Digital Pedagogy Lab Toronto Keynote

How Do You Practice?
Close your eyes or rest your gaze for a moment. Don’t look so intently. I want you to think about your formative years — some of you are panicking because you’re not
sure what those years were, or if they’ve happened yet, or if you missed something. YOU DIDN’T — I’m just hoping you’ll move your shoulders away from your ears a
little bit, take a deep breath, relax your eyebrows, and do the following.

While I’m speaking, I’d like you to please notice the events from your life that you think about. They might be positive moments, negative moments, unfinished business,
unresolved conflicts… I might make you feel uncomfortable. I might upset you. I’d like you to notice those moments. If it’s too much — please let me know and I’ll adjust.

Afterwards, I want us to practice something together. So, while I’m speaking, if you think about a person, a moment, an event — please write it down or hold it in your
noggin. You’ll have a chance to decide if you say anything out loud or not — so don’t edit yourself in the writing down — only you will see what you’ve written. Ok, open
your eyes.

We don’t often create space for self-reflection. I’d like us to try some of that today. So, please pay attention to your body, to your mind, to your palms while I’m speaking.
Right now, I bet there are some of you out there feeling a bit nervous — and I bet you’re nervous for me. You are deep empaths. I’m ok. We’re all going to be ok. Pay
attention to your feelings… Ready?

I am no island…
Lara Kirk

Jutta Treviranus

Tara Robertson

Lena Patterson

Amy Collier
Amanda Coolidge

Mary Burgess

Sean & Jesse

Terry Greene

Rajiv Jhangiani

I am no island…
Cooper Eugene Mitchell Kirk

Tucker Tuesday Mitchell Kirk

Piper Princess Mitchell Kirk

Alice, Bette, Tina, Dawn Denbo,
Lover Cindy, Phyllis, and Leonard

Do No Harm
Ethics and the
Privilege of Teaching
@jesshmitchell
When Sean asked me to be a keynote speaker at this event I immediately said yes and then I quickly said: Are you sure you’ve got the right person? I’m not a pedagogue
in the literal sense of the word – I’m not a faculty member, I don’t have a teaching load. And so you should know I’m an imposter pedagogue.

There are a few other things you should know about me…

I sometimes feel like a contrarian. Not for sport, I come by it naturally.

I get nervous when it feels like I’ve become a member of a group… I immediately want to wander away.

I get antsy when I show up to spaces and I know everyone or everyone know me.

I get agitated when people aren’t authentic with me — when they agree with me ALL the time. I know I’m not right all the time. It’s statistically impossible. And if you ask
my wife, entirely impossible.

This is a photo of my duck, Alice. CC-BY me

8 months ago, Sean asked for a title for what I might talk about today. I gave him this title… Do No Harm: Ethics and the Privilege of Teaching

And then a few weeks ago, I excitedly sent Sean an email announcing I had a title for my talk!

So, apparently I have quite a fondness for titles. I love them. And then I thought, what if my entire talk was just a series of titles???????? And I got really excited.

I also noticed that in 8 months’ time I’d moved from DO NO HARM TO…

How do we choose?
Burn it all down
or
Build it anew from within
@jesshmitchell
Burn it all down or build it anew from within:

When the very institution is rotten, when the system sucks, when is it time to burn it all down and when is it time to be “more circumspect” and attempt to rebuild it anew
from within..

Then I got frustrated with just how uncritical we are…

https://www.pexels.com/photo/red-match-66270/

match

https://unsplash.com/photos/OO89_95aUC0

blocks

Power, poor eyesight,
and lazy brainz
Be critical evermore
@jesshmitchell
How can we wake up to power (our own and others), see how what we’re doing is causing harm, and not let ourselves oﬀ the hook. How can we be disgusted every day
and not just on the days when the glare from the injustice of a mosque getting blasted with bullets or a young man in a hoodie getting shot for walking while being black,
blinds us — We need to be critical evermore. EVERMORE. EVERYDAY. Yes, even Saturdays.

