Projects / University of Texas at Austin,
Project Title: Difficult Dialogue Forum Seminars PI: Pauline Turner Strong, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Women's and Gender Studies and Associate Director, Humanities Institute.
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) is a large, culturally diverse university in the heart of a state that is undergoing massive social change. Increasing urbanization, the rapid growth of minority populations, the decline of an agricultural economy, and the rise of technology are all contributing to the transformation of Texas. Shifts in population, politics and lifestyle have set the stage for controversy in the university such as the Hopwood decision of 1996, which essentially made affirmative action illegal in Texas higher education, leaving the state legislature to institute the “top ten percent rule” guaranteeing state university admission to the top tier of students graduating from Texas high schools. This has helped to increase the representation of students on campus from rural areas and from racial and ethnic minorities, but tensions have also increased due to such events as the defacement of a new Martin Luther King statue, stereotyping of African Americans and Native Americans by student organizations, and charges of racial profiling by the campus police.
The focus of the U.T. Austin project is the creation of lower-division, interdisciplinary “forum” courses with distinct themes, each taught by a cross-disciplinary team of faculty. The themes are specifically relevant to the campus: Religion and Sexuality, Affirmative Action and Racial/Ethnic Diversity, Church and State, and Islam in America. Academic freedom provides the context to engage in difficult dialogues in these areas and will also be included in the content of the courses. The project builds on the Forum Seminar Program of Connexus: Connections in Undergraduate Studies, which provides a high-visibility integration point for campus-wide efforts to improve the quality of undergraduate education. One of the central tenets of Connexus’s initiatives has been to connect the campus’s vast existing resources and to provide undergraduate students with opportunities to take advantage of the vast resources of the institution with the end goal of broadening the students’ perspectives on culture, religion and sexuality; engendering greater acceptance of difference; and improving skills in civil discourse.