{"id":25782,"date":"2014-05-16T08:02:52","date_gmt":"2014-05-16T13:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=25782"},"modified":"2014-05-16T08:03:39","modified_gmt":"2014-05-16T13:03:39","slug":"improving-privilege-awareness-at-harvard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/05\/16\/improving-privilege-awareness-at-harvard\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving &#8220;privilege awareness&#8221; at Harvard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/education\/archive\/2014\/05\/how-to-improve-privilege-training-at-harvard\/370927\/\" target=\"_blank\">Conor Friedersdorf<\/a> talks about a new privilege awareness exercise for new grad students at Harvard&#8217;s  John F. Kennedy School of Government:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Such exercises are not without insight or merit (though I find it hard to believe that first-year graduate students at Harvard haven&#8217;t encountered this sort of thing before). It surprises me not at all that Harvard insiders would craft the exercise to highlight where they ostensibly stand <em>relative to their fellow Harvard classmates<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>As a Harvard outsider who will one day live under a governing elite populated by today&#8217;s KSG first-years, I&#8217;d only ask for one addition to the &#8220;step forward, step back&#8221; exercise. Prior to the day it is conducted, KSG should take out some ads in local media: $50 dollars available for the first 500 non-Harvard students to show up at the campus football field at an appointed time. Let them gather, black, white and brown; men and women; straight and gay. The hoi poloi and the KSG freshmen should all mass together behind one end zone. Then the stadium announcer should say, &#8220;If you&#8217;re not a Harvard student, stay where you are. And if you are a Harvard student, take 95 steps forward, until you&#8217;re at the 5 yard line by the far end zone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Once all the KSG freshmen are lined up straight at that 5 yard line, everyone can do the &#8220;step-forward, step-back&#8221; exercise as before. I submit that my augmented approach will afford a more accurate understanding of privilege as it operates at Harvard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conor Friedersdorf talks about a new privilege awareness exercise for new grad students at Harvard&#8217;s John F. Kennedy School of Government: Such exercises are not without insight or merit (though I find it hard to believe that first-year graduate students at Harvard haven&#8217;t encountered this sort of thing before). It surprises me not at all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,73,13],"tags":[912,764,315],"class_list":["post-25782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-randomness","category-usa","tag-privilege","tag-university","tag-wealth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6HQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25782"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25784,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25782\/revisions\/25784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}