Working Group to advise 3M Council and STLHE on anti-racism List of Demands

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At the 3M Council 2020 AGM on 5 June 2020, a working group formed to think through how 3M
Council and STLHE can address ongoing anti-Black racism through action. A group of STLHE
members (including 3M student and teaching fellows) met throughout June and July and
formulated a list of demands for 3M Council and STLHE commitment to anti-racism in all areas
of their activities. As we present these demands, we recognize the earlier (often unseen) work
of BlPOC members to shift STLHE in a progressive, anti-racist direction.

FUNDING: dedicate sustainable funding in support of anti-racism work by Black and Indigenous
students and external anti-racist educators/consultants/faciliators in developing anti-racism
capacity within 3M Council and STLHE

• Short-term: Pay Black and Indigenous scholars to host an anti-racism webinar as
  professional development for STLHE members, which is consistent with typical higher
  education honoraria. Student EDI labor must be compensated.
• Long-term: Dedicated budget line in the STLHE budget to fund capacity-building,
  development of teaching resources, and training for anti-racist and decolonializing
  pedagogies.

INFRASTRUCTURE: develop anti-racist infrastructure and positions within 3M Council and
STLHE

• Immediate: require 3M NTF and 3M NSF retreat facilitators have experience in using
  intersectional anti-racist approaches in pedagogy and/or facilitation starting immediately.
• Short-term: enact a wide-ranging consultation with the STLHE community to determine
  infrastructural changes as they relate to anti-racism – the EDI Task Force must address
  and be targeted towards confronting anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism.
• Long-term: Create positions, committees, and dedicated board seats to analyze and
  articulate how the structures of STLHE (including 3M fellowships, awards, etc.) are white
  settler colonial (including white supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal, meritocratic, ableist).
  These must be long-term positions and incentivized with adequate compensation. Once
  named and identified, strategies for transformation are created and implemented.
  Critically analyze STLHE partners for support of anti-racist goals, if goals are not met
  then divestment is necessary.

CAPACITY BUILDING: build anti-racist capacities with 3M Council and STLHE
members-at-large rooted in critical race and decolonizing theories and centering Black and
Indigenous scholarship. Our concern is that a disproportionate amount of anti-racist work is put
on the shoulders of BIPOC, subjecting them to the harm that comes from working within a
system that is white supremacist, settler colonial, ableist, and cisheteropatriarchal. Anti-racism
work within STLHE must be a responsibility shared amongst all members, which demands
developing anti-racist capacity in all members.

• Short-term: Develop a conference code of ethics that all attendees are required to sign
  that includes sanction for discriminatory speech, practices and procedures, and a
  restorative justice approach to address harms caused.
• Long-term: Restructure teaching and learning awards to value anti-racism work within
  institutions. Ongoing opportunities through dedicated platforms for STLHE
  members-at-large to learn in community about systemic racism, support transformative
  unlearning processes, and build anti-racist capacity.

DEDICATED PLATFORMS: ensure and sustain capacity-building with dedicated time, space,
and funding at STLHE/3M conferences to address learning in community

• Sh ort-term: Ensure that the conference theme of STLHE 2021 addresses anti-Black &
  anti-Indigenous racism in teaching and learning in Canada. This must include sessions
  for STLHE members-at-large to learn about systemic racism (including how systemic
  racism operates in higher education) and build anti-racist capacity.
• Long-term: All future STLHE conferences and events center anti-racist pedagogy and
  explicitly welcome such presentations in the Call for Proposals. Ongoing opportunities
  for STLHE members-at-large to learn in community about systemic racism and build
  anti-racist capacity; this includes learning spaces at annual STLHE conferences, as well
  as specialized remote learning opportunities throughout the year (such as book clubs
  and webinars).

PROACTIVE NOMINATION: nominate Black and Indigenous students and faculty for the 3M
Fellowships, and for board/committee/leadership positions/opportunities within 3M Council and
STLHE

• Short-term: A formal, public, apology (signed by chairs and vice chairs of both STLHE
  and the 3M Council) for unaddressed systemic racism and subsequent harm to both
  current and past members of the 3M/STLHE community due to racist behaviours,
  policies, omissions, or other. An acknowledgement that racism is not limited to
  intentional and interpersonal discriminatory acts, but rather, is perpetuated in the myriad
  ways that the university culture is rooted in white supremacy, settler colonial, ableist, and
  cisheteropatriarchal modes of reason and action.
• Long-term: 3M Council & STLHE call upon all member institutions to promote and
  nominate Black and Indigenous faculty and students for teaching and learning awards,
  and the development of evaluation metrics to determine who is being nominated, who is
  winning, and where institutional barriers to equitable representation exist.

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Public Ad Hoc Committee Members:

• Tari Ajadi, 3M National Student Fellow 2014
• Heather Carroll, 3M National Student Fellow 2014
• Maureen Connolly, 3M National Teaching Fellow 2003
• Jason Earl, 3M National Student Fellow 2015
• Ethan Pohl, 3M National Student Fellow 2019
• Chloé Soucy, 3M National Student Fellow 2018
• Christl Verduyn, 3M National Teaching Fellow 2018

There were a number of other STLHE members who participated in the creation of these
demands whose names are not listed above. We want to acknowledge their labour and appreciate their relationship to this work.