And I got angry with us for not learning lessons from history…

This is a photo of my gander, Leonard. CC-BY me

Critique + social justice
lessons-learned
How To
@jesshmitchell
How can we, as young ducklings, learn from the past and avoid the mistakes that were made in the name of social justice?

I’m speaking here about the exclusions we ﬁnd in the history of social justice movements. The forking or ﬁssures in those movements between those who want to rebuild
and those who want to burn the whole thing down…— e.g. in second-wave feminism — poor white women, black women and trans women were largely excluded.
Feminist Movement, Community, Cause — whose cause, whose community, whose movement?? Jo Freeman, whom we’ll talk about a bit later, left the Feminist
Movement 3 times — every 10 years. She got fed up. Movements, communities, causes evolve and grow — they make mistakes and changes — they are moving, not
static. How can we make sense of that WHILE keeping track of the successes, the goals, and the work that remains.

Why aren’t we teaching critique — how to give critique, how to take critique, the artfulness of productive critique. MORE ENGAGEMENT — SELF-ASSESSMENT; bi-
directional PEER ASSESSMENT

This is a picture of my little feminist ducklings Alice and Gertrude. Turned out Alice was a boy… CC-BY me

But then I asked myself, why are we doing all these things wrong STILL? Why aren’t we getting better at this work? Is there a root to the problem? And I went to this…

Open
Dialogue
Do we even
know how to
talk about
messy things?
@jesshmitchell@jesshmitchell
When was the last time you had a genuine and productive talk about race? About poverty, about homelessness. About who has access to clean water?

About privilege?

About reconciliation, not just truth?

About whose truth?? About whether or not we’re even doing truth? Rajiv showed us a school that erased part of its history on its website — shame? forgetting? That
doesn’t smell like reconciliation — what IS that?

Do we even know what reconciliation might look like?

We use nice words — what are our actions?

This is another picture of Alice. CC-BY me

Creating a
Community
What would it look like
to create a community
with people you
disagree with?
This is a photo of Phyllis on the left and Leonard on the right. CC-BY me

They didn’t like each other at ﬁrst…

Phyllis would bite Leonard, yell at him, diminish him.

Now, through strategic co-snacking they are becoming friends.

Are we tuned into how it feels to walk into a group, to join, to be included, to be invited, and to leave communities? Do you know how you get to a room of “your people”
as many of you have called this gathering?

Do you know who is here and is thinking, ‘um, these aren’t my people… they say nice words, but where is the change? Words aren’t change.” Those folks are here too…

Is a group of ‘like-minded’ people desirable? Does it create inclusion? Diversity?

A code of conduct is necessary but not suﬃcient for creating inclusion. What else do we need to do? Is comfort desirable? How much comfort? Where do we draw the
boundary?

I feel as though I should tell you something about myself to perhaps set you at ease that I’m not super negative, super cynical, or on-the-edge of something…

I am simply in constant search of an equilibrium to balance on. So, I wonder about these imbalances. They cause me a visceral vertigo that I have to make sense of.

I believe we can confront these questions earnestly, inclusively, and practically w/o BEING negative. We need to look for the grey rather than dwell in the black or white.
And we need to teach OURSELVES that the discomfort in the grey, the vertigo, the uncertainty is EXACTLY where we should be.

LINK
Understand why we do what we do — be curious about your own reactions.

https://youtu.be/RP4abiHdQpc

Baby laughing at Dad ripping rejection letter

Behavioural
Contagion
Reﬂect on how it felt to just laugh at that.

How loud was your laugh.

How did being in a room with other people have an impact on your laugh.

Were you trying to hold your laugh in?

Did you wonder if it was appropriate to laugh?

Why did you laugh?

How can you talk to someone about their behaviour?

LINK
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/01/08/meryl_streep_rips_trump_at_golden_globes_we_need_journalists_and_theyll_need_us_to_safeguard_the_truth.html

Meryl Streep: January 8, 2017

When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose," Streep declared. "Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence invites violence.” it was effective and it did its
job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth.

