed discusses the compounding exhaustion and terror that Black academics are facing right now due to the threats of COVID-19 and being killed for being Black.

White Academia: Do Better. Higher education has a problem. It’s called White supremacy (Roberts, J., June 8, 2020) Medium

“If you are a White academic or higher education professional, there are some tangible actions you can take to support Black faculty, staff, and students.”

Underwood, Thomas. Blacks at Harvard: A Documentary History of African American Experience at Harvard and Radcliffe (1993)

This anthology of readings by black Harvard graduates includes remarkable essays about their experiences in all-white institutions.  My favorite essay in the book is W.E.B. DuBois’s “A Negro Student at Harvard at the End of the 19th Century.” Tom wrote about the experience editing the book in this op-ed of almost two decades ago.

Tuck, Eve, et al. “Citation Practices Challenge.” Critical Ethnic Studies, April 2015: 

This resource offers a challenge for academics to question their citation practices. Whose voices are you amplifying vs. erasing? It is a call to reconsider the politics of citation.