Beyond Both Sides: Advancing Spaces for Exploration and Not False Binaries

Source: https://americancultures.berkeley.edu/twtt/beyond-both-sides Parent: https://americancultures.berkeley.edu/

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Beyond Both Sides: Advancing Spaces for Exploration and Not False Binaries

About

On October 1, 2024, the Teaching and Working in Troubled Times program hosted the panel "Beyond Both Sides: Advancing Spaces for Exploration and Not False Binaries.” In this discussion, Berkeley faculty and staff from various departments came together to discuss how the concept of binaries shapes the work to advance justice and equity on campus. The panelists reflected on how they contend with the binary thinking and discussed recommendations for how faculty and staff can meet political moments by analyzing, challenging, and thinking beyond the institutional and cultural binaries.

Event Speakers

Moderator: David Wilson, Dean and Professor, Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy
Panelist: Keith P. Feldman, Chair and Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies
Panelist: Andrés Cediel, Professor-in-Residence, School of Journalism
Panelist: Em Huang, Director, LGBTQ+Advacement & Equity, Gender Equity Resource Center
Panelist: Lisa Garcia Bedolla, Vice Provost for Graduate Studies, Dean of the Graduate Division and Professor, Berkeley School of Education

Disruption is a part of the process of understanding. Systems can be destabilized when we understand how they work and when we understand what needs to be done to disrupt them.

Em Huang

Event Resources

Black Studies: Bringing Back the Person by June Jordan

In discussing how instructors, administrators, and faculty can reflect on their positionality within educational institutions, Professor Keith Feldman references June Jordan’s essay ‘Black Studies: Bringing Back the Person.’ This piece is from Jordan’s collection ‘Moving towards home: political essays.’ Jordan, a former professor at UC Berkeley who founded the incredibly impactful Poetry for the People program, contemplates what it means to have a university that is truly responsive to public needs. In this essay, she posed the critical question quoted by Professor Feldman: “How shall we humanly compose knowledge that troubles the mind into ideas of life?” Professor Feldman initiates a conversation about bringing marginalized communities into the university project and long-standing institutional inequalities. For a deeper understanding, readers are encouraged to review the complete essay in ‘Moving Towards Home.’

VOCES: LATINO VOTE 2024

VOCES: LATINO VOTE 2024 is a documentary that delves into the efforts political parties are making to reach the Latino electorate in California, the state with the largest Hispanic/Latino population in the country. Produced by panelist Andrés Cediel, the film critically addresses broader themes of media representation and language in political discourse. In doing so, the film challenges false binaries and misleading portrayals of Latino communities as monolithic. By examining the careful choices of words and community portrayals, Cediel reflects on the valuable lessons on the impact of language and media in shaping public perception and policy.

Ta-Nehisi Coates Interview (CBS Good Morning America)

In this interview, acclaimed author Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses lessons from his latest book “The Message.” The book delves into how the stories we tell and/or omit profoundly shape and distort our perceptions of reality. He specifically highlights his strong stance against Israel as an apartheid state and explains why his book focuses on the often-ignored and suppressed narratives of Palestinians living under an apartheid system. This interview complements Keith Feldman’s insights during the panel on how instructors can effectively communicate ethical orientations in teaching. By critically addressing narratives that bridge deep-seated divides, Coates’s perspectives provide an essential resource for instructors, staff, and students committed to students to develop their positions argued from evidentiary bases.

The core, foundational responsibility of an institution like Berkeley is to grow curriculum that is responsive to the world around us.

Keith Feldman

Key Takeaways

Balancing critical thinking and binary enforcement at Berkeley

(00:05:51) The space for intellectual inquiry that our institution encourages can often push people to feel pressed into finding an answer. Rather, we should contemplate how we can learn from the process of finding an answer. Instead of thinking that there is a definitive “right” or “wrong” answer we should consider that there might be many different possible answers. There may be right answers for a particular person or particular group. Intellectual exploration flourishes when we take time to consider the components of answers that are neither definitively right nor wrong.
(00:08:05) People often promote a false binary between theory and practice, when in fact the two intersect and intertwine. When instructors encourage students to contemplate this intersection, they become better at recognizing the binaries that show up in their daily lives and thinking.
(00:10:09) A teacher’s job is to get people to disrupt. Instructors should think about ways that they can encourage others to engage in ‘productive discomfort.’ García Bedolla argues that people don’t effectively learn unless they’re uncomfortable. While everyone comes to the institution with their political upbringing, an academic institution university is meant to challenge understandings people may take for granted.

Navigating Binaries and Advancing Institutional Research

(00:25:02) Whether in the classroom or the field conducting research, the question of how to draw a framework is crucial. Scholars must struggle at every step around what questions they can or cannot handle at any particular moment. With this in mind, it can be helpful to “report against your story” to help reveal potential blind spots. It is impossible to address every perspective within one story or piece, but considering the frame in which you are working and its potential shortcomings is incredibly important to creating impactful work.
(00:36:14) Despite having to continually grapple with binaries, journalists and other storytellers have the power to inspire people to embrace their humanity in ways that they cannot manage alone.