Yes, and… this audience laughed and cheered and clapped at the following, “football and mixed martial arts (which are not the arts).” Why that? Who did she just
exclude and why? To bring that crowd together did she need to diminish another?

The Blind Side - Oscar for best actress

Remember the Titans

Jerry McGuire - Oscar for best supporting actor

Friday Night Lights — Clear eyes, full hearts can’t lose?!

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon - Oscar for best foreign language film

We create communities by speaking to those who agree with us and subtly making an US which is distinguishable from a THEM.

How can you show someone their divisiveness?

The most vilified segment — the press

Binary
Human Follies. We’re bad at some things. We seem fond of binaries.

We like to categorize. We build databases in our brains — we like to sort things into neat little buckets in our brain database.

Enemy or Friend
Deplorables
Trump supporter
NFL fanColin Kaepernick
CIS-men
White
Men
Mixed martial arts
Science
News
Fox News
Rachel Maddow
Russia
Iran
TERFs
Martina
Texas
Arkansas Christian
Poor
And we get it wrong sometimes and without practice we’ll continue to get it wrong. So, practice in this case comes in the form of experiences. If we’re among friends and
colleagues and we’ve had a good bit to drink and someone makes a (racist, sexist, misogynist) joke, do we laugh? I know that we’ll all say no-way! But I think we all have
times that we wish we’d stood up and didn’t. And some of these issues are so blurry, we might not know which side to take, which side we should take, which side we’re
on… and that side might change throughout our life… we might change our mind.

So, I want us to consider the messy edges of life, politics, context, power, teaching, learning and privilege. I want us to practice a little…

LINK
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/election-us-2016-37329812/clinton-half-of-trump-supporters-basket-of-deplorables

Clinton at a fundraiser

We all do it. We all have biases, intolerances, people we like, people we don’t like. How do we build community / remain inclusive.

There is also something else interesting here — we create idols that we sometimes hold to a higher and sometimes lower standard than we do ourselves and “ordinary”
people.

How can you remain critical evermore of those you admire?

•beware idolatry

•beware of leaders
Beware Idolatry

Beware of Leaders

Hold them accountable

more? Less? How can we hold them accountable? What does the structure of doing that look like?

They are human. They will err. They have more power (at least over you).

And question why are we treating them like idols? Is it necessary? Does it serve a purpose for us?

Can we admire a thing they did instead?

“It’s really hard to communicate that I’m
just a normal person doing her best,” she
shrugged. “I’m not a superhero. I’m not a
villain. I’m just a person that’s trying.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

U.S. Representative - bronx NY

This is not a humble brag — this is the damage we do to people who standup, who stand out. We make them impossibly cool and we diminish ourselves. She is a fan-girl
of Bill Nye, the science guy. She’s nerdy. She danced on a rooftop to support open content

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-interview

LINK
0:16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX9reO3QnUA

Trump mocks reporter who has a disability.

How do you say, “we don’t treat people like that. We won’t tolerate that.”

NO
How do you say, “we don’t treat people like that. We won’t tolerate that.”

*student in class

Some would say, if you sit with the tyrant, you are complicit in the tyranny. That sounds right, but how on earth do you do it? How do you stand up and walk away from
the tyrant and the tyranny?

tweet that says, As in Germany, if there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis

Huh?
•Get over it

•Stop being so sensitive

•Stop taking everything personally

•Let’s agree to disagree…
So, we apply the NMP principle — it is NOT MY PROBLEM

It’s outside of the scope of our job description

It’s outside of our pay range…

or we’re told that we’re being a snowﬂake and we should just

Get over it

Stop being so sensitive

Stop taking everything so personally

Or my LEAST favourite, just agree to disagree…

Is this the best we can do? 
 
What about critique, what about debate, what about disagreement? And where does teaching and learning ﬁt into this?

Can’t we help build the skill set that will help people productively disagree?

Bring your “full self”
Please don’t
In diversity equity and inclusion circles you often hear people talk about “bringing your full self.”

Please don’t

When your full self takes up all the space, it’s too much.

