Create Conditions for Scholars of Color to Thrive: 2018 Doctoral Consultation Report

FTE Doctoral Consultation Report

C R E AT E THE CONDITIONS FOR SCHOLARS OF COLOR TO

THRIVE DESIGN FOR OUR FUTURE

FTE DOCTORAL INITIATIVES TEAM

INSTITUTIONAL DOCTORAL NETWORK CONSULTANT

Elsie Barnhart Program Manager Forum for Theological Exploration

Marsha Foster Boyd Chief Catalyst Catalyst Connections Global LLC

Patrick B. Reyes Director of Strategic Partnerships for Doctoral Initiatives Forum for Theological Exploration

CONSULTATION DESIGN COMMITTEE

CONSULTATION EVALUATORS Andrea Paull Teacher Education Advancement Edmonds School District,Washington State Shaya Gregory Poku Director, Center for Social Justice and Community Impact Wheaton College Abraham Rodríguez-Hernandez Racial Equity Advancement Manager Seattle Public Schools

Debbie Gin Director of Research and Faculty Development The Association of Theological Schools Boyung Lee Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty Iliff School of Theology Maureen McCarthy Director, Best Practices and Advancement Council of Graduate Schools Stephen G. Ray Jr. President Chicago Theological Seminary Shively Smith Assistant Professor of New Testament Boston University, School of Theology Frank Tuitt Sr. Advisor to Chancellor and Provost on Diversity and Inclusion University of Denver Matthew Wesley Williams Vice President of Strategic Initiatives Forum for Theological Exploration

table of contents OVERVIEW.....................................................................................................................2

Our Purpose................................................................................................................2

Our Partner.................................................................................................................3

Our Plan.....................................................................................................................3

Intervene, Interrupt, Inspire......................................................................................... 4

KEY INSIGHTS................................................................................................................5

Convene for Shared Work..............................................................................................5

Define Thriving............................................................................................................5

CONSULTATION CONTENT.............................................................................................7

Change Is Possible. . ..................................................................................................... 9

A Laboratory of Ideas................................................................................................. 10

What’s In Your Box?. . .................................................................................................. 13 .

Data: More Than Researchers of Color; Fundamentally Different Research Questions . . .......... 13 Inclusive Pedagogies and Practices: To Exclude is to Include............................................. 14 System Design and Inter vention: Abstract Thinking Does Not Lead to Concrete Results. . ....... 15 Leadership: Nothing for Us Without Us.. ...................................................................... 16

Promising Practices.................................................................................................... 17

CLOSING CHALLENGE.. ................................................................................................ 19

50 Years in Hindsight, 50 Years in the Future................................................................. 19

Leader as Designer..................................................................................................... 21

OUR WAY FORWARD...................................................................................................25

A Reflection on the 2018 FTE Doctoral Consultation by Dr. Patrick B. Reyes. . .................25

DEFINITION OF CONDITIONS NECESSARY FOR SCHOLARS OF COLOR TO THRIVE.. ...... 26

2018 FTE DOCTORAL CONSULTATION REPORT 1

overview The Stats, The Stakes, and The System

I

n the 50 years that FTE has been offering fellowships, consultations on the state of theological education have been a touchstone of how we understand what is happening in the church and the academy.

And for 50 years, the consultations we convene have offered similar insights about the state of the academy for scholars of color. FTE’s Doctoral Fellowships and consultations have always been designed to improve diversity, to increase the representation of scholars of color, and to seek pathways that empower the essential intellectual and spiritual gifts they bring to every campus and community.

From 1968 through 2013, every FTE Doctoral Consultation has noted consistent trends in theological education: •

The pervasive lack of diversity recruitment strategies and critical mass of students of color in undergraduate and graduate programs, which would support and lead scholars of color to pursue a PhD;

• Financial aid for students of color is insufficient at all levels of theological education; • Far too few faculty of color are in leadership positions to mentor and support the next generation of scholars; • Programs and educational models do not reflect the experiences and contexts of students of color; and, • Theological institutions need to adapt to changes in the church, higher education, and society.

With this as our backdrop, we aimed to design the 2018 FTE Doctoral Consultation differently.

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CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR SCHOLARS OF COLOR TO THRIVE

Internally and over the course of four months with our consultation design committee, we asked these pivotal questions: • If we continue to gather as a field and we continue to see similar results and trends, what needs to change about the way we gather?

• How does that change need to take place?

• How does the field—or can the field—have a shared sense about what might be possible if we chose to act and be together differently?

The challenge for our 2018 FTE Doctoral Consultation was to model how we might answer these questions together in service to our larger question, How do we create conditions for scholars of color to thrive?

Our Purpose • Host a 2018 gathering of experts to discover emerging new insights, building on what we learned at the 2013 FTE Doctoral Consultation; •

Establish a baseline for the current conditions of scholars and students of African, Latinx, Asian-Pacific Islander, and First Nations descent in theological education; and

•

Engage in a creative, collaborative process to identify what it could look like to design conditions for scholars of color to thrive in theological education.

Our Partners For our 2018 Doctoral Consultation held in Denver at the Iliff School of Theology, FTE gathered 54 participants representing various parts of the theological education system.

This included accreditation institution staff, staff members of philanthropic organizations, presidents of theological schools, deans, directors of doctoral programs, faculty of color, doctoral students of color, partners in theological education (including Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning, InTrust, Louisville Institute, and the Hispanic Theological Initiative), and leaders and consultants who work in inclusion and equity.

To spark and transform the role of FTE and its partners in meeting the changes that the church and academy need, FTE invited trusted leaders to serve as a consultation design committee. This committee’s goal was to help identify methods, practices, and themes to focus the consultation conversation.

The design committee consisted of a member from each level and sector of theological education that was present during the Doctoral Consultation: accreditation institution staff, academic administration, faculty of color, and other partners in higher education.

The design committee determined that the content of our gatherings needs to change.

Key Concerns Prior to the Consultation

It also concluded that how we gather must also adjust in order for us to see a different result.

• Conditions and statistics for scholars of color have not changed significantly nor kept pace with the changing demographics of the United States (see FTE’s report, Calling for More than We Have Got Thus Far).

How do we create conditions for scholars of color to thrive?

• Student debt continues to rise, especially for Black and Latinx students.

• The changing landscape of higher education, theological education, and the church add to competing priorities of institutions with the need to support, hire, and promote scholars of color.

