Are EDI and decolonization training necessary for Arts graduate Education?

Some reflections on a recent discussion

Hello colleagues!

Issues of equity, diversity, inclusion and decolonization have been front and center in postsecondary education over the past decade. This increased attention to previously marginalized perspectives in academia has had its champions and critics, with divisions typically falling along traditional left-right lines. 

In For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities, my coauthors Lisa Young, Jonathan Malloy, and I argue that arts graduate programs should be reimagined to address Canada’s public good imperatives, and we identify EDID among these. (The other two imperatives are wicked problems and talent development.) We write: “Canada faces an EDID Imperative of addressing inequities, conflicts, and resentments stemming from our colonial past and the forward-looking challenge of building a radically diverse society. Universities are both vehicles for addressing this imperative, and subjects for reform and change themselves.” We go on to identify ways in which Arts graduate programs have the potential to add particular value to this important work.

Over the summer, a thoughtful colleague teaching in the humanities, “Jordan” (not their real name), contacted me to raise their concern about centring EDID within arts graduate education: might an overt emphasis on EDID prevent more conservative students from studying the arts? Would having EDID explicitly included in arts graduate education essentially tell conservative students that they are not welcome in the social sciences and humanities?

I found this to be an intriguing question, and one I was happy this colleague posed to me. In our book, we note that the inclusion of EDID among Canada’s public good imperatives risked raising ideological objections. We write, “some readers may feel embracing the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization Imperative is an act of “wokeness”.” 

But in my discussion with my humanities colleague, it was clear that wokeness was not the concern. Jordan felt strongly that engagement with EDID is necessary in the social sciences and humanities, and that failing to teach about EDID issues would require instructors to deliberately exclude important content. 

Jordan’s concern was not with the teaching of EDID. Their concern was with which students would and would not sign up for arts graduate programs that explicitly foreground EDID in their curriculum. Would signposting the teaching of EDID lead to less ideological diversity in arts graduate classrooms? Would the result be both fewer conservative students receiving EDID instruction (because they opted out of arts graduate programs, or found more ‘traditional’ programs) and a liberal/leftist echo chamber for the remaining students (in the absence of the conservative students)?

Interesting questions.

Jordan suggested that arts programs could avoid these potential challenges by making EDID instruction more subtle or inductive. Through the careful use of cases and examples, for example, arts graduate students could uncover how sexism, racism, colonialism, and other systems of societal privilege inform outcomes and lived experiences. By coming to these conclusions themselves, Jordan suggested, the lessons may be more deeply held and understood.

I feel conflicted with my thinking about this. I have long argued in favour of explicit instruction as a pedagogical best practice. The idea of teaching EDID implicitly to avoid scaring off conservative students seems like hiding vegetables in the meatloaf to get them past picky young eaters. 

At the same time, I value ideological diversity in my own classroom. I also concur with Jordan’s position that proper engagement with wicked problems necessitates consideration of EDID. As we teach arts students to consider how structural and institutional factors inform and perpetuate wicked problems, we must teach students to grapple with questions of how systemic biases are embedded within our systems and institutions. 

Similarly, as we aim to teach students human literacy skills, we must help them draw upon empathy and understanding of others. This too requires awareness of systems and different lived experiences. 

So, to Jordan’s point, yes, if programs and instructors are deliberate about the inclusion of EDID learning outcomes, there may be no need to ‘advertise’ this to prospective students. I would not feel comfortable with concealing anything about the program or curriculum (as a parent, I never did sneak puréed cauliflower into the sauce). 

I am still thinking about this issue (thank you again to Jordan for raising it with me!) and would love to hear your thoughts. How do you feel arts graduate programs should engage with EDID? Please let us know in the comments below. 

On behalf of my For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities coauthors and myself, thanks for your continuing interest in improving Arts graduate education. We appreciate your engagement in these conversations. 

One more thing before we go: now that For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities is published, we welcome opportunities to work directly with units – including yours! – to support your efforts to update and reimagine your social science and humanities graduate programs. Contact us at Reimagining.Grad.Education@gmail.com for details. And if you would like to write a guest post for the Reimagining Graduate Education newsletter, please contact us at the same address. We look forward to hearing from you! 

Stay well, colleagues!

Help advance broader discussion of graduate education! Ask your university and local libraries to order a copy of For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities.

Praise for For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities:

• “It is the kind of quietly good book we need to see more of. … This book provides a very solid description of the process of defining and developing excellent, sustainable arts programs that serve students rather than academics. And not only is it dead-on in terms of its recommendations about how to design and evaluate programs, it has a lot of helpful matrices and worksheets to help those who are put in positions requiring them to do exactly that … More like this, please." – Alex Usher

• “Nearly half the book is dedicated to charting a transformative course for liberal arts departments.... If For the Public Good can provide the impetus for social sciences and humanities departments to refine their graduate studies programs, the career outcomes for tens of thousands of grad students will be the better for it. That alone would move the needle on Canada’s public good problem." – Literary Review of Canada

Related articles:

• Arts graduate education in Canada should be redesigned around students’ and society’s needs (May 2024)

• Arts graduate programs have an opportunity and a need to focus on talent development (June 2024)

• Canada actually needs more arts graduate students. We’ve just been doing it wrong (paywall, The Globe and Mail) (August 2024)