This Tuesday, we held our first Big Thinking lecture of the season. University of Ottawa law professor Jeremy de Beer discussed ways of rethinking intellectual property and how we measure innovation. In his talk, de Beer argued for a more holistic approach to innovation, one that values contributions from the social sciences and humanities and relies on a variety of measures that complement economic ones. A recap of de Beer’s talk is available on University Affairs’ Margin Notes blog. iPolitics also covered the event. If you have an account, you can read the article here.

An upcoming Congress Big Thinker, Thomas Homer-Dixon, published an editorial in the Globe and Mail this week, discussing the oil crisis. Homer-Dixon, who is the CIGI Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, will present a Big Thinking lecture on May 31 on complexity science and its application to the social sciences and humanities.

Paul Jay, Gerald Graff and Greg Jay, co-editors of the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC), are launching The Future of the Humanities: A Think Tank, which will explore ideas about the future of the humanities and how they can remain a relevant and competitive field. Check out their work and submit your own material here.

Inside Higher Ed published an article on the benefits of introducing digital humanities research into undergraduate courses. According to author Steve Kolowich, students who use digital technology for their humanities research need to understand how the underlying design of programs can influence research findings.

The New York Times published an article by Vedika Khemani, a Ph.D. student in theoretical physics, which argues for the value of a humanities education. According to her, complementing a science degree with courses in the humanities helps create well-rounded graduates who can think outside the box.

Zetta Elliott, Borough of Manhattan Community College
Guest Contributor

Last summer, after returning from a cross-border trip to Toronto, a friend of mine asked: “What’s wrong with Canada?” It’s a question she and I have considered over the years as we’ve worked to establish ourselves as black women writers and scholars. Rosamond is a poet/performance artist/activist. I met her in graduate school at New York University, where she wrote her dissertation on Caribbean immigrant literature, including texts by Canadian authors Dionne Brand and Austin Clarke.

It was both surprising and embarrassing for me to find that many graduate students in the United States knew more about African Canadian literature than I did. I read no black-authored books as a child, and in high school was exposed to “classics” written primarily by white American authors (e.g. Catcher in the Rye, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Great Gatsby, etc.). The few black-authored novels I had access to also came from the United States, and so in 1994 when I decided to pursue my dream of becoming a writer, I left Canada with barely a backward glance, convinced that my best chance of success was on the other side of the border.

In some ways, it’s reassuring to know that my African American friends also sense something “wrong” when they venture into the Great White North. Most bookstores carry few if any black-authored books. Despite over five centuries of contributing to Canadian cultural, social and political life, African Canadians seem satisfied with—or resigned to—having limited literary offerings for themselves and their children.  Blacks in the United States don’t always realize their relatively privileged position in relation to other members of the African diaspora; African Americans represent a much larger percentage of a much larger nation, and while many challenges remain, they have a long, proud tradition of highlighting African American talent and resisting racism and social exclusion in publishing and other spheres of life.

When the 2012 Coretta Scott King Book Awards were announced recently, my American community of book bloggers, librarians, and educators bemoaned the fact that the same black children’s book authors and illustrators seem to win the CSKs year after year. My colleagues here in the United States have to be reminded that there are countries where not enough books are published to sustain such an award. Apparently this kind of literary award is a luxury that Canada cannot afford.

Book awards are meant to celebrate excellence, but can excellence emerge from a small and/or stagnant pool? I call this phenomenon the “big fish, small pond” syndrome, which ensures that a handful of authors are celebrated while emerging talent often is left to flounder, undiscovered or unsupported. Arundhati Roy calls this the “new racism,” which she explains using this brilliant analogy:

Every year, the National Turkey Federation presents the US president with a turkey for Thanksgiving. Every year, in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the president spares that particular bird (and eats another one). After receiving the presidential pardon, the Chosen One is sent to Frying Pan Park in Virginia to live out its natural life. The rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for Thanksgiving are slaughtered and eaten on Thanksgiving Day. ConAgra Foods, the company that has won the Presidential Turkey contract, says it trains the lucky birds to be sociable, to interact with dignitaries, school children and the press.

That’s how new racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred turkeys – the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell, or Condoleezza Rice, some singers, some writers (like myself) –  are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park.

