Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Graduate experiences can be isolating, while BIPOC students may be facing a range of racialized experiences in addition to that experience. This Intergroup Dialogue will be an opportunity for Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) graduate students to connect to their own experiences, share across perspectives and work on developing a community of support.

This group will meet on Thursdays from 5-6:30, starting the week of March 29th.

Open to all, these dialogues center the experiences of women of African descent and will provide a space for participants to unpack the tensions that exist between these identities and how they are received in institutional settings. Topics include: systemic racism, intersectionality, resistance to oppression, self care, as well as personal, professional, and societal aspirations.

This group will meet on Fridays, starting the week of March 8th. Time to be announced.

Looking Inward White Experience Dialogues is a forum dedicated to looking at anti-racism work through the lens of White racial advantage. Students will engage with written and video material that will look at the divergent and convergent lived experiences of BIPOC and White people, racial identity development, anti-racism, and accountability toward one's own transformative journey. Each week students will come prepared to discuss the materials assigned for that week.
 
This group will meet on Fridays from 2-3:30, starting the week of March 22nd.

“Looking Inward” Race Dialogues are curricularly constructed in a way that the experience will center inquiry on a particular group’s experience around racial advantage or racial disadvantage. For example, “Looking Inward” race dialogues that focus on racial advantage will explore the interpersonal and systemic ways that White people experience racial advantage, particularly in the U.S. Similarly, “Looking Inward” race dialogues that focus on racial disadvantage explore the interpersonal and systemic ways that BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) people experience distinct forms of racial disadvantage, particularly in the U.S. Though BIPOC “Looking Inward” dialogues operate under an umbrella acronym, the curricular point of entry for each dialogue acknowledges that not all People of Color face equal levels of oppression or experience and process racism in the same way, particularly when we use an intersectional lens in a power analysis.  The subject matter of these dialogues will vary by group but will all cover fundamentals of race, racism, and racial justice.  

In naming these “Looking Inward” dialogues that focus on racial disadvantage, we aim to provide a space through which inquiry and exploration is rooted in the  histories, representations, , stories, , and empowerment of Black and Indigenous people as two groups that have historically experienced a particularly severe form of oppression in this society.  “Looking Inward” dialogues employ an approach in our anti-racist work that allows for deeper conversations around racism, including exploration of the “presumed alliances” that exists between and among all people in maintaining or combating racism and racial inequities. 

The “Looking Inward” Dialogues are designed to support conversations and interpersonal connections among Brandeis students who wish to engage one another around the shared or divergent experiences of a particular social identity. Though each “Looking Inward” Dialogue is open to all students, the curricular focus will be specific to the history and lived experience of specific racial groups, particularly in their collective understanding of how that group engages anti-racism and racial equity work and combats racism at the interpersonal, institutional, structural and systemic levels. 

All “Looking Inward” dialogues will support participants in the “deconstruction” of their social identities and explore their own individual and group positionality within our society’s structures of domination and subordination.  “Looking Inward” dialogues can form around a number of social identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, religion) and shared experience, but for now, our pilot groups will specifically engage participants around issues of race and racism while advancing the goals of equity, inclusion, and belonging. 

While all “Looking Inward” dialogues are sites for combating racism, the curriculum for “Looking Inward” dialogues differ based on the exploration of racial advantage or disadvantage, or common White or BIPOC experiences respectively.  Dialogues that explore racial advantage specifically address White privilege, Whiteness, and the social context of historic and current domination of Whites, primarily within the U.S., in a way that provides space for: a) examining the presumed alliance across individuals who experience racial advantage, b) exploring unconscious bias or microaggressions, and c) creating room for racially advantaged individuals to find peer support in challenging racism and stereotyping.  “Looking Inward” dialogues focusing on racial disadvantage  provide space for: a) examining the presumed alliances across disadvantaged groups, b) exploring internalized oppression, and c) creating room for racially disadvantaged individuals to find peer support in challenging racism and stereotyping. All “Looking Inward” dialogues are designed to build stamina and preparedness to engage in cross-race experiences.

Looking Outward Dialogue (Intergroup Dialogue)

“Looking Outward” dialogues bring participants together to explicitly address cross-race conversations. Drawing on the experience of the “Looking Inward” dialogues, participants will enter these facilitated spaces with a better understanding of their own racial identity and the larger context that informs and shapes that identity.

Facilitators lead discussions, open up the conversation, and guide participants as they engage around curriculum, materials, or exercises.  Facilitators are also referred to as conveners to distinguish them from instructors.  In these roles, facilitators create an educational experience by exposing participants to informational materials and help participants connect these materials to their lived experiences and observations. In this sense, facilitators bring people together not simply to engage in dialogue, but to undertake informed dialogue. In addition to the content of the dialogue, facilitators support the process of community building, the development of communication skills, awareness of social systems and structures, academic engagement, challenging and decentering master narratives, demarginalization, integration, solidarity, empowerment, transformation, and liberation. Thus, facilitators lead participants on a journey of discovery that starts with a careful and deliberate “look within.” Using this approach, the typical power imbalance between teacher and student is minimized in a setting where the facilitator encourages participants to direct questions to each other, speak freely, compare “academic knowledge” to their own lived experiences, and challenge the assumptions and knowledge constructions contained in the curriculum.

Though the process of identity-based intergroup dialogue experiences are similar to certain aspects of group therapy, they are not synonymous and have very important differences:

 
Both identity-based dialogue and group therapy have the following in common:

1. Requiring a commitment to confidentiality; 
2. Can be experienced as healing or therapeutic; 
3. Can change participants in profound ways;
4. Supportive and protected environments; 
5. Afford educational spaces; and,
6. Can facilitate deep self reflection.

They differ in that identity-based dialogues (Looking Inward and Looking Outward) allow participants the opportunity to explore issues related to the intersection of identity, power and privilege. For persons from marginalized groups, this is a space free of the need to educate others. And for those persons from privileged groups, it is a space for education and decentering their privileged identity(ies). These spaces are typically facilitated by individuals who share membership in the centered identity and are trained in supporting the dialogic process.

Though a completely different space, group psychotherapy is a mental health treatment and can also sometimes be a space of shared identity.  The treatment is being offered to provide insight into one’s experience and sources of distress and to offer skills to mitigate negative mental health outcomes.  These services are offered in a counseling setting and provided by trained mental health professionals.  Groups may focus on coping skills, managing depression or anxiety, grief, and surviving quarantine to name a few.

In essence, dialogue and group therapy are not the same thing. Though dialogue may have the impact of being therapeutic, it is not intended as therapy.