Our Plan Design Differently: Facilitating for Trust, Engagement, and Different Results Our aim was to disrupt the 50-year track record of rehearsing and rearticulating the common themes and scripts that have emerged from consultations without much impact on the landscape of theological education.

In other words, FTE sought to experiment with how we work with partners to come to new insights on the question, How do we create conditions for scholars of color to thrive?

With the challenge of generating different results, the design committee planned the elements of a two-day consultation where leaders in the field of theological education would come together to: • Follow-up on results and insights from the 2013 FTE Doctoral Consultation; • Establish a baseline of the current conditions of scholars of color in doctoral theological education; • Engage in a collaborative process to identify what it looks like to design conditions for scholars of color to thrive in theological education; and • Define next steps for FTE and the field for creating the conditions that enable scholars of color to thrive.

2018 FTE DOCTORAL CONSULTATION REPORT 3

The design committee identified four key themes to focus the participants’ attention: • Data.

Who is doing research? What data are we collecting to recognize communities and scholars of color?

•

System Design and Intervention.

How do we see the interrelated parts of the theological education system in order to create conditions for scholars of color to thrive?

•

Inclusive Pedagogies and Practices.

What are the institutional practices in the classroom and elsewhere that promote thriving of students of color?

• Leadership.

How do we create leadership development programs that support scholars of color?

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CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR SCHOLARS OF COLOR TO THRIVE

Intervene, Interrupt, Inspire The design for the consultation experimented with how to create the conditions for a group of academics to be creative—people who without an intervention, in the words of Charles Shelby Rooks, would go about the work by “the same old stand.”

Even with the four themes provided to focus participants’ attention, the design committee believed that if the 2018 FTE Doctoral Consultation was composed of academic grandstanding, lectures, panel presentations, white papers, or a keynote from a luminary in the field, it would be more likely to come to the same conclusions and recommendations of the past five decades.

So the design committee and FTE took up a challenge: How could this consultation be different?

How could we model and inspire new ways of collaborating across our field to create the conditions for scholars of color to thrive?

key insights

T

he design of the 2018 FTE Doctoral Consultation employed culturally responsive methods to scaffold a shared understanding of the lives, work, and aspirations of students and scholars of color.

This included a look at the current socio-political context that impacts their lives.

The consultation promoted leadership models that embrace network building. The gathering—specifically the design with and for participants—provided structured time for peer learning and created opportunities for self-organizing. It highlighted creative collaboration as an entry point to systemic alignment and the improvement of conditions experienced by students and scholars of color within the academy.

These same features—culturally responsive methods, shared leadership-promoting networks, and structured time for peer learning and self-organizing—are also the practices that institutions should employ to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Further, this design is precisely the level of collaboration needed for system-wide change within the field of theological education.

Through this collaborative process, participants concluded that there are two main focus areas for FTE and the field to create conditions for scholars of color to thrive: • Convene the field for shared work to advance this cause, and • Create definitions and benchmarks for “thriving.”

Convene for Shared Work Partnerships are a key strategy to systems change.

However, partners need the capacity to think, design, and execute collaboratively. Consultation participants believe that in theological education there is a limitation on the capacity and imagination about what work is necessary to create conditions for scholars of color to thrive.

Leaders in theological education have limited time and bandwidth. Participants noted the need to prioritize diversity, inclusion, and equity work. As John Kutsko, executive director of the Society of Biblical Literature, puts it, “The work is heavy and the workers are few. Distractions take up time. Regularity makes the work a priority.”

FTE and other partners need to persistently convene theological education influencers with shared goals and metrics in mind. To preserve any gains made, and to ensure accountability, this convening must be an ongoing commitment.

Define Thriving Together, leaders in theological education need to define 1) The conditions necessary for scholars of color to thrive, and 2) What “thriving” looks like for individual scholars of color.

Following the consultation—drawing on the definitions, curated artifacts, and evaluators’ reports of collaborative conversations at the gathering—we offer these prototype definitions:

2018 FTE DOCTORAL CONSULTATION REPORT 5

FTE Vice President of Strategic Initiatives Matthew Wesley Williams

Definition of Conditions Necessary for Scholars of Color to Thrive:

Definitions of Thriving; Scholars of Color Are:

• Research is driven by scholars of color.

• Academically strong

• Data-informed decision making is the norm.

• Financially secure

• White allies and leaders participate in the thriving of people of color with measurable and achievable benchmarks.

• Community oriented

• The culture of an institution is shaped by people of color at every level.

• Communities promote empathy and trust over competition and title.

• People of color and women receive fair and just compensation.

• Space for reflection and creativity is part of institutional culture.

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CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR SCHOLARS OF COLOR TO THRIVE

• Vocationally clear • Holistic in their sense of self • Prepared to be change agents

consultation content

T

he consultation opened with the Rev. Dr. Boyung Lee, senior vice president for academic affairs, dean of the faculty, and professor of practical theology, who welcomed the participants to Iliff School of Theology. She framed the importance of our conversation.

In her role as Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Lee reflected on the stakes for theological education to keep pace with the changes in higher education. Dr. Lee shared her experiences as being the first Asian woman—and first woman of color— to be tenured at Pacific School of Religion back in 2002. She also noted that at present she is the only Korean American woman to serve as Dean for an institution accredited by The Association of Theological Schools (ATS). While these are important milestones, she reflected on the personal toll it takes on people who are the “firsts and onlys” in their categories of diversity or professional accomplishment, particularly on women of color.

Dr. Lee reframed how we might come to understand the high stakes of our work together. She observed that our work must not just support the need to be more inclusive in our programs, classrooms, and curriculums—the core products of the higher education enterprise—but it must also support the private and intimate needs of marginalized students.

For example, Dr. Lee shared stories about gatherings in the homes of women of color in the academy as a means of their surviving the academy. Dr. Lee also spoke about the impact on people that physical design and infrastructure might have, and what messages building infrastructure itself might carry.

She referenced gender-neutral bathrooms and buildings that are supported by solar panels, and how physical design can transmit a sense of inclusivity that includes multiple identities and issues.

Creating conditions for scholars of color to thrive, as reframed by Dr. Lee, is about making sure that formal programs are more inclusive and diverse, and that other supports, such as the physical layout of buildings and who they were designed for, are also part of the education and formation of PhD programs.

The institutional leaders and students gathered for Dr. Lee’s remarks gained an understanding that what is at stake is determining how institutions and programs are going to survive the changing demographic land-scape—and how changes in academic work and facilities speak volumes about who and what matters to an institution.