If the Canadian publishing industry only opens the gate for two black novelists each year, what happens to all the other talented and aspiring writers? Twenty novels written by twelve African Canadian authors have been published in Canada since the start of the twenty-first century – and only two of the twelve were first-time authors. A rather astonishing percentage of those novels have won or been nominated for major literary awards, including Esi Edugyan’s Half Blood Blues, which won the 2011 Giller Prize. Yet can you name three black Canadian women novelists under the age of forty? I couldn’t do it when I emigrated in 1994, and I still can’t do it now that I’m nearing forty myself. I can name black women novelists from the United Kingdom (e.g. Helen Oyeyemi, Diana Evans, Zadie Smith) and the United States (e.g. Jesmyn Ward, N.K. Jemisin, Heidi Durrow). I adore the novels of Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, an amazingly talented writer from Nigeria. But when I think about young black Canadian women novelists, I draw an unsettling blank.

My scholarly field, Ethnic Studies, is very much in the news these days since the Tucson Unified School District complied with an order from the Arizona state superintendent for public instruction to terminate the Mexican American Studies Program. It infuriates me to know that books are being banned – books that empower so many students of color by opening doors to an alternate, more inclusive view of the world. I know from experience – both as a student and educator – how it feels to finally find yourself in a classroom where people who look like you take center stage. How often does this happen in Canada for black children or children of color more generally? How can it happen when gatekeeping in the Canadian publishing industry keeps the flow of diverse voices to a trickle?

Over the past couple of years I’ve found myself writing extensively about my childhood in Canada and my subsequent efforts to “decolonize” my imagination. As I age it becomes harder to accept the slow pace of progress when it comes to multicultural literature for young readers. I started my blog to advocate for greater equity and inclusion in the United States publishing industry but soon realized that the situation was actually much worse for blacks in Canada. I dedicated my forthcoming novel, Ship of Souls, to my cousin’s son, Kodie. He’s not yet twelve but his childhood in twenty-first century Canada is looking a lot like my own childhood of the 1970s and 1980s – not much has changed. His white mother and black father are no longer together, and this brown-skinned child is growing up outside of Toronto in an all-white environment. I send him books from the United States that offer Kodie a mirror in which he can see himself, but I resent the fact that his mother can’t walk into a local bookstore or library and find Canadian books that do the same.

Last year I began to compile a bibliography on my blog and discovered that, of the 500 English-language books published for children in Canada each year, on average only three are written by black authors. Since 2000, of the nearly thirty novels featuring a black protagonist, only two depict black children living in contemporary Canada. Outraged (though not especially surprised), I wrote an essay, “Navigating the Great White North: Representations of Blackness in Canadian Young Adult Literature,” in which I examined this “symbolic annihilation” of black youth:

I detect a disturbing focus on people of colour who are represented as distinctly not Canadian, not living within the country’s borders, and not active in the current historical moment; blacks specifically are imagined as foreigners and/or figures from the distant past rather than established/integrated members of the national “mosaic.”

…instead of reflecting this racially diverse nation, books for young readers published in Canada during the first decade of the twenty-first century paint a picture of a country devoid of black citizens.

…black youth appear as fugitive and/or former slaves or as impoverished Africans grappling with violence and disease. Why is it so difficult for authors of any race to situate black teens in contemporary Canada? Why do so many authors prefer to see blacks as “eternal slaves” seeking sanctuary in “the promised land?” And what effect does the erasure of black teens from the contemporary Canadian landscape have on young readers?

I worry that, like me, Kodie will grow up not dreaming in color, not imagining himself as worthy of assuming the starring role in literature (as protagonist and/or author). Right now he has aspirations of becoming a writer and I’ll do what I can to help him realize that goal. But I’m not a very good role model since I never managed to get my own books published in Canada, and ultimately chose to leave rather than blaze a trail that successive generations could follow.

The truth is, effecting change in Canadian publishing is difficult when I’ve committed myself to life in another country; as an expatriate it is challenging to organize a much-needed symposium on multicultural children’s literature – something comparable to the inaugural ‘A Is For Anansi’ conference held in 2010 at New York University. Here in the United States I have advocated for the adoption of a Publishing Equalities Charter like the one sponsored by the Diversity In Publishing Network (DIPNET) in the United Kingdom, but my pleas have had little if any effect. I have, nonetheless, managed to launch my writing career, and I have found a community of like-minded activists who helped me to launch a childhood literacy initiative with an emphasis on multicultural books. As a black writer, I have no regrets about leaving Canada. By comparison, the United States is a vast sea that is, perhaps, more perilous but ultimately more productive for me than Canada’s “small pond.”

Zetta Elliott is a Canadian-born black feminist writer of poetry, plays, essays, novels, and stories for children. She is Assistant Professor in the Center for Ethnic Studies at Borough of Manhattan Community College and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Matthew Batstone, director of Britain’s New College of the Humanities, wrote an article for The Guardian advising graduates in the humanities on ways to capitalize on their education when they are applying for jobs. One of his tips for humanities graduates is demonstrating that they are not just suited to thinking, but also to handling projects and working in an applied way.

