Multiculturalism: Inaugural Issue of the Journal of the Western Institute for Social Research

Programs

Multicultural is WISeR

John Bilorusky, PhD and Cynthia Lawrence, PhD, WISR Faculty

Introduction

One of our favorite sayings at the Western Institute for Social Research (WISR) is, Multicultural is WISeR. Although we are small and not widely publicized, WISR is known as a premiere academic institute for social change since its inception in 1975. WISR offers individualized Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral degree programs for working adults. WISR offers individualized Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degree programs—in the fields of education, justice and social change, community leadership and services, and counseling psychology, for working adults. WISR is a small, multicultural learning community, and was designed as a living experiment in co-operation among people of different races, cultures, and personal backgrounds. People know each other personally, procedures are human-scaled, and every person makes a difference. Active collaboration with others, not competition and distance, lend richness and interest to each person’s learning process.

WISR was founded in part as an attempt to improve on both conventional and alternative higher education as they had evolved into the 1970s. At that time, in the aftermath of the sixties, many educators and students were debating the merits of the university’s role in the community and in social change, the relevance of the curriculum, and generally, the values served by higher education. WISR has been our modest but concerted response to some inadequacies in conventional education—for example, the absence of emphasis on personalized education, multiculturalism and social change. It was founded partly in response to the limitations of alternative programs of the seventies, which oftentimes were too preoccupied with simply looking different from the conventional. Since then, many conventional institutions have adopted reforms, which have incorporated in only a partial way some of the agendas from the sixties (e.g., field studies programs, women’s studies, ethnic studies). Most current reforms are guided by the economics of marketing academic programs to appeal to a growing population of mature adults who are interested in returning for further academic study and professional certification (e.g., to obtain degrees and licensing). Most alternative institutions of the sixties and seventies have failed to survive.

We’ve been fortunate that from the beginning and throughout our history, we have attracted talented learners from many different cultural backgrounds. WISR learners show a remarkable openness and curiosity to learn about the experiences and ideas of their fellow learners—this is a tribute to who they are as people, and perhaps to some fortuitous qualities in the learning culture that prevails at WISR.

Students and faculty—the WISR learners—may sometimes have their differences and disagreements, but these differences are not sources of conflict—people do not feel unseen or discounted, perhaps because of WISR’s culture of affirming the purposes and interests of each learner, and of respecting and valuing their personal and cultural histories. Seldom, if ever, do we have people at WISR debating about who is more oppressed, or who among us is at fault for the injustices that exist. By contrast, in the 1970s I was involved with one alternative university without walls program where there was remarkable diversity, as there is and always has been at WISR, but people in that institution’s culture were divided into opposing camps based on their ethnic and cultural background, and occasionally by gender. Oftentimes, our learners comment on how at home they feel at WISR. This is a big deal for them because their viewpoints and cultural experiences are often marginalized in the society as a whole and in most mainstream institutions. However, at WISR, their experiences and views are respected, and beyond this, taken very seriously as a basis for developing new knowledge out of our learners’ deeply felt and valued life experiences.

WISR learners demonstrate explicit and deeply felt concerns with multicultural issues and ideas—in their projects, papers and studies. Sometimes they show their passion for delving into their culture, and how their culture has shaped their experiences, and what is valuable about their culture. For example, sometimes they aim to promote reflection and discussion about their culture, preserve and cherish it, and communicate to others the worthwhile knowledge contributed by their culture. Other times, our learners pursue projects to create opportunities to move our society forward by making it more inclusive, and to address the challenges posed when people show no special interest or awareness about their culture or the cultures of others, and how all this matters. WISR is distinctive because concerns with multiculturalism are pervasive, and yet, at the same time, multiculturalism is not experienced as a duty that must be manifest in every learning project, nor even in every student’s main areas of study.

Multicultural Images and Student Recruitment

A story comes to mind. About 15 years ago, a student with whom a WISR faculty member was talking suggested that if WISR wanted to get more students enrolled, we should change the cover of our catalogue. The student said that when she showed our catalogue to friends, they got the impression, from the photographs on the cover, that WISR is a Black school. In fact, WISR’s cover has always shown faces of quite varied genders, skin tones and facial features. There was never any consideration given to changing the cover of the catalogue. It was a quiet, matter of fact, choice to present the photos that would accurately represent our diversity and inclusiveness, without overstating it. They are photos of our students. It never occurred to us to do our catalogue another way.

