Comment by ariabuckles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ariabuckles | Hacker News Reader

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I might be making a jump, because I've followed a lot of these discussions over time.

To my understanding (and as a disclaimer, I advocate strongly for it), "inclusivity" in general means making an environment safe for people of marginalized backgrounds. So to me, his declaration that inclusivity as a value ought to be up for debate seems to indicate he doesn't think it's a top priority that students of marginalized backgrounds feel welcome in his classroom.

Is that a jump? A bit, but it's based on seeing similar situations play out in other areas.

But the choice of curriculum was to my second point: I think students deserve the chance to study a wide variety of history and literary viewpoints, including when feasible some from backgrounds similar to theirs. There has been tons of literature written by black authors, written by women, written by LGBTQ folx. Often times those works have been, in the past, deliberately destroyed (like the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) or not considered for publication (George Elliot choosing a pseudonym to publish outside romance), which is a significant component to why there are so many more white men authors historically.

If you teach a course where all the literature you choose is from white men, you really limit what history you are teaching, and you can subtly reinforce that others may not be welcome to succeed in literature. Inclusivity asks us to consider those implications and pick some variety of authors--there are many great writers of so many different backgrounds to choose from.

I think what the parent poster is getting at is that many of us are bewildered at the way you are using the word “safe”.

I take it you aren’t saying that students believe that an assailant will be hiding in the classroom with a bat ready to assault them as the enter the classroom.

Rather I take you and others to be using safe to mean something like comfortable. But unsafe and uncomfortable are two different words. There’s rarely or never good cause to make someone feel unsafe, but sometimes being uncomfortable can lead to growth. Or at least people used to believe so.

I mean psychological safety, as in https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/after-years-of-research-go... , or as in "will i face verbal bullying in this space". That is a different type of safety than physical safety, but it's very real. How much people experience not feeling psychologically safe varies widely, though.

I'm a visible minority, and my rights are frequently a part of political debate. In spaces where those debates are allowed to happen, it's often not safe for me to participate. It's a hard feeling to describe or put into words for someone who hasn't experienced others saying that they shouldn't be allowed to do participate in some aspects of society because of a characteristic they can't change.

> In a team with high psychological safety, teammates feel safe to take risks around their team members. They feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.

Well. What happened when Kunin took a risk and published an essay asking some questions and offering what he thought was a new idea? He faced verbal bullying and was punished. Is the point to give psychological safety to minority students but not bother about other people? (In fact, I suspect many of the minority students who happen to agree with Kunin would not feel psychologically safe saying so.)

At this point the classic rejoinder would be to say "look at these suffering minorities; your argument is invalid" or to talk about Kunin's privilege, but you seem to make better arguments than that.

Okay, but are people being verbally bullied in university classrooms?

> So to me, his declaration that inclusivity as a value ought to be up for debate seems to indicate he doesn't think it's a top priority that students of marginalized backgrounds feel welcome in his classroom.

Well, Kunin says: "My sense is that students and faculty are unsure of the meaning of inclusive teaching. To the extent that we feel any certainty, we do not agree with one another." I don't think he ever says that he thinks inclusivity, the way he interprets it, is a bad thing or isn't worthwhile.

Is that a distinction without a difference? Suppose, for illustration, that I declare that "inclusivity" means everyone has to sit in a circle for the whole class, because otherwise some people won't be seen by others and therefore won't be properly included in the classroom experience. Kunin protests that this would make it impossible for him to write on a chalkboard or project an image onto a screen. I tell everyone that this means Kunin opposes inclusivity, and the minority students start to feel unsafe. Is this Kunin's fault, or mine? Is the solution for Kunin to buckle up, or for me to stop scaring the students?

If you think that's a silly idea, consider this: "Last year when I proposed to teach a seminar in which the syllabus would include essays by Ralph Ellison, two of my colleagues wrote to the Curriculum Committee, as well as to the dean and the president of the college, objecting that it would be “literary blackface” for me to study Ellison." (The more general term "cultural appropriation" could be used if Ellison were a non-black minority.) I wouldn't be surprised if someone had actually proposed sitting in a circle.

Is there some source of truth, that all responsible people should obviously recognize as the source of truth, about what is the ideal "inclusivity"? If it were a serious attempt at "making an environment safe for people of marginalized backgrounds", then one thing I would expect to see is for these recommendations to be backed by studies; is that usually the case?

Also, by the way, receiving a failing grade on a test is probably very distressing to many people (perhaps a majority), and failing a class even more so. Surely making students feel "safe", at this level, would imply eliminating the possibility of such distress and making sure the students knew it was gone?

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