Dr. Lee’s greeting and overview was followed by a presentation by the Rev. Matthew Wesley Williams, FTE vice president of strategic initiatives. He framed the scope of the consultation by the need for change in three major areas: statistics, stakes, and system.

Rev. Williams reminded the participants and institutional leaders of FTE’s published report, Calling for More than We Have Got Thus Far).

This report about the conditions of scholars of color in theological education states that “The stubborn statistics most often tracked in the field reveal a chronic problem of racial and ethnic underrepresentation in our field. These are not new findings.”

Rev. Williams noted that at this moment in history, women of color are the least represented among the faculty in the field of theological education, and 80 percent of faculty positions in schools accredited by The Association of Theological Schools (ATS) are still held by white faculty members. Rev. Williams added that if one looks further back into the pipeline of future faculty members, people of color—and

2018 FTE DOCTORAL CONSULTATION REPORT 7

women of color in particular—make up an even smaller share of PhD candidates in their respective fields.

With these stubborn statistics in mind, Rev. Williams asked participants: Are we measuring what matters? Are we asking the right questions? How might we begin to ask questions of our field and institutions that are not only concerned with whether people of color increase numerically, but that also call our attention to whether these growing numbers of students and scholars are thriving vocationally?

Rev. Williams declared that the stakes of our work are especially high for people of color. He quoted this passage from consultation participant Dr. Wonhee Anne Joh’s article “On Diversity, Institutional Whiteness and Its Will for Change”: Well-meaning institutions tell students from communities of color that they are inclusive and have a commitment to diversity, but they neither cultivate institutional will for justice-oriented diversity nor forge new institutional habits. As a result, students and faculty of color are often left to work as individuals within institutions whose wills and habits are in opposition to, or in direct conflict with, the lived worlds of these scholars.

Being ‘included’ or folded into such unchanged institutions is to experience violence at close range.1

Systems thinking requires us to shift from reacting or observing events or data, to identifying patterns and trends in behavior over time, to then surfacing the underlying and unexamined structures and assumptions that give rise to those events, data, and patterns.

By understanding and changing those underlying and unexamined structures that are not serving us well, we can widen the choices that are available to us and design more desirable, just, and sustainable solutions to the chronic problems we face.

This approach to our shared work requires us to show up differently than we typically do in normal professional meetings and engage with our whole selves: with our cognition, emotion, and intuition.

Rev. Williams challenged participants with this question: If we are truly engaged in shared work that requires us to ‘show up differently than we typically do in normal professional meetings,’ is the field prepared to ‘change the nature of work’ for just two days to arrive at a different set of results than those named year after year?

This “set of results” refers to the long continuum of consultation findings that highlight: • The lack of funding for scholars of color;

Rev. Williams examined a final pillar for necessary change: the system.

Organizational theorist Ronald Heifetz argues that the language of a ‘broken system’ is largely an illusion. When in a field like ours we see patterns of behavior and activity that remain constant over a period of time, we must come to grapple with Heifetz’s insight that while a system may be dysfunctional, systems produce the very things that they are designed to produce.

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• Curricula that do not represent communities of color; • Campus cultures that do not support the presence and scholarship of people of color; • A persistent lack of a critical mass of students and scholars of color; and • Other systemic obstacles to the thriving of scholars of color.

W. Anne Joh, “On Diversity, Institutional Whiteness and Its Will for Change,” American Academy of Religion.

CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR SCHOLARS OF COLOR TO THRIVE

Change is Possible After presentations from Dr. Lee and Rev. Williams, we explored what working together might look like through a process called Mission Possible, developed

by Matryoshka Haus.

Participants split into teams of eight people. Each group represented the various “sight lines,” or locations, within theological education. The process served as a gaming experience to provide an outlet for innovative thinking.

Each group was given a small context card with a problem and a related set of statistics. These problem cards reflected the themes of the consultation—Data, System Design and Intervention, Inclusive Pedagogies and Practices, and Leadership—with specific focus areas. The groups worked on five problems:

•

Changing Job Market.

Job trends supported by data from the academic year 2017 Society of Biblical Literature Job report.

•

Institutional Change.

I NI C UD EN T TD D E BT NR CE RAS E AISNI G N GSTST UD EN E BT Changes in theological education such as mergers, closures, and demographic shifts in the faculty and student body.

•

Supplying the Pipeline.

The lack of PhD students of color, representing less than 20 percent of the total across all racial/ethnic groups.

•

Increasing Student Debt.

The average debt loads of students, which continues to rise, particularly for Black and Latinx students.

In addition to the context card, each group was given three resource cards. These resources included a facility, some form of human capital, and physical resources. The cards and the resources they represent served as creative limitations and non-traditional resources in the academic field. This inspired participants to think creatively during the next step of the process. The resources included items such as a pool (facility), one graphic designer (human capital), and five popcorn machines (physical resources).

After each group received a context card and resources, they were asked to succinctly name the problem they were trying to solve and to brainstorm CC HH AA NN GG I NI N GGJ O B BMM AA RR KK EE TT JO a viable solution to that problem.

(Continued) (Continued)

» The total number ofof faculty positions » The total number faculty positions

Particularly among students ofof color, Particularly among students color, student debt continues toto increase, student debt continues increase, affecting African American and Latinx affecting African American and Latinx students disproportionately toto other students disproportionately other groups.

According toto the Graduate Student groups.

According the Graduate Student Questionnaire curated byby ATS, in in 2015: Questionnaire curated ATS, 2015:

decreased byby 8.6% year over year from decreased 8.6% year over year from AY16 toto AY17.

Within this percentage, AY16 AY17.

Within this percentage, several mixed findings can bebe highlighted: several mixed findings can highlighted:

After spending 20 minutes developing these solutions, each team was asked to pitch their ideas to the larger group in a three-minute summary. Each of the solutions presented created new approaches to creating conditions for people and scholars of color to thrive, while using very limited resources.

» »Postings from research institutions Postings from research institutions

are atat anan all-time low since SBL and are all-time low since SBL and AAR began collecting employment AAR began collecting employment data inin 2003. data 2003.

» »The number ofof entry-level faculty The number entry-level faculty

positions increased byby 11.4% year positions increased 11.4% year over year from AY16 toto AY17. over year from AY16 AY17.

• Diversity Deficit in the Faculty.

The lack of representation of people of color on the faculty in theological education. » More than 50% ofof African American » More than 50% African American

MDiv students graduate with more than MDiv students graduate with more than $40,000 in in debt. $40,000 debt.