Léo Charbonneau, of University Affairs, refutes arguments that online education will be the demise of traditional classroom lectures and universities. He argues that education is a social experience and that there is something to the heady university experience that will keep students coming back to campus, rather than staying home on their computers. Instead, he argues for more partnership between universities in offering a standardized set of first year courses online, for a reduced cost.

Apple’s iBooks Author for the iPad was released last week, and some believe it is the solution to the problem of inaccessibly expensive academic textbooks by eliminating printing and distribution costs. According to the Los Angeles Times, Steve Jobs believed the application could shake up the textbook industry. Textbooks are already available through the application for $14.99 or less, but the high cost of tablets could be a barrier for many students.

Angela Dwyer, Queensland University of Technology

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on issues related to LGBTQI2-S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning, intersex and Two-Spirited) peoples.

Some police still do victimise lesbian and gay men, as the 2006 Amnesty International report Stonewalled clearly documents. Generally, however, the police are more likely to be seen as supporting diversity rather than demonising it. In Australia, as in the United Kingdom and Canada, the police have implemented police liaison programs to build relationships with LGBTI communities. Police from different parts of Australia now march in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in a uniformed display of support. Reflecting on this contemporary context, it would appear we have come a long way since Gary Comstock’s ground-breaking work – Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men – in the 1990s highlighting how lesbians and gay men were being deliberately targeted and victimised by police.

I think a lot about this history of repression and persecution every time I walk from the train to work and make my way past groups of out-n-proud young people wearing rainbows and holding hands in Brisbane city. They are what I call ‘regulars’ as I see them at least once a week in my travels and, as Malinda S. Smith puts it  in “Queering In/Equality,” these young people  are not only ‘out,’  they are hyper-visible. They attract attention from passers-by because they are young, they are loud, they are colourful, and they are affectionate. When I interviewed 35 LGBTIQP young people in Brisbane, it became increasingly clear that it was these very characteristics – young, loud, colourful, openly affectionate – that appeared to draw the attention of police in public spaces.

The stories of young people provide a different picture of police relations with the LGBTIQP community in Australia. The stories they share are not the premeditated hate-filled violence documented in Comstock’s research. In my research hate violence from police was the exception rather than the norm in young peoples’ accounts, a refreshing change from past research on these issues. That said, some of their stories revealed that the harassment, if not the hate and the violence, have not disappeared entirely and, instead, they may have shifted and reshaped in to new forms. Similar to the subtle forms of harassment elaborated in Brian Burtch and Rebecca Haskells’ Get That Freak. The young people in Australia talked about how police stops and actions sent clear messages to them: LGBTIQP were not wanted in public spaces. Their narratives revealed how the intersection of age and sexuality shaped public spaces. LGBTIQP youth were sent the message that public spaces were gendered, that is, heterosexual and heterogendered, and those who fell outside the normative boundaries did not ‘fit in’ and were excluded.

Over the years of doing research with young people about their interactions with the police in public spaces many of them recounted experiences of being moved on, fined, arrested, and having their details checked. Young people talked about how they felt violated by these frequent police stops and searches. For young people generally these outcomes came from a range of conduct such as hanging out with other young people, drinking in public, being seen as a public nuisance, using offensive language, homelessness, cigarette smoking, begging, criminal justice breaches, and resisting arrest.

In my study a key difference between stories of young people generally and the stories of LGBTIQP young people specifically was ‘looking queer’ such as, for example, wearing rainbow coloured or tight fitting clothing, boys looking ‘girly’ (wearing make-up or having long hair), and girls looking ‘butch’ (wearing leathers and mohawks). Looking queer in public spaces drew the attention of police. One young gay male shared how he and his friends were dressed in rainbows for pride day. Although the police stopped and questioned them about drugs they ignored another group of young people who were dressed ‘normal’. A young lesbian talked about how the attitude of police changed to being ‘quite negative’ when they realised her concern for another girl’s safety was because they were partners. For another young gay male who was dressed in drag, it was clear, in his words, that his choice of attire made police just want ‘to get away from me.’ Police also used gendered language to make it clear to young people that a ‘girly looking boy’, for example, was a ‘slut.’ The interviews suggested the police sanctioned the informal targeting of young people either because they were LGBTIQP or for ‘looking queer.’ Police moved such LGBTIQP youth out of public spaces, treated them more brusquely, and gave them weird looks.