Upon reflection, we have come to think about what it means that a handful of different faces of color make the institution appear diverse and appealing to the masses. It seems that 15 years ago, at least, too many faces of color may have given some the impression, even in the enlightened San Francisco Bay Area that WISR was a colored school and not for me. Since then, times have probably changed—as is witnessed in the use of many diverse faces to promote mainstream products for consumer consumption. WISR has never been about manipulating images, but more about an earnest and forthright effort to create a learning culture that would be inclusive, welcoming and supportive of learners from many cultures and backgrounds. A few brief vignettes may be illustrative …

Many Stories of Multicultural is WISeR

WISR PhD alumnus, Oba T’Shaka pursued his WISR doctoral studies in conjunction with his duties as Chair of the Black Studies Department at San Francisco State. His areas of specialization at WISR were Afro-centric education, community leadership, social change and participatory research.

Anngwyn St. Just, a woman of European-American ancestry, earned her MA in counseling and then her doctorate at WISR, while becoming involved in working with diverse groups of people recovering from trauma—including a wilderness project that involved women who were survivors of rape, American men who were vets of the Vietnam war, and men who were Soviet veterans of the war in Afghanistan. Later, she worked with people in communities enduring civil war in Europe.

Dennis Hastings, a member of the Omaha Tribe, and his colleague, Margery Coffey, a woman of Celtic ancestry, earned their Master’s degrees from WISR while working to preserve and promote the culture of the Omaha people—in communities and schools in Nebraska. They did this through their work with the Omaha Tribal Historical Research Project, a non-profit founded by Dennis Hastings, and a group that has been officially designated by the Omaha Tribe as the cultural authority of the Omaha people in perpetuity. Dennis and Margery re-enrolled at WISR and did an impressive series of projects and a dissertation collaboratively—including, for example, the Omaha perspective on the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Omaha language, key Omaha figures in history, curriculum materials for use in schools attended by Omaha children, and the definitive history of the Omaha people in the face of the European invasion.

Roger Mason is finishing his PhD at WISR, and oftentimes in participating in WISR seminars and events, he has shared with our learning community his pride in and knowledge of his Swedish heritage.

Marilyn Jackson is a WISR PhD alumnus and current faculty member who also shares with us her Scandanavian heritage, including her talent in fiddling. As a student and later as a faculty member, she has done research and published articles in peer-reviewed books, to increase the understanding of and appreciation for the contributions of the Danish folk school movement.

William Duma was an exiled Black South African journalist who was named Contra Costa Community College District Teacher of the Year in 1994. He did his WISR dissertation on his idea of neo-Apartheid in South Africa. He then returned to South Africa, where he lives today.

Ronald Mah grew up in a Chinese American family in a multicultural, but predominantly African American, neighborhood of Berkeley. He is an alumnus of WISR’s Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) program and our PhD program, more recently. For 20 years, he has been is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California, a community college instructor and consultant to numerous community-based organizations and parent groups. He has served for a few years on the Board of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapist (CAMFT). As a therapist and consultant, he has several major areas of specialized expertise, one of which is cross-cultural family dynamics.

Sunaree Medrala received her Master’s at WISR and returned to her native country of Thailand to become the principal of a business college there.

Many years later, and quite recently, Na Limopasmanee, who immigrated to the US from Thailand under traumatic circumstances finished her Master’s toward the MFT license. Throughout her studies, she collaborated on a number projects and studies, as well as their culminating thesis, with Suzie Rudloff who grew up in the southern United States in a military family. They have shared with many of us their delight about how their differences in previous life experiences were so valuable and beneficial for their constructive collaboration for well over a year on many projects and in many areas of study.

The late, James Todd, II joined the faculty of the Black Studies Department at San Francisco State while working on his Ph.D. at WISR, and he then became head of the Step to College program there. Later, he assumed the position of Chair of the Business and Hospitality Department at Morris Brown College in Atlanta.