» Around 25% ofof Latinxs graduate with » Around 25% Latinxs graduate with

more than $40,000 in in debt. more than $40,000 debt.

» The average debt load forfor FTE » The average debt load FTE

Fellowship applications – students who Fellowship applications – students who have completed coursework – is above have completed coursework – is above $70,000. $70,000.

» »The number ofof tenure-track faculty The number tenure-track faculty

positions reached aa six-year low. positions reached six-year low.

» »The number ofof postings from The number postings from

baccalaureate institutions is is atat baccalaureate institutions seven-year high. seven-year high.

Read more atat https://www.sbl-site.org/ Read more https://www.sbl-site.org/ assets/pdfs/jobsReportAy17.pdf assets/pdfs/jobsReportAy17.pdf

I NI ST I TIU NN AA L LC H NN GG EE N ST TT UITOI O CA HA

CHANGING JOB MARKET

Institutions are undergoing tremendous Institutions are undergoing tremendous change.

Within just our Institutional change.

Within just our Institutional Doctoral Network: Doctoral Network: » Two schools are facing relocation. » Two schools are facing relocation.

According to the latest report from the Society for Biblical Literature: » Positions advertised in AY17 increased

4.0% compared to AY16. This increase in postings was primarily the result of increased listings for non-faculty positions.

» Two institutions are attempting toto revise » Two institutions are attempting revise

their academic models. their academic models. » One ofof only two schools with a majority » One only two schools with a majority

faculty ofof women and the only school faculty women and the only school with a majority ofof women ofof color with a majority women color tenured is is facing potential merger. tenured facing potential merger. » Embedded schools are negotiating » Embedded schools are negotiating

» For faculty positions, the most selected

category for the annual course load shifted from three to four in 2016 to five to six in 2017.

financial constraints and policies ofof financial constraints and policies larger University systems. larger University systems. » Most IDN schools are seeing anan increase » Most IDN schools are seeing increase

in in enrollment atat the Master’s level ofof enrollment the Master’s level students ofof color and strategizing oror atat students color and strategizing least reacting toto a similar change in in their least reacting a similar change their respective doctoral programs. doctoral programs. respective

CH

» The to

DD I VI V ER S ISTI Y EE F IFCI C I TI T ER T YDD I NI NT H E EFAC UU LT YY TH FAC LT

S U P P LY I N G T H E P I P E L I N E

Women ofof color are grossly Women color are grossly underrepresented inin ATS faculty positions. underrepresented ATS faculty positions.

ATS Faculty ATS Faculty

%% ofof 2017 M M2017 WW Totals 2017 2017 Totals total total

Asian/PI Asian/PI

175 175

7373

248 248

7%7%

Black Black

171171

100 100

271 271

8%8%

Hispanic Hispanic

108 108

3333

141141

4% 4%

Native American Native American

44

1 1

55

0.14% 0.14%

Multi Multi

15 15

7 7

2222

0.64% 0.64%

Visa Visa

15 15

7 7

2222

0.64% 0.64%

White White

2013 2013

603 603

2616 2616

76% 76%

When FTE began awarding fellowships for doctoral students of color in 1968, there were only 18 African American doctoral students in the country. People of color still make up only 20% of Ph.D./Th.D. students of color in ATS doctoral programs.

African American/Black - 6% Latinx - 4% Asian or Pacific Islander - 10% First Nations - <1%

I N C R E AS I N G ST U D E N T D E BT Particularly among students of color, student debt continues to increase, affecting African American and Latinx students disproportionately to other groups. According to the Graduate Student Questionnaire curated by ATS, in 2015: » More than 50% of African American

MDiv students graduate with more than $40,000 in debt. » Around 25% of Latinxs graduate with

more than $40,000 in debt. » The average debt load for FTE

Fellowship applications – students who have completed coursework – is above $70,000.

decre AY16 severa

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I N ST I T U T I O N A L C H A N G E Institutions are undergoing tremendous change. Within just our Institutional Doctoral Network: » Two schools are facing relocation. » Two institutions are attempting to revise

their academic models.

underre

» One of only two schools with a majority

faculty of women and the only school 2018 FTE DOCTORAL CONSULTATION REPORT 9 with a majority of women of color tenured is facing potential merger. » Embedded schools are negotiating

ATS Fac

Asian/

Black

The group voted on the ideas that were the most promising and imaginative use of resources.

The ideas included: • Don’t Let Us Eat it Down with Disproportionate Debt: A nonprofit focusing on bridging the gap between white and People of Color debt loads.

• Upstream Women,Wisdom, and Work: A program building a leadership pipeline for women of color.

• The Equitea Café: A café that serves coffee and provides resources and networking events for scholars of color.

• The People’s Seminary: A new type of institution designed by and for people of color.

To further inspire the group to think about what is possible, the exercise added gifts from entrepreneurs who create conditions for people of color to thrive for the team who won the group vote. These gifts included: • Call Number Gift Box: A subscription gift box created and curated by an academic librarian, Jamilah R. Gabriel, who oversees a special library with a comprehensive collection of items pertaining to the African diaspora. The monthly subscription box provides award-winning Black literature to customers.

• Squad Block Comics: A curated bundle of comic books either written by or featuring comic book heroes of color. Corey Hill founded Squad Block comics. He did so as both a fan of Black comic heroes and as an uncle who saw a lack of diversity in superhero representation for his nieces and nephews.

• My Lit Gift Box: A gift box of curated books and self-care items representing people of color. Its founder Sanura Williams turned her passion for Black Literature and love of sharing books into a business to support Black communities.

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CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR SCHOLARS OF COLOR TO THRIVE

• CandleLit Gift Box: Lauren Elliot, founder of CandleLit Box, saw a need for self-care kits designed for and by Black women. This box kit has items from the African diaspora, candles, beauty products, and other related items.

These gift boxes, created by innovative entrepreneurs of color, served as more than just prizes for the winners. They exemplified responsive, actionable, and relevant solutions to create conditions for people of color to thrive intended to broaden the imagination of the leaders present for the gathering.

A Laboratory of Ideas On day two, the consultation moved from Iliff School of Theology to Shift, a co-working space in a refurbished and repurposed electrical parts plant in Denver. This move in our meeting location was meant to do more than simply represent the changing nature of work, but to shift the participants’ thinking about what we actually do to create conditions for scholars of color to thrive. As one evaluator for the consultation said: The design and organization of seminary (and other college and university) campuses have long played a crucial role in the practical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual life of students, staff, and faculty. Starting the dialogue at the University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology campus provided the participants with the physical space to begin the conversation at a traditional setting. This space promoted the circulation of ideas and requested collaboration. At Shift, the space felt more like a laboratory of ideas. The management of the space fostered the proper environment for developing social relationships and favored learning. In contrast to the seminary space, Shift allowed for the co-creation of ideas.