These sanctions were even more pronounced when affection was displayed towards a same sex partner in public spaces. For example, young people in my study recounted many instances where if a young male was sitting on another young male’s lap, police would be ‘pulling it up pretty fast’. Typically these instances involved informal intervention by police where they would separate the young people and tell them ‘public affection’ was ‘not allowed in Queen Street.’ Some young people were even fined under public nuisance laws for ‘making out’ with their partners in the street, in train stations, and in shopping centres. Formal or informal, these sanctions made it very clear to LGBTIQP young people that same sex affection was outlawed in public spaces.

While this is far removed from the hate violence of the past, I would suggest these police actions are no less harmful. In fact, if we are to understand hate in the way it is articulated by Nathan Hall in Hate Crimes, then we need to recognise that it is also about messages. There is little doubt that police actions with LGBTIQP young people in Brisbane sent specific messages to these young people about the social acceptability of their presence in public spaces. What this all suggests, then, is that simultaneously persecuting and protecting people who are sexually and gender diverse is paradoxical and in flux, as Sharalyn Jordan  elaborates in her discussion of homophobic and transphobic persecution.

The stories told by the young people I interviewed reflect these paradoxes, tensions and fluctuations. The messages that police were giving to sexually and gender diverse young people were both subtle and yet loud and clear; they were not wanted in public spaces. The interviews also made apparent an unspoken conflict between LGBTIQP young people and police, a conflict Lesley Moran and Beverley Skeggs discussed in Sexuality and the Politics of Violence and Safety in terms of heteronormativity, those who are able to be visible in public spaces and those who, in the eyes of the law, are seen as having no right to occupy such public spaces.

Progress has been made in relationships between the police and sexual and gender diverse communities. Yet, it seems, we still have some ways to go in order to improve the experiences of the most visible and vulnerable members of LGBTIQP communities. And, if we reflect on the numbers of young people who commit suicide, as Gerald Walton does, then clearly we have some ways to go not just to improve relations with the police but also within the broader public.

Finally, the world’s first comparative study into the criminal and educational sanctions meted out to heterosexual and nonheterosexual young people was conducted by Himmelstein and Bruckner. That study found that nonheterosexual young people were far more likely to be subjected to sanctions. Given the fact that LGBTIQP young people are disproportionately impacted by formal criminal and educational sanctions as well as informal sanctions and messages from the police, then educators and policymakers alike must consider how to improve this situation. These issues require further examination to prevent LGBTIQP young people from being caught up in youth justice systems worldwide. As a start, the LGBTIQP young people I interviewed suggested a two-fold approach: first, they suggested the need for better training for police about sexual and gender diversity; and, second, they suggested education for LGBTIQP young people on how to engage with the police.

Angela Dwyer, co-author of Sex, Crime and Morality, is a Sociologist and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, School of Justice at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.

Last year, I had the incredible privilege of attending the 2011 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences as CFHSS’ communications co-op student. In Fredericton, I got to spend my days in the media room, in the thick of things, writing Experience Congress content, observing the frantic pace of a media relations job, meeting interesting people, and loving every minute of it.

Even though I had been on the job for less than a month when I landed in Fredericton, I was immediately swept up by the passion and dedication that goes into Congress. The newness and the rapid pace of Congress were exhilarating. It also didn’t hurt that I was completely enamoured with Fredericton’s beauty, culture and hospitality.

Aside from my experiences behind the scenes, I also really enjoyed Congress as an attendee. I found the Equity Issues panel on “Indigenous Knowledge and Indigenizing the Academy” challenging and eye-opening. I saw Shakespeare in a whole new light when I followed Bard in the Barracks’ production of Macbeth through woodsy Odell Park. I sampled the Maritimes’ renowned selection of local beers (Fredericton was a real haven for beer-lovers like me).

After having such a wonderful time at Congress 2011, I was overjoyed when I was offered the opportunity to attend Congress 2012 as part of CFHSS’ communications team. Congress 2012 is shaping up as an amazing event and I wouldn’t miss it for the world. The beautiful Kitchener-Waterloo region, the stellar roster of Big Thinking speakers, the vision of this year’s Congress co-chairs and the exciting cultural program that is in the works are sure to make 2012 a memorable year for Congress organizers and delegates.

Oralia Gómez-Ramírez, University of British Columbia
Guest Contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on issues related to LGBTQI2-S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning, intersex and Two-Spirited) peoples.

When I asked trans activists Angie Rueda Castillo and Irina Layevska what this blog entry should be about, the two of them encouraged me to account for what is happening in the struggle for trans people’s rights in Mexico, and how this may contrast and compare to the state of affairs in Canada.

