Forgot your password?
Diversity and Innovation Seminar
The Diversity and Innovation Seminar is a year long interdisciplinary seminar and research practicum, which develops innovative frameworks and strategies for addressing structural inequality through institutional change.
The seminar explores the emerging role of lawyers, transformative leaders and other change agents in advancing equality during an era of judicial retrenchment. Although the seminar focuses on higher education, its approach has implications for efforts to address structural inequality in many other domains. The seminar is also an experimental site for research and teaching methodologies that will develop the capacity to research and practice institutional change.
During the first six weeks of the fall semester, the seminar provides a multi-disciplinary conceptual and intellectual framework for understanding "the architecture of inclusion" in higher education, by examining the dynamics of structural inequality and its remediation at the level of relationships, groups, organizations, networks, policy, and culture. This portion of the seminar also critically evaluates the law's role in addressing structural inequality. The students will then examine the potential and limits of emerging roles, institutions, and policies for transformative change, with the participation of cutting edge researchers and practitioners. This work is integrated with the development of field research methods and projects documenting efforts at innovation in the advancement of inclusion in higher education.
The attached syllabus and course procedures memo provides an overview of the topics and methods used in this seminar.
- Working Syllabus (Fall 2008)
- This seminar explores new frameworks and strategies for diversifying higher education, and for understanding the relationship between inclusion and innovation more generally.
- Course Overview and Procedures (Fall 2008)
- This seminar is a year long interdisciplinary seminar and research practicum, which develops innovative frameworks and strategies for addressing structural inequality through institutional change.
- Preliminary Overview of Higher Education Field Research
- Faculty and students collaborating in the 2008/09 Diversity and Innovation seminar develop and conduct field research projects with the Center fellows and leadership. Their participation enables the Center to link research, teaching, and practice and, in the process, to develop the capacity to participate in effective public problem solving and institutional change. This work is supported by funding from Columbia Law School, Columbia University, The Ford Foundation, The Kriwan Institute, and Harvard University.