In fact, the culture of Shift invited participants to enter the conversation as a student instead of an expert. It fostered the initial collaboration developed in day one, and it required the engagement, agency, and voice of each person to be in the space together.

Prior to arriving at Shift, each participant was asked to think creatively and bring three items that represent their personal or institutional definition of thriving:

•

A book, article, written piece, or album that inspired them to do the work they do, live the life they live, or—as FTE Board Member Rev. Dr. Gregory Ellison says—“signifies where you found your academic freedom.”

• A resource that reflected one of the consultation’s themes (Data, System Design and Intervention, Inclusive Pedagogies and Practices, or Leadership) that the participant felt most called to explore. For example, participants could bring artwork for inclusive practices and pedagogies, a faculty handbook

for design, a Bureau of Labor Statistics report on administrators pay for data, or a NASA

photo inspiring them to be “architects of the future” for leadership.

•

A small symbol or token that represented participants’ own “thriving” in one of the theme areas. Examples included a sacred candle, a gift from a mentor, and a pen reminding them to write.

Altogether, the field brought together approximately 170 artifacts that represented their thriving in the academy.

Participants were then invited to opt-in to one of four groups related to the key themes of data, system design and intervention, inclusive pedagogies and practices, and leadership.

Once in their groups, they were tasked with sharing some of their items that define thriving to fill a gift box to promote thriving for scholars of color. Each group was also given a number of paper slips (as filler paper) for them to write down their definitions of thriving. Once their box was filled, each group exchanged their box with another group.

2018 FTE DOCTORAL CONSULTATION REPORT 11

12

For example, the group preparing a gift box on the theme of data exchanged their box with the group who prepared a box on leadership. Each group then unpacked the box and provided feedback.

differently to explore new solutions. More importantly, the design committee’s hope was to allow the curated artifacts and themes to focus the group’s insights.

The purpose of this task was to have a democratized discussion about what we mean by “thriving in the academy.” It was also designed to experiment with new ways of being together that promote creativity and meet our design challenge: to meet together

This process was an attempt to model the practice of designing and prototyping solutions with the resources that create conditions for scholars of color to thrive.

CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR SCHOLARS OF COLOR TO THRIVE

What’s in Your Box?

Data: More Than Researchers of Color; Fundamentally Different Research Questions KEY INSIGHTS: • Researchers of color ask different questions, offer a different set of culturally responsive analytic tools, and look at history and trends from different perspectives than white researchers.

• Stories and narratives of people of color are data, though they are rarely represented in reporting.

• There is a need for more researchers of color, not just scholars who interpret data.

In the data group, a number of artifacts reflected the need for people of color to participate in the larger research agenda. This is not just for representation’s sake, it is because the stories, artifacts, and questions that researchers of color ask provide necessary insights into the trends and histories the field chooses to focus on. For example, Rev. Belva Brown Jordan, associate dean of Claremont School of Theology, offered this personal reflection: As I sat on the front pew for my ordination, May 18, 1986, I held in hand my mother’s ordination certificate, dated June 12, 1947. It is the totem that carried me through the death of my mother and eventually through four years of seminary. It is the artifact that shouts every time I look at it, ‘You can do this. This is your call.’

For the 2018 Doctoral Consultation, we received the invitation to bring an artifact to Denver that symbolizes what moves us to do our work. Immediately I knew my mother’s ordination certificate was the artifact I would take to share. A first-generation college graduate, my mother was embraced by the church and called to be a supportive presence in organizing Black congregations within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) across Texas and Tennessee. That organizing spirit included encouraging young people to pursue higher education beyond what they had seen or could imagine. In a time when seminary education was not possible for my mother, it was a path she knew would be an option for me.

The morning of my ordination, ten years after her death, I received a gift from my mother, entrusted to a dear friend, having said to her, ‘Hold on to this for Belva; one day she will need it.’ The handmade red stole that had been tucked away for ten years was taken out of its box and draped around my shoulders during my ordination service. The 1947 ordination certificate remains an artifact that moves me to embrace a life of academic administration in theological education. For this is the place I thrive, this is the ministerial life I know I was called to live.

The data group excavated and shared profound stories that are not part of the canon or histories named in theological education. These stories were inspired by the ordination gifts given by women of color to celebrate the “firsts” and “onlys” among our gathering—the first PhD, the first full professor, the first deans, the only faculty member of color, the only administrator of color, the only one in her community to get a PhD—and the albums, books, and articles that changed the way we think.

2018 FTE DOCTORAL CONSULTATION REPORT 13

Debbie Gin, director of research and faculty development at the Association of Theological Schools, invited the group to think collaboratively about how to make industry data more readily available and how to create viable career pathways for scholars of color for institutional research. Because researchers of color ask different questions—and have different communities of accountability than those for whom the system of theological education was designed—the research they do and the interpretation of that research would likely yield different results.

Inclusive Pedagogies and Practices: To Exclude is to Include KEY INSIGHTS: • To exclude is to include. When we leave people and their cultures out of the educational environment, leaders send a clear message about who is included.

• People of color are expected to navigate the system without instructions.

• A classroom is a sacred place that can be a site of resistance to white supremacy or a tool of an oppressive system.

• Allow learners to experience and do research on their own to advance the work of creating conditions for scholars of color to thrive.

Similarly, this group offered pointed insight for the field. They claimed that a classroom is a sacred place.

The educator’s role is to see every person in that space. Everyone has a story and has something to share.

The safety in that space is fragile, however, especially for people of color. Given these assertions, the group asked, “What items might make it into the box kit that would represent inclusive pedagogy in these conditions?” Some of the items and their meanings included: • A glass figurine with two baby turtles on the back of a giant turtle. We sit on the backs of our ancestors to get where we are.

• The Rise by Sarah Lewis. We need imagination and grit to persist and thrive.

• Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman. People have it imprinted in their souls that they don’t matter. What does Christianity have to say to those folks with their backs against the wall?

• The album What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye, as inspiration and as a challenge to white normativity in the arts.

• The summoning papers for a courtroom hearing regarding the immigration status of one of the consultation participants.

