Faculty support

Ideas on how faculty can teach and promote justice.


Selected ideas for faculty in social science, multicultural education, and other justice related fields. Many of us became teachers and faculty out of a concern for promoting democracy and social justice. It is important that we think this through.

Purpose; to record some of our experiences in order to advance our efforts and to assist others struggling with these same issues.

Paulo Friere;
We need to make the political more educational and the educational more political.

1. Raise key issues in your classes: race, class, gender, justice.
2. Use progressive authors and present progressive positions.
3. Encourage students to participate in struggles, not just read and talk about them.
4. Announce the next march, rally, film, guest speaker etc.
5. Use films and video’s that make strong points.
6. Teach about unions and labor history.
7. Give examples from your personal life.
8. Post literature and articles on bulletin boards.
9. Invite and bring progressive speakers and films to the campus, and build an audience for these speakers.
10. Recognize students who are making positive contributions. Allow them to make announcements in class.
11. Assist students to form progressive clubs, ie. Mecha, Latinos Unidos, Peace and Justice.
12. Organize faculty into progressive support groups.



Set your own research agenda to support popular struggles. Ie. Living wage research, inequality research.
1. See for example, Inequality and American Democracy: What we know and what we need to learn. Lawrence Jacobs and Theda Skocpol.

2. Join or create radical caucuses within professional organizations.


Praxis. The combination of analysis and act leading to political clarity.

1. Participate ourselves in political organizations and struggles.
2. Invite students to join us in these organizations.
3. Encourage students to take internships in progressive groups., ie. The AFL-CIO’s Organizing Institute. Mecha. Etc.