The late, Marita Davila received her Ph.D. at WISR in 1980. In 1982-83, she was granted a postdoctoral fellowship in the administration of higher education from the American Council on Education. Her postdoctoral studies built on her Ph.D. studies which included an examination of the causes and prevention of dropouts in California community colleges among Spanish-speaking students. Her dissertation was an in-depth study of The Black Presence in Spanish America—a dissertation that was motivated by her realization, while a student at WISR, that her family had been trying to conceal their African heritage. Her work was subsequently used as an important instructional resource at Stanford University and several other Bay Area colleges.

Nadine Shaw-Landasvatter is the mother of two biracial boys and the founder of a support network for parents of biracial/multiracial children. Her senior thesis for the Bachelor’s degree centered on the research and initiatives necessary to her successful efforts to incorporate this support network as a nonprofit organization.

There is the story of WISR PhD student, Agnes Morton, longtime San Francisco public health nurse, who upon retirement a few years ago enrolled at WISR in conjunction with her return to the community where she grew up, Overtown, in Miami. Within this low-income African American community, she has become a community organizer and an indigenous health educator in her 70s.

Recent BA alumnus, William Poehner has a passion for sharing Nonviolent Communication. He grew up in a bilingual family, living his early childhood in a working class neighborhood in Cali, Colombia, and later in compacted neighborhoods in New York City and Los Angeles. Now, in Albuqueque, New Mexico, William and his colleagues help men in prison develop a deeper personal awareness of their own lives, while developing skills needed for living peacefully with themselves, their co-inmates and the society to which they will return.

WISR PhD alumnus, Che Kum Clement, is Cameroonian, and full Professor and Chairman of the Department of Technical Education, Islamic University (IUT) in Bangladesh. His Department enrolls students from all over the world, who then return to their home countries to help educate people in various technical fields that are crucial to the development of those countries. He is deeply involved in furthering the learning and capacities of teachers of technical and vocational education as a means of social change.

Sajad Shakoor is of Pakistani descent, and recently enrolled in WISR’s Master’s in Education program, with plans to go on for his doctorate. He is committed to developing a quality, accessible undergraduate curriculum by correspondence—for men and women in prisons in California and other states. Just over a year ago, he himself was released from prison after serving half of his 41 years of life in San Quentin as a result of California’s now abolished three strikes law. While in prison he earned his GED, AA and BA degrees, the latter by correspondence through Ohio University.

The Inaugural Issue of WISR’s Online Journal: Theme Multiculturality

There is much more that could be said about WISR, and the amazing people from many cultures in the United States, and around the world, who have studied at WISR. The knowledge and needed diversity of perspectives, talents and experiences they have brought to WISR have in turn been further developed, practiced and articulated to share with others—throughout professional, academic and lay communities in the Bay Area, in California, in the US, and the world. This multiculturalism is more than a diversity of different faces and skin tones, although that in of itself is a valuable part of what makes us all human. It includes, but is more than, being free to express one’s pride in one’s heritage. It includes learning more about one’s own heritage, as well as what can be learned from others about their cultures. It can sometimes include collaborations between people of different life experiences and backgrounds, where the emerging whole is indeed greater than the sum of the parts. It is certainly even much more than any one of us knows and understands, and none of us can adequately articulate all of what we do know and understand. But we do know this. Multicultural is WISeR.

Multicultural Therapy

Heather Watkins, WISR MFT student

Color Sighted

With a growing awareness and appreciation of the diverse nature of humanity, the psychotherapy field is embracing the need for modalities of therapy that account for the distinctions and uniqueness of cultures, considering both the internal and external experience of the client. I will look at why there is such a need for a multicultural approach and some of the limitations of traditional models. Specifically, I will focus on the traumatic nature of racism, historically and presently, its influence on the intra-psychic and extra-psychic workings of culturally diverse clients and its relevance in the therapeutic process.

Why Multicultural?

Traditional psychotherapy has been based heavily on the values and norms of the dominant Euro-American culture, and