The group chose not to explain any of the items in their gift box. The logic behind that was that people of color are expected to navigate a system without instructions. To exclude is to include. They observed, “Let people experience the box and do the research to understand its contents, and to better understand our experiences.”

During the debrief with the other groups, it was this last point of experiencing the items and researching them that was particularly powerful for the group that had received the box kit in exchange for theirs. Everyone (people of color and non-people of color) in the group benefited from the process and creative experience of thinking about thriving from items that they were not familiar with. As one participant stated, “We recognized that white histories and personal narratives are always included, and when we experience a person of color’s history, the definition of thriving in the academy is expanded.”

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CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR SCHOLARS OF COLOR TO THRIVE

System Design and Intervention: Abstract Thinking Does Not Lead to Concrete Results KEY INSIGHTS: • What purpose does doctoral theological education serve if the scope goes beyond preparing research and teaching faculty in higher education?

• Systems thinking can be too abstract and there is a need for clear definitions about “systems,” “racial inequity,” and the relationship between the two.

• We need “field maps” to help us find strategic leverage points within theological education.

• Knowledge of systems thinking literature and design is either a personal inquiry or a new field of inquiry for leaders in theological education.

• A gap analysis should be conducted between promoting thriving at the individual level and creating thriving structures and systems.

Curiously, the system design and intervention group received the most participants. A number of the conversations in this group returned to themes noted in prior consultations, specifically the prolonged diagnosis of the state of the theological education “system.” As many of the post-event evaluations noted, the challenge was talking about the system in generalities, with no shared or clear definition of the system, or what part of the system the group was discussing.

In addition, participants did not always make the connection between the invitation to create small box kits with individual items to promote thriving and the much larger question about creating systems that promote thriving for people of color. Groups continued to raise systemic problems as if their conversation was being played from a decades-old recording: citing the lack of funding, struggling institutions, the system’s racist underpinnings, and the lack of a critical mass of scholars of color in the system.

Some key takeaways emerged about systems after the groups received the gift boxes from other groups and were able to offer feedback about thriving—specifically, keen observations about how clearly the items in the other group’s box were tied to thriving.

As one member of the group noted: A lesson learned and shared by the group was the recognition that FTE is one of the few existing religious organizations in the U.S. that is focusing on institutional and structural forms of oppression. The context for the consultation highlighted important distinctions between individual expressions of prejudice, bias and discrimination, and institutional or systemic forms of racism. Participants were able to critique the dominance of individual-level approaches that fail to address the more prevalent, less visible, systemic dimensions of inequity. All in all, the conditions provided by FTE challenged participants, white individuals and people of color alike, to recognize and work against those systems that provide unearned privilege to some and impose undeserved restrictions on others.

The learning emerged as a result of feedback suggesting that organizations do not have a common set of definitions. Nor do they have an analytical framework for understanding racism as one of the primary obstacles to improving the conditions experienced by scholars of color. The unclear, fragmented, and

2018 FTE DOCTORAL CONSULTATION REPORT 15

competing discourses about racial equity—and the lack of critical power analysis—serve to divide scholars and institutions, hindering their ability to positively influence the experience of scholars of color within academic and religious institutions. After much deliberation, the group focused on racism as the defining form of oppression that impacts scholars of color.

The exercise was simple: place the approximately 60 items that symbolize thriving into a box that would help scholars navigate and intervene in the system. But the exercise proved to be both abstract and pedagogically challenging for many of the participants.

Participants noted that they were challenged both by the purpose and by the efficacy of such a task. This response seemed to beg the question, How do you change the nature of work for visionaries and system thinkers? In addition, How do you promote the flow of thoughts from diagnosis and critical thinking to creativity and real solutions—and back again—as both are important?

This group did not hesitate to diagnose the problems with the theological education system. How then will those same system thinkers participate in the creative system building or system restructuring needed in theological education?

Leadership: Nothing for Us Without Us KEY INSIGHTS: • Institutions, programs, and initiatives that support scholars of color need to be designed, implemented, and evaluated by and for people of color.

• We need to create measures of thriving for scholars of color.

• Uncomfortable moments of learning and dialogue between white leaders and leaders of color are needed and helpful.

• White fragility is a barrier to diversity, equity, and inclusion, especially among white leaders and institutions.

The majority of participants in this group were white. They were deeply challenged and troubled at first by the gift box activity. Reactions included the activity was not relevant to long-term, strategic change work.

The group struggled with understanding how making a small box of items that promote thriving for scholars of color gets the field any closer to its goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

However, the process was designed to mimic how one achieves change through the collaborative work of a collective. The participant posturing of “we know how to do diversity, equity, and inclusion, so these activities are beneath us,” surfaced good learning.

From being invited to be creative on a small scale with low stakes, an “aha” emerged when the group’s box returned. To paraphrase one participant’s remarks after receiving the group’s leadership box back with feedback from others: When we received our box back, one of the feedback cards asked: ‘How would this help people of color thrive?’ This question shifted our conversation. This is how it typically works. White leaders designing

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for people of color think we did something good; however, we rarely receive feedback. The conversation shifted from everyone trying to provide answers to turning to the leaders of color in the group to ask what would promote thriving.

The Doctoral Consultation planners designed this learning moment. It was not a comfortable moment.

No one in the leadership group walked away with an overwhelming sense that they had created conditions for scholars of color to thrive. Coming to a deeper understanding about how the majority of leaders in theological education (most of whom are white) approach diversity, equity, and inclusion allowed for participants to see how creating conditions for students and scholars of color to thrive cannot be left up to the white imagination. This “aha” references the sentiment of Charles Shelby Rooks’s claim in 1968 that if leaders in theological education are not pushed by leaders of color, the enterprise will continue on at the “same old stand.”

This baselining is uncomfortable. It feels unproductive, especially to people of color, and yet it is a necessary first step to create conditions for people of color to thrive. For as long as institutions and white institutional leaders continue to design without people of color at the table—and never receive feedback for their work— the solutions are simply not for people of color, nor are they recognizable by them. Likewise, if there are no low-stake opportunities to participate in generating ideas and solutions, as one white leader suggested, “I might be far less likely to offer what I think thriving for people of color would look like. I might get stuck in a paralysis of analysis about what ‘white people should be doing’ as opposed to do something, anything.”

Promising Practices As consultation members reflected on the insights from each group, Maureen McCarthy, director of best practices and advancement for the Council of Graduate Schools, pointed to a resource: “Promising Practices in Humanities PhD Professional Development.” The resource was the result of the NextGen PhD Consortium, a group of institutions which received a grant for their work from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

While new educational models are sorely needed, participants reflected together that alternative vocational pathways and new business models for graduate schools and their programs are equally as important to creating conditions for scholars of color to thrive.

