Overview

Over the past three decades, colleges and universities have committed to encouraging, embracing, and supporting diversity as a core principle of their mission. But how are goals for achieving and maintaining diversity actually met? What is the role of students in this mission? When a university is committed to diversity, what is campus culture like? In Learning to Speak, Learning to Listen, Susan E. Chase portrays how undergraduates at a predominantly white urban institution, which she calls ""City University"" (a pseudonym), learn to speak and listen to each other across social differences. Chase interviewed a wide range of students and conducted content analyses of the student newspaper, student government minutes, curricula, and website to document diversity debates at this university. Amid various controversies, she identifies a defining moment in the campus culture: a protest organized by students of color to highlight the university's failure to live up to its diversity commitments. Some white students dismissed the protest, some were hostile to it, and some fully engaged their peers of color. In a book that will be useful to students and educators on campuses undergoing diversity initiatives, Chase finds that both students' willingness to share personal stories about their diverse experiences and collaboration among student organizations, student affairs offices, and academic programs encourage speaking and listening across differences and help incorporate diversity as part of the overall mission of the university.

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Reviews

<p> Learning to Speak, Learning to Listen approaches the important issues of racialization and antiracist activism in an innovative way. While Susan E. Chase focuses on one college in particular, the dynamics she highlights have implications for many other college and university settings. Nancy A. Naples, University of Connecticut

"""Susan E. Chase's focus on the narrative environment and the impact it has on the way students, especially, learn to speak and listen about diversity is a fresh perspective and an important reminder to all that context matters, and what we say and do (our narrative practices) shape and are shaped by it. As faculty and administrators, we have a critical role in creating and understanding that narrative environment. She also reminds us of the power and value of 'integrating academic and extracurricular' areas to strengthen learning and create change. After all, that is how our students live their daily lives ... knitting the various pieces of the academy together.""-Susan Murphy, Vice President, Student and Academic Services, Cornell University ""Learning to Speak, Learning to Listen approaches the important issues of racialization and antiracist activism in an innovative way. While Susan E. Chase focuses on one college in particular, the dynamics she highlights have implications for many other college and university settings.""-Nancy A. Naples, University of Connecticut"

Susan E. Chase's focus on the narrative environment and the impact it has on the way students, especially, learn to speak and listen about diversity is a fresh perspective and an important reminder to all that context matters, and what we say and do (our narrative practices) shape and are shaped by it. As faculty and administrators, we have a critical role in creating and understanding that narrative environment. She also reminds us of the power and value of 'integrating academic and extracurricular' areas to strengthen learning and create change. After all, that is how our students live their daily lives . . . knitting the various pieces of the academy together. -Susan Murphy, Vice President, Student and Academic Services, Cornell University

""Susan E. Chase's focus on the narrative environment and the impact it has on the way students, especially, learn to speak and listen about diversity is a fresh perspective and an important reminder to all that context matters, and what we say and do (our narrative practices) shape and are shaped by it. As faculty and administrators, we have a critical role in creating and understanding that narrative environment. She also reminds us of the power and value of 'integrating academic and extracurricular' areas to strengthen learning and create change. After all, that is how our students live their daily lives ... knitting the various pieces of the academy together.""-Susan Murphy, Vice President, Student and Academic Services, Cornell University ""Learning to Speak, Learning to Listen approaches the important issues of racialization and antiracist activism in an innovative way. While Susan E. Chase focuses on one college in particular, the dynamics she highlights have implications for many other college and university settings.""-Nancy A. Naples, University of Connecticut

Author Information

Susan E. Chase is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Tulsa. She is author of Ambiguous Empowerment: The Work Narratives of Women School Superintendents and coauthor of Mothers and Children: Feminist Analyses and Personal Narratives.

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