When your full self shuts someone else up, it’s too much.

When your full self talks ALL THE TIME, it’s too much.

When your full self creates a toxic situation, tone, environment… it’s too much.

We have to, instead of bringing our full selves, learn how to learn from others how we are effecting them. How the words we say land or don’t. How we are making them
comfortable or not. We have to first grant each person the right to exist — say, you deserve space. We have to give a damn what the other person thinks. And this is
fundamentally necessary and not at all sufficient for making inclusive spaces.

We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist. - James Baldwin

surprisingly, even this needs clarification — where to you draw the line and define oppression and denial of humanity and right to exist? How many data points until you
get there?

We are so scared to not be liked. Who is going to be strong??

In our culture this sentiment that Baldwin shared is not seen as strong. Who is strong? The loudest voice — say it with a deep voice and confidence and that’s all you
need.

•beware idolatry


•YIELD space

•give a damn what the other
person thinks (especially the
person that disagrees with you)

•Draw the line (revisit this!)
Beware idolatry

Beware of leaders

YIELD space

Give a damn what the other person thinks (especially the person that disagrees with you)

Draw the line and feel uncertain and uncomfortable with that and continually ask yourself if it’s in the right place.

BUT DO DRAW THE LINE. This is what it looks like when people stand up and say NO, we don’t treat people like that. Australia did this — they said no to Milo — And
drawing that line is an ethical act.

Al Jazeera news story about Australia barring Milo Yiannopoulos over mosque attack comments

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/australia-bars-milo-yiannopoulos-mosque-attack-comments-190316140539695.html?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:
+Trending+Content&utm_content=5c8d4ec24b73850001c4bb41&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1dmCkbKHQVhA7CXACobDj4xkAjUDN
Be8EmOcrxkNHsK2wwljp6aVj_Ff4

Univ. Of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson in New Zealand in February 2019 posing with his arm around a man wearing an “I’m a Proud Islamaphobe” t-shirt.

How many of you have read Peterson’s latest and very popular book, “12 Rules for life: An antidote to chaos”

How many of you listen to divergent ideas? Who are your usual suspects and how do you reach beyond them? How do you reach outside of your comfort zone, like Rajiv
implored us all to do?

You have to decide where to draw the line for yourself. Peterson might be too far outside the line. But we all need to challenge ourselves to extend that line into
discomfort — that is what lies outside the comfort zone.

NOTE: lift what you can — those of you who have been beaten down and have no more strength, this is not your lift. Many of the folks in this room, the strong, this IS
YOUR lift.

Let’s talk about how to show up, be an ally…

Enough is Enough
•when do we stand up?

•who gets to stand up?

•standing up is f***ing hard
When do we say Enough is Enough? 
when do we stand up?

Who gets to stand up?

Standing up is really f’ing hard.

A colleague in Africa who works in open education; a young woman.

We won’t hear her voice…

Why?

Because she’s not rich enough — that’s what she told me. She can’t stick her neck out — the costs are potentially too huge.

She needs a white person to back her up if she’s going to step out there.

Sometimes standing up means losing your job — so many of us fear this. How many times have you done something you felt was risky on a Friday afternoon and been
convinced that by Monday you’d be fired?

Kneeling during the Star Spangled Banner — Colin Kaepernick

During a post-game interview, he explained his position stating, "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people
of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and
getting away with murder”,

By Mike Morbeck - Flickr: Colin Kaepernick, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30174119

https://i.etsystatic.com/16983100/d/il/c78b5e/1612178578/il_340x270.1612178578_9038.jpg?version=0

LINK
17:55-18:41

And this is what standing up to power looks like

https://youtu.be/CeEiq_C6j3c?t=1076

Michelle Wolf White House correspondents dinner

How can you change an entire enterprise?

Have you ever thought:

- Unless we topple capitalism, we’re f’ed

- Unless we remove the capital from education we’re trapped

- …

How can you critique and be aware of your motivations, your advantages, your role?

Both, And?
So, how do you do this stuﬀ??