As we look to the future, it is clear that there is a need for more models of connection where institutions can gather to develop resources for creating those conditions.

Whether those models look like FTE’s Institutional Doctoral Network (IDN), a group of nine institutions participating in a learning community to create conditions for scholars of color to thrive, or the NextGen PhD Consortium, the field is in desperate need of models that support the production of knowledge from communities of color.

To paraphrase a participant: If the problem is a leaking roof, we cannot keep endorsing bucket-like solutions: like hiring a special administrator charged with diversity and inclusion to “empty the bucket.” Or purchasing bigger buckets to catch all the water, like recruitment initiatives that focus on getting more people of color into the field.

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Or complaining about not even having a bucket and paying to replace the floor every few years—which is the chosen practice of institutions that like to have diversity speakers and programs but will not invest in the structure necessary to support them. Someone just needs to get up there and build a new roof because the problem is structural, not cosmetic.

At various stages of repair in their structural repair, the FTE IDN schools and their leaders point to the promise of collaboration.

Nine schools were selected from among 24 institutions invited to participate in a learning community now known as the IDN. The nine institutions were selected by their peers as those who were both willing to participate in a learning community and who are committed to seeing change in their institutions. Schools were not selected based on who is doing the “best” diversity, equity, and inclusion work, but rather, what institutions were ready to participate in a learning community of their peers to further advance their work.

The schools are: • Boston University School of Theology • Chicago Theological Seminary • Claremont School of Theology • Denver University and Iliff School of Theology Joint Program in Religion • Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary • Fordham University, Department of Theology • Fuller Theological Seminary • Wake Forest Divinity School • Vanderbilt University Graduate Department of Religion For all leaders in theological education who are committed to creating the conditions for scholars of color to thrive, collaboration across institutions and within the various levels of an institution continues to be the most promising practice.

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closing challenge 50 Years in Hindsight, 50 Years in the Future FTE President Stephen Lewis closed the 2018 Doctoral Consultation with a challenge to participants—and to the entire field of theological education—to think creatively about the future.

“

W

e are leading in a time of tremendous crises, conflicts, and massive institutional changes, if not failures. It is a time of painful endings and hopeful beginnings. It is a transitional period that feels as if something profound is shifting and dying, while something else wants to be born.”

With those prophetic words, economist Otto Scharmer suggests that what we face in the United States and abroad is a debate over the different futures that are before us. He says, “What is at stake is nothing less than the choice of who we are, who we want to be, and where we want to take the world we live in.”2 In 50 years, scholars of color will be in a different political, religious, and higher education landscape.

So what will their work look like?

Will they be making films? Films like the one produced by Dr. Miguel De La Torre, Trails of Hope and Terror? It documents “...the stories of two teenage girls, Sandra and Josseline. One encounters the border (La Frontera) by accident, and the other on purpose. But their journeys, along with the others we hear about in the film, began hundreds of years ago, as complicated political and economic strategies set up a vast system from which there is little hope of escape.”

Will they be creating products like Dr. Kit EvansFord at Argrow’s House of Healing and Hope in Davenport, Iowa? She has designed a safe place where women who are healing from abuse and trauma are creating hand-made products, such as 2

soap. Proceeds from sales are reinvested to help other women. Dr. Evans-Ford left her tenure-track job to do this work of healing, this work of reimagining her brilliance to deliver social goods to folks in our own Black and Brown communities who need them.

Will future theologians who are scholars of color still write books, but find new ways to disrupt their genres and guilds to be relevant in the public square?

Dr. John Kutsko, executive director of the Society for Biblical Literature, is constantly reminding us that religion is important for its voice in the public square.

He is leading this charge within an increasingly global professional guild.

Will intellectual work look like our friend Dr. Erica Ramirez, who is reimagining her sociological training to tell the stories of her Latinx community? She’s finding ways to talk to lawmakers, churches, and folks working for social good, to tell them that faith has something to offer. She’s finding places to publish her views in forums like the Washington Post, or shares them while sitting down in lawmakers’ offices.

Will our work be increasingly bi/tri/quad-vocational like our friend the Rev. Kermit Moss, who on top of being an FTE Alumnus, a doctoral student, director of Black church studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, senior pastor, full-time father, partner, and speaker, is also just a good human-being?

Will it be in philanthropy and grant-making like Louisville executive director Dr. Edwin Aponte?

Dr. Aponte, since he was appointed in the last few years, has “browned up” your house in fellowships

Otto Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges (Oakland: Berrett-Koehler, 2016), 20.

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and grant making. He takes on issues like the exploitation of contingent faculty with the academic guilds with the 50 percent campaign and the name, “There must be a better way.”

Or FTE, what will we be working on in 50 years?

Looking at the trends in higher education, and the data we receive from FTE Fellows and our Institutional Doctoral Network schools, how long can we provide fellowships as the balm to a violent system?

What gifts might we be giving instead of fellowships to the enterprise that would promote the type of thriving we have named over the past two days?

What will the theological workforce look like in 50 years? Is this room ready to not just panel, present, and debate that future, but to live into the design and building together? What will we need to do this work well, especially with and on behalf of creating conditions for the next generation to thrive?

These are open questions. And we hope to continue the conversation with each of you about what we might do to design, build, and execute the vision we collectively hold.

Religious leader Malidoma Patrice Some, suggests in Of Water and Spirit: Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of An African Shaman, “Wanting to be a priest doesn’t mean wanting to be white...I want to be a priest as much as I want to be an African.”

We have people we need to help. To fight a system effectively you have to be on the inside. What’s the harm in that? I knew I wanted to be a priest, but not the kind I was being asked to be.”3 But he was also challenged by his community: …you have been received and initiated into the white man’s knowledge, been steeped in his reflection and how he thinks about God. His spirit lives in you. In a way you are not here and present to your people. It’s as if the real you is somewhere else, still trying to find the route

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home. When a person has been changed-shaped and formed the way you have, one of two things always happens: either you die to the old part of yourself—and that is painful—or you make everything else die into you...

He responded to this by observing, I did not know myself yet, nor did I understand the extent of the fragmentation within my psyche. The elders were aware of the forces at play within me, and their concern translated into a desire to provide a cure for the forces that did not want me to come home. They suggested that a sure way to cure me would be to go to the school of the ancestors and to be trained according to our custom.

