Category Archives: Inclusion

Diversity and Inclusion

Advisors, AI, Authors A-H, Inclusion, Trends 2026

Renewing Diversity Part 12:  Diversity and the AI Frenzy – by Carlos Cortés

During 2025 few trends, if any, received more attention than developments in artificial intelligence.  You can hardly pick up a magazine or listen to a newscast without hearing something about AI.  However, I have encountered relatively little addressing the intersection of AI and diversity. 

What might AI mean for diversity?  What can diversity advocates do to address the implications of AI?  Questions range from the ethical to the practical.  In this column I will focus on one question: what are some of the diversity implications arising from the creation of AI databases and the resulting “information” that they supply when prompted?

Continue reading Renewing Diversity Part 12:  Diversity and the AI Frenzy – by Carlos Cortés →

Levine articles, Religious Diversity Kit

Sacred Calendars and Holidays Define Us — by Deborah Levine

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Religious diversity and holidays are challenging regardless of the time of year with deeply held beliefs regarding food, sacred texts, and worship traditions. Yet, there is no season like the end of the year for demonstrating cultural differences linked to religion. The differences can be glaring, giving rise to culture clashes and political controversies. It’s astonishing that there was ever a planetary-wide agreement on a calendar that named the months, determined their length and decreed when one year ends and the next begins. How did that calendar happen and can we capture the global mindset that created it for today’s “Holiday Season”?

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Authors R-Z, Books, Religious Diversity Kit

The Art of Resilience. From Pain to Promise: Book Review – by George Simons

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Deborah LevineFar from being abstract research on the dynamics of resilience, Deborah Levine has provided us with a life story, and highly relevant biography, an ethnography if you will, of the struggle for resilience lived out, day by day. It is filled with the challenges to resilience from health, work, environments, and relationships. Today we speak of the cost of intersectionality on oneself. The term is extremely relevant here, as Deborah herself is bundled into her white female identity, her Jewish ethnicity, the cultural marks of her places of upbringing, her immigrant status, her health vulnerability, and her religious belongings. Each of these shows up repeatedly both as a liability and an asset in her resilience narrative.

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Authors A-H, Race & Ethnicity, Social Issues

20 Interview Questions I Should Have Asked – by Sharon Hurley Hall

More than 300,000 Black women have lost their jobs this year. As a Black woman who’s navigated similar systems, it’s made me think about the interview processes I faced: extremely stressful, multiple rounds, and not a person who shared my identity at any of them. I know from my own experience that there are double-takes as you walk in the door. There’s extensive questioning about birth, nationality and my right to be there, and extreme scrutiny of my qualifications. And even if I then get the job, there’s no guarantee it’s a safe place to work. 

I know I’m not the only one to experience this. But what if you could use the interview process to get the answers you really need as a Black person? You might not get the job, but you’d be a whole lot clearer about whether it was the right workplace for you.

Here are 20 questions I wish I’d been able to ask.  Continue reading 20 Interview Questions I Should Have Asked – by Sharon Hurley Hall →

Authors I-Q, Inclusion, Of Women, Social Issues

The Psychology of Displacement and Projection – by Olya K-Mehri

In professional and organisational settings, the word “aggressive” is often applied in response to tone rather than conduct. What is described as aggression in these moments seldom concerns hostility; instead, it reflects an emotional defence mechanism in which discomfort is projected onto the speaker. Through processes of displacement and projection, the listener redirects their unease rather than examining its source. subsequent labelling of their expression as “aggressive” functions less as an objective observation and more as a psychological strategy to preserve equilibrium and reaffirm dominant notions of professionalism.

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Advisors, Authors A-H, Gender

Renewing Diversity Part 10: Unpacking the Inclusivity Dilemma in Health Care – by Carlos Cortés

I recently received an invitation to attend the national conference of the Society for Intercultural Education, Teaching, and Research.   The conference theme was “Inclusive Interculturalism.” The implicit message was simple: in order to be inclusive, interculturalists need to make a conscious effort .  Inclusivity doesn’t come naturally.

In my last month’s ADR column I addressed a similar issue about the development of multicultural education. I argued that multiculturalists need to be cognizant about whom they may be excluding as well as including. The more that you exclude categories of people, the less inclusive the curriculum becomes. 

Continue reading Renewing Diversity Part 10: Unpacking the Inclusivity Dilemma in Health Care – by Carlos Cortés →

Advisors, Authors A-H, Race & Ethnicity

The little known life of Willis Carter – by Terry Howard

I could be wrong (and hope that I am) but the guess here is that those about to read this column are probably unfamiliar with the name Willis McGlascow Carter. (How about a show of hands by those who do and are anxious to prove me wrong.)

But for those who don’t, no worry since until recently, neither did I although he spent most of his life as a teacher, newspaper editor and activist in Staunton, Virginia, which happens to be my hometown.

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Advisors, Authors A-H, Race & Ethnicity

Mr. and Mrs. President, tear down those border walls – by Terry Howard

In case you didn’t know, September 12 is the start of HHM (Hispanic Heritage Month). And I’ll be completely honest with you, readers – I missed writing something uniquely significant and celebratory about HHM and other heritage months over the past few years. To be clear, I’m not Hispanic by birth, although that doesn’t matter, nevertheless I still regret missing that annual opportunity. 

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Advisors, Authors A-H, Education, Inclusion

Renewing Diversity Part 9: Rediscovering My Professional Journey – by Carlos Cortés

For nearly a year I’ve been going through an out-of-body experience. It was launched by a simple request that has turned into a not-so-simple journey.  Here’s what happened.

In the fall of 2024, Steven Mandeville-Gamble, Director of the University of California, Riverside, Library, asked me to donate my professional papers to the library’s Special Collections.  Feeling quite honored, I agreed.  Since then I have been preparing my papers for delivery.  This has involved months of wading through file cabinets, bookcases, and stacks of boxes crammed with books, articles, correspondence, course notes, past public lectures, workshop outlines, video and audio tapes, and published and unpublished manuscripts. 

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Advisors, Authors R-Z, Gender

Survival Matters: Cross-dressing – by Julia Wai-Yin So

Cross-dressing has a Different Meaning at a Different Place in a Different Time

In recent years, with more and more social acceptance of multiple variations of gender identity, cross-dressing has become an empowering tool for transgendered individuals who are out, proud, and loud to assert their gender identity. Notwithstanding, we have to be cognizant of the fact that cross-dressing validates the practice of the binary system of gender. We also have to remind ourselves that the binary system of gender is a social construct and that it is built on a medical model using the binary system of sex. More importantly, cross-dressing carries a different meaning at a different place in a different time. Here, I will describe three specific examples of females cross-dress as males.

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