Instituting an Antiracist Public Policy Curriculum: An Investigation of Faculty Professional Development that Makes Imagined Racial Equity and Inclusion Possible

Abstract

The traditional pedagogical practices taught to and employed by faculty in U.S. higher education tend to perpetuate white supremacist ideals and Eurocentric curricula, simultaneously discounting the academic and societal benefits of newer pedagogies, such as antiracism. The dominant explanation for this trend is that most faculty members attended institutions of higher education with traditional, white-centering programs. Further, faculty members are afforded teaching autonomy in their classrooms, making professional development trainings related to socially just pedagogies difficult to mandate. Previous research on curriculum change has emphasized administrative encouragement but ultimately curriculum change in the education of junior and senior students is left up to faculty interest. Here I use interviews and text analysis to define four pressure areas in the institutional transformation process at the undergraduate program at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. Most important to the many organizational processes of sustained antiracist curriculum change, administrators and faculty members must work in tandem with one another regarding accountability, responsibility, authority, and autonomy. My findings indicate that a pending shift in the Program’s cultural and academic values away from white supremacist ideals and towards inclusive pedagogies depends greatly on individual and collective modifications of language and norms.