In the middle of my lecture on the gender pay gap in organizations, a student interrupts me to proclaim how the gender pay gap “can’t possibly exist” because his mother is a senior manager in her company and gets paid “more than the men she works with”. Other students visibly bristle around him. I’m teaching…

Of the 184,074 people who received a doctoral degree in the United States in 2018, only 17 percent were women of color. With 57,766 graduates, there were almost twice as many white women who were awarded a doctorate than the 31,465 women of color graduates that included women who identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific…

In my years teaching intersectionality, social justice, and diversity in universities, I’ve seen the challenges of introducing such complex and messy subjects to my students. I’ve fallen into countless pitfalls, seeing group discussions trigger marginalized students and descend into tears. Over time, I experimented with different ways to introduce intersectional feminism constructively and sensitively in…

Social justice, intersectionality, and diversity are necessary and important topics to introduce in classrooms, but when you’re underprepared, lessons can become difficult, triggering, and destructive. Learning about social justice prepares students to understand and challenge power and oppression in the world. It also helps young people to recognize the full humanity of marginalized people, especially…