Diversity Discussion

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Catbagan: I think what you're saying is so important, and it's how we've created that diversity seminar for students to be able to ... you know, we start with a historical foundation. This is what we know from history about who we've been as a country. And then we give them frameworks for understanding where they're going to go, but for also understanding that someone else in the class might go somewhere else and that's okay. That is, in itself, what makes a dialogue rich. We also talk about the difference between dialogue and debate. In debate, we're going to point fingers at somebody; and in dialogue, we're going to try and gather information and look at it together. So, the other thing we do in class is use personal stories. This semester I'm using the Heath Anthology of Literature that has so many rich stories by so many wonderful authors that explicate the ideas that underscore the isms that create suffering, and it's in that place that students can go, "Oh, okay, now I have to connect on a cognitive level because I'm reading the theory, then I'm reading a personal story and then I'm interacting with my own reflection on that story and that theory, and pulling those things together." And, hopefully, what happens then is that in the classroom we create a forum for that all to come together, and that's where the richness of the course comes out. And students walk away shaking their head, and I like that. Putting those pieces together for them, that's our job.

Simmer-Brown: My course in interreligious dialogue is about religious diversity in America and how it's connected with other kinds of diversity. The core of the course is teaching how to dialogue, the stages of dialogue—listening and suspending, learning to really be present with someone else's narrative and experience, and then learning to voice. I work to create an atmosphere in the classroom where people are dialoguing with each other, then we invite in other groups to dialogue with. For example, we're dialogue partners with a Muslim foundation in Colorado.  Everybody in the class has a dialogue partner from the Muslim foundation, as well as other dialogue partners outside of class. We work with religious identity and religious diversity issues It's really potent because the majority of our Religious Studies students are not Buddhist. (People think that they would be Buddhist in religious studies at Naropa, but that's not the case.) The dialogue skills that we work with become part of relating to everyone at Naropa, with their incredible religious diversity. It feels to me an extremely important thing to recognize our own religious identities. We faculty probably have more formed religious identities than our students, but many of our students are going through a journey with religious identity. This relates to many other identity issues besides religion. The skills of dialogue are very important at Naropa in general. And I know, Jeanine, you teach dialogue in your classes as well.

Carpenter: We teach dialogue in the psychology classes as well—the reflective listening and speaking. Another thing that that comes to mind around diversity which sometimes gets overlooked here is the Meditation Practicum III: Maitri/Mandala or the Buddhist Psychology II: Maitri/Compassion. Both teach students a deeper level of diversity within their own psyche and the way they view the world. When students start to learn that the tension between themselves and others often has to do with how they view a particular situation in the world and how another alternately views the same situation then there is a sense of relaxation that comes from, "Oh, you perceive the world that way!" This can be such a relief to give up the struggle of trying to make others see or experience exactly the way we do. Those outer topics, which are loaded, can be dealt with in a very interesting way. "Oh, you're going to approach it from this point of view," which is even more subtle in some way than the topic itself. I found through the Maitri classes, that students are actually going deeper with their own level of empathy or compassion based on seeing the diversity within their own minds and hearts. They actually become more resourced and draw out the skills needed to meet diverse situations.

Canty: I was going to say, too, because I think part of your question was how students of color experience these topics, specifically in working with diversity in the classroom with the courses, that I think that's a whole other dimension and layer, and I think maybe that gets, a little bit, to what you were talking about—who's at the table for diversity conversations—and recognizing that a person with some sort of visible diversity will have a level of expertise in navigating these issues or experiencing them that a lot of the other students won't have, necessarily. And, so, recognizing that we're all equal humans, and compassionate, that there are different levels of expertise and experiences that students come from and how much some of these topics, especially with the emotional issues, it can really bring up really sensitive issues for students of color or with other visible diversities, who have been in these things and know so much about it, and sometimes other people are starting from scratch, can really bring up so much stuff in the classroom.

Giles: Something that you said, Jeanine, brought up a question that students have with me sometimes which is, as you said, "we're all equal; we all have compassion." It seems there is this tension, sometimes, between recognizing basic oneness and our similarities—is that what diversity work is all about is recognizing how we're all the same?—or is it about recognizing how we're all different? And I think students get a bit confused about all that. "Are we supposed to be focusing on how you eat this kind of food at home and I eat this kind of food; you speak a tonal language and I speak a Romance language; or are we looking for common threads, universality? Or both?"

Simmer-Brown: In our classes in Madhyamaka (Buddhist “middle way” philosophy), we look at how those notions of same and different are concepts, and how much we base our identity on that kind of conceptual game. It's very important to look at the conceptual habits of mind, and to classify the ways we solidify a sense of personal identity. It's really important that we continue to raise that kind of fundamental question, as well as address it when doing diversity work.

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