SJI Curriculum Proposal April 2008

Social Justice Curriculum Proposal

Please contact: Geoff Hicks ghicks@hamilton.edu
Yong Kwon ykwon@hamilton.edu
Corinne Bancroft cbancrof@hamilton.edu
Kate Hails khails@hamilton.edu

Diversity Intensive Courses promote students’ critical consciousness and understanding about the intersection of race, class, and gender. These courses both inform students and equip them with the tools to sensitively and confidently engage in dialogues about these issues with people from a range of backgrounds and experiences.

Courses that would be diversity intensive currently exist across the curriculum and fulfill a fundamental part of the Hamilton education. The Social Justice Initiative believes that students cannot be fully educated with out taking at least one of these courses. Hamilton maintains an open curriculum because the college aims to teach students to speak, write, and think well. The skill of approaching and understanding difference is structurally parallel and fundamental to the previous two skills, speaking and writing. The need that diversity intensive courses satisfy is in line with the stated Purposes and Goals of the College, as indicated in the following statements from the Hamilton College Catalogue:

• “Graduates should be poised to investigate new avenues of knowledge, to respond creatively to new and unexpected situations and to address problems and challenges in a morally and intellectually courageous manner…”

• “Students of unusual talents to realize their fullest capacities, for their own benefit and that of the world in which they will live…”

• “They should recognize the limits of factual information and become attuned to how such information can be used and misused…”

• “Above all, students should develop respect for intellectual and cultural diversity because such respect promotes free and open inquiry, independent thought and mutual understanding…”

There are currently many courses that serve this need across the curriculum. The Social Justice Initiative proposes that Hamilton College structurally facilitate the enrollment of all students in at least one of these courses by their junior year.

We have brainstormed a number of options that would help achieve this goal without undermining Hamilton’s commitment to an open curriculum. We acknowledge that these solutions are both imperfect and incomplete, but hopefully they will help move in a productive direction.

Departmental requirements: We strongly believe that every department has the capacity to offer a number of diversity intensive courses. Each department should be required to offer at least one course, at any level that fulfills the definition of diversity intensive. We recognize, however, that some departments might have a harder time enacting the requirement because of the nature of the discipline.

Diversity Intensive requirement: The diversity intensive requirement would function exactly like the Writing Intensive requirement in that students may fulfill the requirement in any department offering diversity intensive courses. Much like the proposed departmental requirements, we believe that a diversity intensive requirement would allow students to study diversity in a way that is relevant to their other academic interests. We also believe that this would be most effective if applied in conjunction with departmental requirements. If departments feel they have insufficient means to fulfill the departmental requirement this option would allow those students access to these courses.

Freshman seminar: This diversity intensive course would be offered exclusively to freshmen or transfer students. Small courses limited to first years are decisively influential on a students’ experience at Hamilton. A seminar style course would offer a forum to discuss diversity as well as orient new students to issues of diversity at Hamilton College. Such a seminar could be, but does not have to be, modeled after College 130.