In Mexico City, a local law was approved in 2008 allowing trans peoples to change their name and sex on birth certificates and other official documents. Despite its narrow provincial jurisdiction and current limited accessibility and affordability, this legal change has been viewed positively by members of the trans communities. The measure allows trans peoples to obtain birth certificates without marginal annotations indicating the sex and name legally assigned to them at birth, and they are not required to undergo a genital surgery to obtain their identification documents. Acutely aware of the status of trans-related legislations in other parts of the world, activists in Mexico have praised the law not only for addressing some of the issues of social stigma, but also for opening up space to live and think about the wide array of trans experiences without the imposition of a medicalized frame.

In the field of critical intersectional studies of gender and sexuality, there is a general willingness to be self-critical and open to new ideas and transformation. At the same time, coming from and having carried out my doctoral fieldwork in one location in the global South, specifically in Mexico City, I continue to notice the ways in which many concepts, categories, discourses, policies, strategies, and the like emerge in the global North, become influential and, subsequently, are circulated and taken up in the global South as desirable models of sensible, good or best practices. Needless to say, those flows of ideas are not unidirectional or unequivocal although it is an intricate task to trace the genealogy of an idea or a concept and how it travels worldwide. Yet, it would be really hard to be oblivious to the fact that such circulations occur against a backdrop of uneven and hierarchical global geopolitical configurations in which nation-states’ wealth and power differentials matter.

It is common to encounter media representations and everyday interpretations both within and outside Canada that simply assume that the terms and practices adopted in the global North as inherently better. Despite the widespread consensus among critical scholars that these ranking scales are historically and politically constructed, oftentimes the concepts and policies used in the global North find echo around the world, while the notions and strategies emanating from the global South do not have the same fate or privilege in other geopolitical locations.

Let me draw briefly on some of the findings of my doctoral research project on trans women’s efforts to obtain rights in Mexico City to provide further example of these uneven travels. Among lower class male-to-female persons, many of whom are street-based sex workers, the terms “jota” and “vestida” are widely used to name each other and themselves. These naming practices emerge out of and reflect the historically specific labour, class, and gender configurations of Mexico City today. The socioeconomic context and the lived experiences that explain these particular naming practices are complex and they deserve more attention than I can give here. Suffice it to say that context matters and these terms are employed differently to refer to what we would understand as transgender or transsexual women. As well,  a growing number of studies in the field have shown they have been in circulation for at least two decades, if not longer. More recently – prior to and particularly after the approval of the 2008 local legislation – terms like “transgénero” (transgender) and “mujer trans” (trans woman) began to be used.

The introduction of these terms with global currency has not displaced the use of the domestic terminologies. Yet it has led to a local symbolic struggle in which the globally circulating terms are valued higher while the geographically influenced terms are viewed as seemingly backwards, incorrect, and derogatory. Their coexistence is certainly hierarchical. Were it not for the resilience of the local notions to stay alive, one would be tempted to overlook the historicity of all of these concepts. More importantly, their conflicting simultaneity in the shared space of Mexico City allows us to remain critical about the ways in which the concepts travelling from the global North tend to be constructed as intrinsically-superior taken up as common sense, or in terms of an always-there kind of vocabulary due, in large part, to geopolitical privilege.

In Mexico and other locations in the global South, the notions of “gay” or “queer,” for example, have been taken up by some people, for diverse reasons, and with ever changing meanings. In Mexico City terms available at the local level (that could have potentially resulted in the rise of a movement for jotas’ or vestidas’ rights, instead of trans women’s rights) have not been politicized or reclaimed. In its place, embracing global terms and notions has helped trans people articulate their demands and to gain relative legitimacy in the socio-legal fields. I am not suggesting they had to steer clear of “foreign” or “imposed” concepts in their mobilizing efforts. Rather, I am encouraging us – scholars and activists based in the global North – to remain aware of the geopolitical and epistemic privilege underlying these processes, and to find ways to help dismantle the disparities and inequalities existing in today’s world system that inevitably shape the ways in which gender- and sexuality-based social justice struggles play out worldwide.

The trans population is one of the most marginalized groups in Mexican society today. Structural and systemic vulnerabilities and pervasive discriminatory practices are expressed in higher rates of HIV/AIDS incidence, hate crimes, rates of incarceration, and police extortion, among other problems. Thus the challenges facing trans peoples in Mexico are still multiple. In the legal terrain – to speak of just one of the fields in which they are seeking to effect change – these include the acquisition of legal literacy and enough economic means to benefit from local legislations, as well as the effort to overturn the prevailing system of partial citizenships in which many trans people, due to absence of a federal law, are in effect undocumented in their own country of birth.