Tweet of a slide that says be radical in changing how an organization works; be incremental in changing what it delivers

Start with structure — ask yourselves, what are we doing in education to break down the broken structure?

It’s interesting to think of what Education has done — what approach we as a community have taken. Largely, we’ve been focusing on the content — the what is
delivered. The folks here have been pushing beyond that. And I think we’re all hinting that something bigger needs to happen… Some aren’t hinting so much as saying
it…

Burn or Build?
We need moonshots, not incrementalism

John Snow — one of the fathers of epidemiology

He couldn’t show that the pump was the cause, but he knew it was — the patterns of the disease pointed to the pump — so he tore the handle oﬀ.

Aaron Swartz - JSTOR

“In 2011, Swartz was arrested by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) police on state breaking-and-entering charges, after connecting a computer to the MIT
network in an unmarked and unlocked closet, and setting it to download academic journal articles systematically from JSTOR using a guest user account issued to him
by MIT.[11][12] Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,[13] carrying a cumulative
maximum penalty of $1 million in ﬁnes, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release.[14]

Swartz declined a plea bargain under which he would have served six months in federal prison. Two days after the prosecution rejected a counter-oﬀer by Swartz, he was
found dead in his Brooklyn apartment, where he had hanged himself.[15][16] “

By Sage Ross - Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15853007

Malala Yousafzai

By DFID - UK Department for International Development - Malala Yousafzai: Education for girls, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4457782

She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in her native Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwest Pakistan, where
the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school.

On 9 October 2012, while on a bus in the Swat District, after taking an exam, Yousafzai and two other girls were shot by a Taliban gunman in an assassination attempt in
retaliation for her activism; the gunman ﬂed the scene.

Enough is Enough
The University of California system stood up a few weeks ago. Elsevier was ultimately unwilling to meet UC’s key goal: securing universal open access to UC research, as
stated in UC’s faculty-driven principles on scholarly communication

How we do this
Sharing Breath: Embodied Learning and Decolonization

Edited by sheila batacharya and yuk-kin Renita Wong

Athabasca press

resisting dominant notions of 'time' -- engagement, collaboration

Rethinking rigour

Replaced with rigour of relationship, collaboration, and experience

How we do this
Sandy Grande

Red Pedagogy

The new edition was written as a reﬂection on what came before.

Undoing the expectations of publications and what they should be and what they should do.

Power +
Social Justice
+ Structure
But who gets to stand up…

If you have power, I want to ask you… as a leader, are you doing work to help those behind you not only take over where you leave off, but also
progress beyond where you have been? Are you comfortable with them passing you? Are your goals built around this as an expected outcome,
an inevitability, a must-have? What will your legacy be? How do you stand up for others?
If you aren’t in a position of power, standing up to power is MUCH MORE DIFFICULT… showing leadership when you aren’t in a position of
power means sticking your neck out — standing up, standing out, stepping up — and there are plenty of times and plenty of environments
where that isn’t valued or is actively punished.
Seeing something that isn’t working and fixing it; seeing someone that is struggling and helping them. And doing it not because it’s part of your
JD, but because it’s the right thing to do. When I hear folks talking about this kind of leadership, they’re usually worried that what they did is
going to be upsetting to someone and that they’ll lose their job or they’ll get in trouble or they’ll get sued.
And I struggle with this. I struggle with knowing when to stand up. I get scared and don’t stand up… and so, I challenge all of us to think about
how to do this.

Who will stand up for these young girls who have gone missing or have been found dead on the Highway of Tears —

The Highway of Tears is a series of murders and disappearances of more than 40 young girls along a 720-kilometre (450 mi) corridor of Highway 16 between Prince
George and Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada. The killings and disappearances began in 1970.

Where is their justice?

https://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2014/05/19/a-list-of-highway-of-tears-victims/#.U3nO3vldVig

— Aielah Saric Auger, 14, of Prince George was last seen by her family on Feb. 2, 2006, and her body was found eight days later in a ditch along Highway 16, east of
Prince George.

