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An upcoming training to teach UC Berkeley faculty how to engage in “racial equity in teaching” will pay participating scholars a $4,500 grant and give them a letter of support for their next merit review.
Applications are being accepted through Sept. 8 for the “The Provost’s Thriving in Teaching: A Mentorship Program for Racial Equity in Teaching” program.
Offered through the Center for Teaching & Learning, the program “aims to bring together like-minded educators to cultivate a community of support, care, and rigor for practicing racial equity in teaching,” according to its online description.
Selected faculty are paired with “two to three colleagues with similar campus roles, teaching values, and shared lived experiences to form a peer mentoring partnership,” its description states.
The peer mentorships will work to develop “a set of observable racial equity teaching criteria” to be implemented in classrooms this spring, it states.
Faculty who participate the full academic year are given a “course improvement grant” of $4,500 and a letter “recognizing their commitment to teaching” signed by a provost in support of their next merit review, it states.
Jenae Cohn, executive director for the Center for Teaching and Learning, declined to comment to The College Fix.
“Upon consulting internally with our strategic communications team at Berkeley, we will decline this invitation for an interview,” Cohn said via email.
The Fix had asked how UC Berkeley defines “racial equity” and information on some of the “observable racial equity teaching criteria” developed in past iterations of the cohort.
Asked to weigh in on the program, Gail Heriot, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, flagged how the description aimed at bringing together “like-minded educators.”
“That’s one of the biggest problems on campuses today. For all the talk about ‘diversity,’ diversity of viewpoint is the last thing that’s wanted. To get ahead—in this case to qualify for the $4500 grant—a faculty member must be ‘like-minded,’” Heriot said in an email to The Fix.
“Alas, this is another in a long series of ‘antiracism’ programs designed to infuse more discussions of racial issues into the university curriculum,” added Heriot, a retired University of San Diego law professor and former U.S. Commission on Civil Rights commissioner.
“Such discussions definitely need to be part of the curriculum,” she said. “But for decades now universities have been overdoing it. Even math and engineering courses are being taught with an emphasis on racial equity. University leaders need to get a hold of themselves. Not everything is about race.”
The Center for Teaching & Learning’s “Commitment to Social Justice” outlines four teaching principles.
They emphasize solidarity with minorities; recognition of individuality; a need for use of social justice principles beyond the classroom; and campus collaboration aimed at establishing “an equitable and just learning environment,” the center’s website states.
The university defines equity as the “guarantee of fair treatment, pay, access, opportunity, and advancement for staff in every stage of career development, while at the same time continuing to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented full participation of marginalized groups.”
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