Why would this matter to a Canada-based audience such as the one reading this blog series? Why is it important to talk about what happens in Mexico, and elsewhere in the global South, in the Canadian context? As I have maintain, what happens in the global North does matter to what goes on in global South – that is, to  how gender- and sexuality-based struggles are framed, what issues are highlighted, what vocabularies are rendered politically viable, what strategies are employed. I want to suggest that we continue reflecting on the ways in which Canada plays a key role in holding, allocating and administering asymmetrical socioeconomic and political privilege worldwide, and how this conferred privilege may shape lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning, intersex, two-spirited (and other) political and academic efforts taking place within and beyond the geographical confines of Canada.

Having a broader geopolitical dialogue that gets translated into meaningful transnational alliances is needed now more than ever. In other words, we should keep an eye out for the ways in which the geopolitical privilege resulting from being based in the global North, including in Canada, structures what takes place in other latitudes. This proposition is certainly not novel, but as a woman of colour from the global South, I still see value in insisting upon this kind of mindfulness and critical engagement.

Oralia Gómez-Ramírez is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology, and a Liu Fellow and Vanier Scholar at the University of British Columbia. She thanks Angie Rueda Castillo, Irina Layevska, Julien Henon, and Mario Ulises Delgado Jaime for their suggestions on this piece.

Inside Higher Ed featured an essay on the current debates about the usefulness of the humanities. Authors Paul Jay and Gerald Graff argue that some academics in the humanities disdain arguments about the humanities’ applicability to non-academic jobs, which ultimately sells humanities students short. Commenting on the essay, Andrew Sullivan highlights a chart of unemployment rates for all university degree holders. According to the chart, the rates for degree holders in the humanities are fairly in line with unemployment rates for other degrees.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) is launching a new research funding initiative in partnership with Industry Canada. The Knowledge Synthesis Grants, which have a value of up to $25,000, will be granted to initiatives that synthesize existing research on the best ways of leveraging public investment in R&D to stimulate innovation. The application deadline is January 27^th.

Increasingly, university professors are questioning the lecture-format of higher education. Pamela Rutledge argues for a move to a more participatory, collaborative and interactive learning model, similar to the way students use social media to express themselves and interact with their social circles. Todd Pettigrew, on the other hand, defends the traditional lecture, arguing that there is value in acquiring knowledge from someone who is an expert in a particular field. As a student or a teacher, what do you find works best in your classroom? Let us know in the comments below.

Malinda S. Smith

Will Ferrell’s comedy, ‘Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy’ tells the story of a woman who is hired in to a newsroom dominated by an old boys club whose behavior ranged from tolerating her presence, to disdaining her professional interventions, to scheming to seduce or depose her. A kind of benign tolerance pertained as long as the ambitious female character stayed in “her place,” doing girly stories on food, clothing and cute pets. Despite being subjected to the kind of garden variety sexism that continues to underwrite the glass ceiling, the female character refused to circumscribe her ambition by being pigeon-holed in to any kind of pink ghetto.

Even as we laugh at the absurdity of the scenes we are reminded of the perennial difficulty faced by organizations trying to treat diverse groups equitably: How do we get those who are comfortably ensconced in the existing social order to recognize the need for change and to be more inclusive? The comedy is productive for thinking about the possibilities of inclusion precisely because it speaks to what makes the absence of diversity and existing inequities so invisible, and yet so ‘normal’, to social majorities who are bemused by, if not resistant to, calls for diversity. This is captured in one memorable scene in the ‘Anchorman’.

Ed Harken: A lot of you have been hearing the affiliates complaining about a lack of diversity on the news team.
Champ Kind: What in the hell’s diversity?
Ron Burgundy: Well, I could be wrong, but I believe diversity is an old, old wooden ship that was used during the Civil War era.
Ed Harken: Ron, I would be surprised if the affiliates were concerned about the lack of an old, old wooden ship, but nice try.

Diversity, we see, can mean different things to different people.  As I wrote in “The language of equity and diversity in the academy,” the word ‘diversity’ is ubiquitous, and circulates in all areas of work as in political, social and cultural life. Its meanings are, like the word itself, multiple, contextual and notoriously contingent. Jeanne Martinson illustrates the point in “What is diversity”: “To a stockbroker, it means a balanced portfolio of stocks, bonds and other investments. To a horticulturalist, it means balancing perennials, annuals, shade and sun.” In forestry, it means variety in life forms, ecological roles and in levels including populations, species and ecosystems. In business, supplier diversity signals strategies to include nontraditional groups like minority-owned enterprises in the supply chain. And, in the workplace diversity generally refers to any aspect of human difference, such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and age. Diversity is also used in the academy to refer to differences in ideas, language, cognitive abilities, and institutional strategies in the area of internationalization.