— Tamara Chipman, 22, of Prince Rupert was last seen on Sept. 21, 2006, hitchhiking along Highway 16 near Prince Rupert.

— Nicole Hoar, 25, was from Alberta and was working in the Prince George area as a tree planter. She was last seen hitchhiking to Smithers on Highway 16 on June 21,
2002.

— Lana Derrick, 19, was last seen in October 1995 at a gas station near Terrace. She was a student at Northwest Community College in Terrace.

— Alishia Germaine, 15, of Prince George was found murdered on Dec. 9, 1994.

This gets at my discomfort with communities…

As they mature, they betray themselves, their own goals…

When we get comfy in a community — we need to push —

TERF — second wave feminism

Take a look at Jo Freeman’s article The Tyranny of Structurelessness

Post-Comfort
You can’t put blinders on anymore.

“What’s the responsibility of the intellectual in a time of
tyranny? It’s to make your voice heard, hold power
accountable and help people understand what counts
as the truth. It’s to produce work that is both rigorous
and accessible while addressing important public issues
crucial to struggling for a more just world. It’s to prove to
the public that the university is not just an isolated
institution removed from the larger society – but so
actively involved that it’s actually central to the formation
of a culture that provides the foundation for enabling
both critically engaged citizens and a vibrant
democracy.”
“What’s the responsibility of the intellectual in a time of tyranny? It’s to make your voice heard, hold power accountable and help people understand what counts as the
truth. It’s to produce work that is both rigorous and accessible while addressing important public issues crucial to struggling for a more just world. It’s to prove to the
public that the university is not just an isolated institution removed from the larger society – but so actively involved that it’s actually central to the formation of a culture
that provides the foundation for enabling both critically engaged citizens and a vibrant democracy.”

In my case, I am starting to get some recognition for my work because I think people believe I am too old to be a threat any longer.

What will your legacy be?

I keep hearing from those who are nearing retirement — that they want to make big changes — because what do they have to lose? How can we extend that to earlier in
careers?

https://brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/articles/a-public-intellectual-in-a-time-of-tyranny/

It is your responsibility to
change society if you
think of yourself as an
educated person —
James Baldwin “A Talk To
Teachers”

What is
Justice?
Story time…

Have you seen the meme on Twitter lately? The one where people tell the story that is most on-point for them? They often tell a story of when they were a little kid —
Amanda Coolidge has one that is so amazing. When she was 7 her mom gave her a $20 bill to go to the store to buy some milk. Amanda bought the milk and told the
clerk, “keep the change.”

The story I want to tell you today that is “most on point” for me isn’t cute — I wasn’t 6 or 7 — but it seems so apropos of everything I’ve said today and I’m struck how so
many years later I’m still struggling with standing up. I was 16 and we were having an all-school assembly. I was sitting next to my best friend and the whole school was
in the gymnasium — yes, my whole school ﬁt into the gym. I lived in a small town in rural Missouri. I’m sure we had been told what the assembly was about but I’m sure I
didn’t listen, so I had no idea what was about to happen…

Then a really large man walked into the middle of the gym and started a slide show.

He was a former football player — a defensemen — he was huge, intimidating. And he was showing clips of tackles he’d made. Bone-crushing tackles where he
emulsiﬁed his opponent.

Then something strange started happening. He started talking about women, about girls, about their purpose in life. It was at a time that the abortion debate was hot. He
was clearly falling on the side of — and he said this — ‘the purpose of a woman is to have babies.’

Now. I knew this was a mess. My cheeks began to burn. I got so furious. It wasn’t a joke anymore. My best friend could tell I was upset. I turned to her and said you
coming? She didn’t move. I loudly stood up and walked out of the gym. Then I stopped… I contemplated going back into the gym to take the microphone away from this

Enough is Enough
I would not surrender. I would not let this giant football man tell me what my purpose was in life! I would not abide this. I had reached a limit.

There was a little queer in me that would take years yet to emerge (but to many was already very obvious).

It would be years until I would read about Jess Goldberg, the main character in Stone Butch Blues; Leslie Feinberg’s gender warrior.