Mitigating Harm & Advancing Equity within Institutional Binaries

(00:29:40) There’s no single way for staff from equity and inclusion (E&I) programs to advance equity on campus. Keep in mind that campus members have a diverse range of experiences, identities, and priorities with countless different needs that must be addressed. Those engaged in E&I work can start by asking themselves who is granted humanity and agency on this campus, and in what ways. This question can serve as a starting point to recognizing what the material experiences of the community are.
(00:31:45) Em Huang: restrooms are an example of a need that varies for different communities. In this example, E&I administrators approached the situation with a question: what does this need to look like in practice? What kinds of restrooms are needed? Where? How often? This approach supports communities in acknowledging people’s varied needs and collectively devising strategies to address those needs.
(00:32:43) Rather than asking, “What is the one right answer that we’re trying to move towards,” the campus members should address problems by attempting to understand them and their impacts on different groups of people. This approach supports problem-solving in ways that best meet multiple needs.
(00:55:08) Policies are not just policies - they impact people. The most effective policy work is rooted in community and grounded in understanding its impact on the people it is designed to protect and guide. Because stories are so often exploited, people working to advance equity and inclusion issues have to think about how to effectively return agency and autonomy to the individuals whose stories are being told.

Recommended Actions

Addressing and Counteracting Institutional Binaries in Teaching

(00:11:39) Instructors can start by rooting their courses in their own humanity and lived experiences. It can be incredibly impactful for instructors to share why they care about what they teach and how it may relate to where they come from. Students and instructors being in dialogue about their “truths” together can be really powerful when it comes to counteracting the learner vs. teacher binary that is so often pushed onto students.
(00:12:38) It can be helpful for instructors to develop community agreements with their class to formulate parameters for how to deal with hard conversations. This can help students acknowledge that while opinions aren’t facts, experience is valuable. This also allows students to hold each other accountable in difficult conversations. These norms should emphasize the importance of addressing the idea and not the person.
(00:13:11) Lisa Garcia Bedolla shared that the first assignment for her Educational Inequality AC Course is an educational autobiography, a project that encourages students to think about the kinds of schools they went to. This self-reflection exercise helps all of the students in the course to start from a place of shared humanity. Assignments like these allow students to recognize that people can experience the same thing very differently, and thus also think about how positionality influences perspective.
(00:50:41) It is crucial also for instructors to reflect on their transformations and the ways that they have had to consciously undo their learning. Instructors have often had to align with the institution in order to advance—in unconscious, conscious, intentional, and unintentional ways. Teaching openness comes from being open with oneself and challenging one’s privileges and how that may have blinded us to other perspectives.

Balancing Instructor Ethics & Classroom Responsibilities

(00:21:56) A big part of expanding the world of possibility for students is being responsive to headlines. Sometimes it can be helpful for instructors to own the impacts of living in a time where the news is saturated with atrocity. Doing so can allow students to also express the challenges they may be going through because of current events.
(01:14:33) Instructors should lay out an ethical stance from the beginning of their courses. They should also work with their students to formulate community agreements, expect disagreement, and honor the diversity of values within the class.
(01:15:45) Lisa García Bedolla: the metaphor “stay in your lane, use your blinkers” illustrates how positionality can be undermined, rather than honored. Incorporating autobiographical assignments into the class allows people to come to the conversation with an understanding of the positions of both privilege and marginalization that inform their thoughts. Doing so helps make power more visible and allows people to understand where they sit in systems of power.

Beyond the Binary of Teaching and Learning

(00:26:20) It’s also important to call out the false binary of teaching vs. learning because it emphasizes that instructors are not just teachers, but participants in the process of learning. Students need to see their instructors “fail” and see them deal with it. Doing so allows students to break down that subconscious binary and understand learning as an ongoing process.
(00:27:58) Facilitating a public presentation for student projects helps students understand that their accountability to their peers is ultimately what pushes them to excel. These alternative forms of assessment have so much potential to promote genuine learning.

Navigating Institutional Hierarchies and Enforced Binaries

(00:39:55) For people in positions of leadership, it is important to be very explicit about one’s values and what you are trying to accomplish so your colleagues also consider how to collaborate in a way that’s aligned with their values.
(00:40:30) There is a lot of performative busyness at Berkeley, and people’s identities are very attached to that busyness. Because this culture can make change very difficult, understand that the building of models for how to lead change with integrity is a work in progress.
(00:42:29) When it comes to managing others and empowering them to be a part of change, intersectionality theory can help recognize that marginalization and privilege can exist simultaneously in the same person.
(00:46:50) Analyzing how power operates within an institution and discussing theories of power in classrooms is crucial for understanding the dynamics of building power and capacity across differences. Consider that students’ hunger for knowledge is powerful and generative, potentially adding depth to classroom discussions.