The many and varied uses of diversity reminds us to heed the emblematic exchange between Humpty Dumpty and Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. Conscious both of his social power and of the contingency of words, Humpty Dumpty told Alice: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Since words can mean different things, the question, according to Humpty Dumpty, was this: “which is to be master – that’s all.”  At this historical conjuncture in Canada there are two powerful demographic changes that are spurring us to more seriously reflect on what we mean by diversity and how and why it matters. And, given the multiple and ever expanding use of the word diversity, organizations need to determine which usage is, for them, ‘master.’

Canada’s Social I-Revolutions: Indigenous, immigrant, inclusive

We are in the midst of two demographic revolutions, “social I-Revolutions,” which are ushering in a great social transformation in the very constitution of Canadian society: One is Indigenous and the other is immigrant, and both demand more innovative ways of thinking about diversity and inclusion. As Inuit Tapirit Kanatami leader Mary Simon made clear in, “Embracing the Maple Leaf,” the annual Mel Hurtig Lecture on the Future of Canada, “[T]he beauty of a discussion of this nature is the diversity of the Canadian voices that can contribute to the conversation.”

One I-Revolution is ignited by increasingly rejuvenated and insurgent first peoples, the Indigenous populations heterogeneously constituted by First Nations (53%), Métis (30%), Inuit (4%), and Non-Status Indians (11%). As Cora Voyageur and Brian Callious write in “Shades of Red: Diversity within Canada’s Indigenous Community,” that immigration produced a racially and ethnically diverse population. Although there is a tendency to think of diversity through the lens of immigration, diversity discourse is also applicable to Indigenous peoples. However, what diversity means for Indigenous peoples and for immigrants and what it requires of us may be radically different. Over 1.3 million strong, the Indigenous population is young, urban and constitute the fastest growing demographic group in Canada. They are spatially distributed, with the vast majority living in Ontario and the four western provinces. Most are concentrated in prairie cities like Winnipeg (10%), Saskatoon (9%) and Regina (9%) although some, like the Inuit, are spatially dispersed across 53 communities in the north, with the majority concentrated in Nunavut (50%).

This Indigenous population often finds itself caught between, and caught up in, two cultural worlds, one Indigenous and the other non-Indigenous. This biculturalism, as Inuit leader Mary Simon puts it, means Indigenous peoples are always already navigating complex social spaces, often with insufficient educational access to their Indigenous knowledge, histories, culture and languages. The Assembly of First Nations tells us that Indigenous languages are at the heart of indigeneity as “[I]t passes on our culture, traditions, history, legends, and spirituality from one generation to another.” Only one-quarter of Indigenous people speak an Indigenous language, a drop from one-third in 1996, so there is much need for a new vision of bilingualism – Indigenous and French/English – particularly in the access to education.

The second social I-Revolution already is transforming Canadian society in indelible ways.  Since the 1970s we have been witnessing one of the largest social experiments in world history. Canadian society, in less than two generations, has undergone a fundamental social change from a white majority society to a social majority constituted by diverse non-white minority populations.  In cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, it is expected that non-white Canadians will be the majority by 2017-2020. Never before in human history has a society changed from a primarily white and European majority to a primarily non-white – ‘visible minority’ – and non-European majority.  Yet, this is precisely the moment in which we find ourselves. What we make of it will have profound implications for the future of Canada.

Former Governor General Michaëlle Jean has encouraged Canadians to open more  doors to the country’s racial and ethnic diversity, particularly in leadership and management positions. Both Indigenous peoples and non-white Canadians are underrepresented in leadership positions across all sectors despite the social I-Revolutions and the reconstitution of the social fabric of Canada. “Saying yes to diversity,” Jean argues, means “saying yes to modernity, to opportunity, and to the very future of our country. But saying no carries a huge price. For each time social exclusion closes a door, another door is opened to desolation, frustration, and despair.” Similarly, in a recent interview with the Globe and Mail, Governor General David Johnston encouraged Canadians to be more open to diversity and to hybridity – to see it as a part of the national ‘gift’. “I think it’s attractive that we don’t discourage but we encourage people to keep their language and their heritage, and to teach it to their children and their grandchildren.” He goes on to say, “The great gift of this nation is that we respect diversity, and somehow we’ve been able to make a nation out of diversity and allow people their expression of their identity – as long as they don’t hurt somebody else.”

Three perspectives on diversity and inclusion

In times of economic crisis, such as we face, it is all too common to hear talk which suggests diversity is a luxury, which we cannot afford, something from which we should divest or, at best, something we should defer to better times. But such magical thinking cannot disappear what is an inalterable fact of Canadian social reality. The question is not whether we can afford or defer diversity.  Diversity is our current reality. Rather, as Humpty Dumpty suggests, the questions we are faced with are really about what diversity means both to and for us.