Photo showing “surrendering is unimaginably more dangerous than struggling for survival” - Leslie Feinberg

Enough is Enough
When I was 16 it did feel like life and death — everything was soooooo intense.

“Seemingly, this society wants its children to know nothing; wants its queer children to conform or (and this is not a ﬁgure of speech) die; and wants not to know that it is
getting what it wants”

- eve kosofsky Sedgwick

I thought, wait a minute… this is what Holden Caulfield was talking about in Catcher in the Rye… adults are phonies! They wouldn’t stand up when it mattered. They
couldn’t confront what they knew was wrong.

I felt betrayed, alone, and so I’d jump in my car and drive to clear my head — windows down, blaring Indigo Girls, REM, — they were the soundtrack for my wanderlust. I
thought there might be people out there… I didn’t know where they were. I lived in a lot of places — and I’m not sure any of them felt like home. So, finally, circumstances
aligned and I moved to Toronto (about 5 years ago). I work at OCAD University — it’s an art and design college here in downtown. We have art on the walls in our
research centre. When I first visited, on one wall was a sketch of Gertrude and Alice with some quotes underneath and on another wall was this…

And everyone walked past this, sat below it, was confronted by it when they walked into our workspace.

- the minister of education

- The University President (a woman)

- My boss (a woman)

- All of my colleagues

I could walk around this city and not fear that someone would harass me or physically hurt me. I rode my bicycle everywhere — down Graﬃti Alley at 3a on a Thursday
morning. I was freer than I ever felt — anywhere. I could be my full, authentic self. Which meant I needed to ﬁnd out what that meant — I had to establish some limits and
decide what I was going to do if I was to be so lucky as to be listened to.

This is the context in which I’ve found home, I found the love-of-my life and married her. I’ve been awaked. I’ve begun speaking out (as much as I can and just a bit more
than I’m comfortable with), I’ve been pushing to make us think and change and feel uncomfortable. Because I don’t want to be a phoney. I want to be the adult that
stands up. For me, for you, for the kids.

Before Toronto

It always seems to me that I should be happy anywhere but where I am, and this question of moving is one that I am eternally discussing with my soul.

Anywhere out of this world…

— Charles Baudelaire

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

— Not waving but drowning - Stevie Smith

Now I occupy rariﬁed air. I realize I’ve begun to acclimate to Canada culturally and I can’t quite tell what is radical anymore — I can’t quite tell why we aren’t changing the
way we treat people, why we aren’t changing our institutions faster.

I worry that sometimes the rariﬁed air means I’m preaching to the choir. There are giant injustices out there still. There are people with microphones that should be taken
away. I am troubled — because I want to make sure I’m standing up as much as I can, and in the right places. There are those who are still out there, not waving, but
drowning… I’m shouting as loudly as I can. And I’m imploring you to do the same.

James Turrell’s Roden Center

Bringing the Gut Back
tweet by Alan Cooper: we can detect it, assess it, appreciate it, use it, build on it, waste it, beneﬁt from it, and learn from it. But we cannot measure it. Not being able to
measure something doesn’t mean it lacks value. You can’t measure how much you love your spouse…

In response to being asked “sir can we measure design or its value?”

Build in checks-n-balances

Build in mechanism for change

Build in reﬂection

Build in Codes of Conduct and ask what else do I need to do to make this space inclusive and also challenging

Do Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work in ALL of the SPACES — not just the DEI spaces.

Sign that says be careful, this machine has no brain use your own”

Hi there! I’m Alex Bertulis-Fernandes. I’m an art student who went viral for a piece of work I produced in response to a teacher suggesting I ‘dial down the feminism.’
Since then I’ve received requests for prints, which is what you’ll ﬁnd in this shop. At least 10% of all of my earnings will go to charities – you can ﬁnd out more here:

dial down the feminism with the dial pointed to “raging feminist” and on the other side “complicit in my own dehumanization”

Enough is Enough
Stand up and shout — Sasha Costanza Chock is standing up and creating an intersectional feminist framework for design theory and practice —

The Future is Design Justice and that future is a Colourful Feminist global + intersectional one… Get used to it.

