Staff Reads: Home
For the Staff Reads book group. Group operates in Summer and Winter Quarters and reads non-fiction texts that address issues facing our students and community.
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Books
Books are provided to participants in a first come, first served basis.
First selection for Summer 2019 is Academic Ableism
Winter 2020 will read The Diversity Bargain
Academic Ableism by
Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education, and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center. For too long, argues Jay Timothy Dolmage, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved. The ethic of higher education encourages students and teachers alike to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual, mental, or physical weakness, even as we gesture toward the value of diversity and innovation. Examining everything from campus accommodation processes, to architecture, to popular films about college life, Dolmage argues that disability is central to higher education, and that building more inclusive schools allows better education for all.
ISBN: 9780472073719Publication Date: 2017-11-22
The Diversity Bargain by
We've heard plenty from politicians and experts on affirmative action and higher education, about how universities should intervene--if at all--to ensure a diverse but deserving student population. But what about those for whom these issues matter the most? In this book, Natasha K. Warikoo deeply explores how students themselves think about merit and race at a uniquely pivotal moment: after they have just won the most competitive game of their lives and gained admittance to one of the world's top universities. What Warikoo uncovers--talking with both white students and students of color at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford--is absolutely illuminating; and some of it is positively shocking. As she shows, many elite white students understand the value of diversity abstractly, but they ignore the real problems that racial inequality causes and that diversity programs are meant to solve. They stand in fear of being labeled a racist, but they are quick to call foul should a diversity program appear at all to hamper their own chances for advancement. The most troubling result of this ambivalence is what she calls the "diversity bargain," in which white students reluctantly agree with affirmative action as long as it benefits them by providing a diverse learning environment--racial diversity, in this way, is a commodity, a selling point on a brochure. And as Warikoo shows, universities play a big part in creating these situations. The way they talk about race on campus and the kinds of diversity programs they offer have a huge impact on student attitudes, shaping them either toward ambivalence or, in better cases, toward more productive and considerate understandings of racial difference. Ultimately, this book demonstrates just how slippery the notions of race, merit, and privilege can be. In doing so, it asks important questions not just about college admissions but what the elite students who have succeeded at it--who will be the world's future leaders--will do with the social inequalities of the wider world.
ISBN: 9780226400143Publication Date: 2016-11-15
About Staff Reads
Inspired by the UW Tacoma Strategic Plan, and the Real Lit[erature]: Reading for Social Justice book groups, Staff Reads seeks to create a greater awareness and discussion of the experiences that are being had by our students, staff, and community members. By interacting with non-fiction texts that discuss different issues being faced by our students and community, it will provide opportunities to dialog with peers. Additional benefits include creating community by reducing isolation, and enhancing campus education through peer-based discussion groups.
Staff Reads is open to any person employed by UW Tacoma, in any capacity.