There are many perspectives on why and how we should care about diversity in a democratic society and a knowledge-based economy. Each of these social I-Revolutions requires a radical rethinking of how we imagine diversity – and particularly equity among and between Canada’s diverse people. While there are many perspectives on diversity, three overlapping and intersecting perspectives are most common: first, there is the ethical or human rights approach to diversity; second, there are various voluntary and instrumental perspectives on diversity including the business case; and, third and finally, there is the ontological or complexity perspective on diversity.

One of the most enduring defenses of diversity is variously referred to as the antidiscrimination or ethical case. Arising out of human rights and civil rights movements, this perspective states simply that diversity is the right thing to do in order to ameliorate social inequities and to fairly reflect the existing social reality.  What distinguishes this perspective is its attentiveness to ameliorating discrimination arising from prejudice and bigotry that impact specific demographic groups as well as  the individual, cultural and institutional barriers that unfairly disadvantage them in the workplace, such as in hiring, retention, promotion and income.  It is also distinguished by its normative or human rights logic, a commitment to antidiscrimination and due process, and its comportment with the efforts to entrench equality rights through various legal instruments that increase diversity.

There are also various instrumental logics for advancing equity and diversity. Proponents of the business case for diversity suggest diversity is a good thing, a resource, one which helps companies and organisations remain competitive by reflecting and staying connected to their customers.  In “Why diversity – why now?” the authors argue that transformational and forward-thinking leaders recognize that diversity and inclusion must be integral to everyday practices rather than conceived as ad hoc or stand-alone programs. Instead, diversity must be understood as part of the business imperative, something that will impact the bottom-line, improve productivity, market share and increase staff and client loyalty.

The final and most compelling argument for diversity is what I’ve called the ontological or complexity case. Diversity is a fact of life. We need to understand the ways in which these Indigenous and immigrant I-Revolutions have reconfigured the diversity of Canada and how this diversity shapes ideas and innovation, novel approaches to problem-solving and creative ways of reinventing our collective futures. As Scott E. Page writes we need to better understand the relationship between diversity and complexity and those instances in which “diversity trumps ability…. for that innovation to happen depends as much on collective difference as on aggregate ability. If people think alike no matter how smart they are [then] they most likely will get stuck at the same locally optimal solutions.”

Canada’s diversity presents an inescapable opportunity; let’s get on with realizing it.

Malinda S. Smith is an associate professor of Political Science at the University of Alberta, and the Vice-President, Equity Issues at the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Registration for the 2012 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, hosted by Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo from May 26 to June 2, is now open! Special early registration prices are available until April 1^st, so don’t delay! Information on featured events, including Big Thinkers like Margaret Atwood, is available here.

Co-founder and director of Britain’s New College of the Humanities Matthew Batstone took to The Guardian this week to argue for the importance of the humanities to Britain’s business and political leadership, most of whom have humanities degrees. Though Batstone frames his argument as a defence, it is actually a good reminder that the humanities should be celebrated for their contribution to all levels of civil life.

The Government of Ontario is cutting $66-million in funding for research grants. The grants were targeted at applied research projects in the social sciences, arts and humanities programs, as well as the Research Excellence programs.

Moira Farr of University Affairs wrote about what universities, particularly Carleton University, are doing to help students with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) adjust to university life and excel. According to Farr, universities, especially in Ottawa, are welcoming increasing numbers of students with AS. Because of this, it’s imperative for universities to prepare both faculty and students with AS to work together.

Yesterday, CBC’s The Current interviewed Jessica Ball, a SSHRC-funded professor at the University of Victoria’s School of Child and Youth Care, who studies Aboriginal men who grew up without fathers, and what they are doing to make sure their own children don’t grow up fatherless as well.

The winners of the second Digging into Data Challenge were announced this Tuesday. The competition, which promotes humanities and social sciences research using data-analysis, is funded by eight partners from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). A total of fourteen projects were selected for funding.

The Government of Canada announced that new and existing loans for part-time students will be interest-free during study. This measure is estimated to save part-time students $350 per year, improving access to post-secondary education.

Film director Sarah Polley is set to adapt Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace, a historical novel set in the 19^th century. Margaret Atwood will be in Kitchener-Waterloo for the 2012 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences as part of our Big Thinking line-up.

According to an article in MacLeans On Campus, employment prospects for PhD holders in the social sciences and humanities are looking up, although they’re not quite as high as they were in 2007-08.