Photo of street art that says “Brown & Proud I’m the next generation”

Photo by me CC-BY

A black woman stood up at a meeting recently and uttered these words. She said, “I’m tired.” I am so tired of trying to bring you all up-to-speed, of trying to bring you
along, of trying to wait for you to ﬁgure it out. I am so damned tired. It’s time for you to do some work. Pull yourself up.

We are in Conﬂict
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely
players;
They have their exits and their
entrances;
And one man in his time plays many
parts,

We are in Conﬂict
Safe space

Mono culture

Stable/standardized

Be the best

Win

Us

Positive
Out of comfort zone

Diversity + inclusion

Change

Collaborate

Cooperate

Them

Negative
This week, I’ve heard the phrase, “like-minded people” a number of times.

To some this isn’t like minded folks

Is it desirable to have like minded folks?

How does that diﬀer from a mono culture?

The greatest enemy of
knowledge is not
ignorance, it is the
illusion of knowledge.
— Stephen Hawking

•beware idolatry


•YIELD space

•give a damn what the other person
thinks (especially the person that
disagrees with you)

•Beware certainty

•Beware completion

•Beware the silver bullet





• Build in checks-n-balances

• Build in mechanism for change

• Build in reﬂection

• Build in Codes of Conduct and ask
what else do I need to do to make this
space inclusive and also challenging

• Do Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
work in ALL of the SPACES — not just
the DEI spaces.





What Can Education Do?
Harm

Burn or build

Power + introspection

Critique

social justice lessons

Truth and reconciliation

Creating a community

Human behaviour

Divisiveness

Binary

Idolatry

No more / standup

How Can You:
• comment on someone’s behaviour?

• show someone the divisiveness of their
behaviour?

• remain critical evermore of those you admire?

• say, “we don’t treat people like that. We won’t
tolerate that.”

• change an entire enterprise?

• critique and be aware of your motivations, your
advantages, your role?

How Do You Practice
For a Revolution?
Thinking

Feeling

Doing
Pay attention to 3 things — only 3!

Thinking

Feeling

Doing

Rushed Intimacy
Like-minded
How many of you did not speak up this week? 
 
How many of you had something you disagreed with; something that didn’t quite sit right, but you let it go? You decided not to take it personally?

How many of you think about the thing you wish you’d said after you have tough conversations? You come up with the perfect thing, but you’re spending all your time
doing that after the fact when you’re alone…

Ask yourself, why, in this group of “like-minded,” brave, safe space could you not speak up/stand up?

How many of you were allies this week? Could you have done more?

This is making space
https://youtu.be/dFVzqDﬁHuo

Jeremy Dutcher - Won Juno for Indigenous music album

Arkells - Group, Rock Album

Tweet from Tara Robertson that says, “ally is a verb, not a noun. Jeremy butcher and the ark ells reminded me to speak truth to power, hold up others’ work, and step
back to create space for others to speak their truth.”

http://tararobertson.ca/2019/ally-is-a-verb-not-a-noun/

Do No Harm
Ethics and the
Privilege of Teaching
@jesshmitchell
To yourself (YOU BELONG HERE; YOU DESERVE SPACE; YOUR IDEAS (DIVERGENT OR OTHERWISE) ARE IMPORTANT — in fact they are the necessary and suﬃcient
of creating this space as an inclusive one.

How can we do that?

Picture of Alice.

Personhood
Curiosity

Care

Listen

Hear

Change

Invest in

…
Build TRUST

Picture of Alice

Start with curiosity

Then care

Then listen

Then hear

Then change

Then invest in

Then what?…

@jesshmitchell
The Kids
are
Alright
This kid is holding a sign that says, “when I said I’d rather die than go to math class, that was hyperbole, assholes”

Flint Michigan still doesn’t have clean drinking water.

Thank you.

https://twitter.com/TheMindBlowing/status/978130902021754880

Digital Pedagogy Lab Toronto Keynote

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