He goes on to say: Ancestral education consists of three parts: enlargement of one’s ability to see, destabilization of the body’s habit of being bound to one plane of being, and the ability to voyage transdimensionally and return.4 So what do we see? Matthew reminded us to look at the Calling for More than We Got Thus Far review of the status of people of color in our industry. The stubborn statistics most often tracked in the field reveal a chronic problem of racial and ethnic underrepresentation. These are chronic, not new, findings.

To add to those data points: • In the past 10 years, CEOs of color in graduate theological education are less than 10 percent of the CEOs compared to their white counterparts who represent approximately 90 percent.

• CEOs of color have increased by only 1 to 2 percent. CAOs of color have only increased by 1 percent.

• Female representation data suggest that neither gender nor race alone are sufficient lenses of

Malidoma Patrice Some, Of Water and Spirit: Ritual, Magic and Initiation in Life of an African Shaman (New York: Penguin, 1994), 129.

Ibid, 226.

CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR SCHOLARS OF COLOR TO THRIVE

analysis to fully understand the barriers to the cultivation of people of color in theological education.

It starts with our food choices, with the journey from farm to fork that gets triggered and reinforced by the everyday food choices that we make.

• The need to cultivate people of color in theological education will soon become a national crisis if current trends persist. The consistently low percentage of Native American, Black, and Hispanic faculty creates several concerns about the ability of theological colleges and schools to cultivate diverse scholarship.

Theological education is no different. It is a system designed not by chance, but by the choices you and I have inherited from others, and by the choices that you and I make every day.

People of color in general, and women of color in particular, are for theological education the “canaries in the coal mine.” This is an illusion to the caged canaries (birds) that miners would carry down into the mine tunnels with them. If dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide collected in the mine, the gases would kill the canary before killing the miners, thus providing a warning to exit the tunnels immediately.

• A vision about what theological education is and is not? Deeply held values?

In other words, women of color and their experiences in theological education reflect the dangerous levels of toxicity in the field. Their academic lives, it seems, are expendable. That is simply wrong, and we must work to end it.

The flesh and blood experiences of people of color in theological education shows that our educational system is badly broken. In his HuffPost article “An Apple Shows Just How Broken Our Food System Is,” Otto Scharmer shows how buying and eating apples seems like a pretty healthy thing to do. But a new study has found that every 1 kilo (2.2 pounds) of conventionally grown apples creates health effects due to the effects of pesticides and fungicides, resulting in sick leave and eventually shorter life expectancies.

The apple is indicative of a bigger picture. Agriculture, the world’s largest industry, is one of the worstpolluting industries on the planet—even though it could be one of the most powerful forces for good.

What does it take to change and scale change across a whole system?

What assumptions are embedded in the system of theological education? Do they include:

• Whose values? Who do they primarily benefit?

• Assumptions about what’s necessary to thrive?

For whom to thrive?

• Why theological education is this way and what theological education does or does not do?

• Are we getting the results we long for in the current system of theological education? Do we know what we long for?

• And who are our systems designers? Who has the power and agency to design the system of theological education? Do they design consciously or unconsciously?

The consequences that appear today are the result of work done long in the past. Our work today will show its benefits far in the future.

Leader as Designer The neglected leadership role is the designer of the ship. No one has a more sweeping influence than the designer. The functions of design, or what some have called “social architecture,” are rarely visible; they take place behind the scenes. The consequences that appear

2018 FTE DOCTORAL CONSULTATION REPORT 21

today are the result of work done long in the past. Our work today will show its benefits far in the future.

involved see things very differently, and so the problems become polarized and stuck.6

But what, specifically, is involved in organizational design? “The first task of organizational design concerns developing the governing ideas of purpose, vision, and core values by which people will live.”5 Few acts of leadership have a more enduring impact on an organization than building a foundation of purpose and core values.

• Collaborative Problem Solving.

It’s about being able to ask questions, listen attentively, and create ideas through debate and discourse. To amplify differences, and to engage in constructive arguments to create a portfolio of alternatives, and to recognize that innovation rarely happens unless you have both diversity and conflict.

Systems design demands that we ask the following questions: • Are we designing for the world that we want?

• Are we designing for the world that we have?

• Are we designing for the world that’s coming, whether we’re ready or not?

Redesigning existing systems or designing new ones that are more life-giving require the following: • Human (community) Centered Design.

It starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor-made to suit their needs and what matters most.

Innovation rarely happens unless you have both diversity and conflict.

• Attention to Complexity.

Problems are dynamically complex, which means that cause and effect are far apart in space and time, and so they can be hard to grasp from first hand experience. Problems are also complex, which means that they are unfolding in unfa miliar and unpredictable ways. And they are socially complex, which means that the people

• Generative Learning.

Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life.

There is within each of us a deep hunger for this type of learning. Through learning we re create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do.

Through learning we re-perceive the world and our relationship to it.

• Playful Imagination.

It invites people to lean into their inner child, creativity, and imagination. Our biggest chal lenges demand nothing less than our ability to play with each other and play well together, accessing additional ways of knowing beyond our analytical capacity.

As Adrienne Maree Brown claims in Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, We are socialized to see what is wrong, missing, off, to tear down the ideas of others and uplift our own. To a certain degree, our entire future may depend on learning to listen, listen without assumptions or defenses.

She goes on to say: We are in an imagination battle. Imagination has people thinking they can go from being poor to a

Bill O’Brien quoted in Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday/ Currency, 1990), 344.

6 Adam Kahane, Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2004), 1-2.

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millionaire as part of a shared American dream.

Imagination turns Brown bombers into terrorists and white bombers into mentally ill victims.

Imagination gives us borders, gives us superiority, gives us race as an indicator of ability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s capability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free.

• Composting.

Matthew 16:24: “Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let [them] deny [themselves] and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his/her life[a]will lose it, but whoever loses his/her life for my sake will find it.”

What kind of organizational life demands preserving? Jesus warns us that whatever life we think is worth saving, finding, or even preserving will ultimately result in us losing it. He says clearly that if people and organizations want to be disciples of his way and follow him, they must—no, they will—lose what the poet Mary Oliver calls their “one wild and precious life.”

The question is not only, “Of all that we care about, what must be given up to survive and thrive going forward?” but also, “Of all that we care about, what elements are essential and must be preserved into the future?” Answering these types of questions are difficult because the answers require tough choices, trade-offs, and the uncertainty of ongoing, experimental trial and error. As in nature, a successful adaptation enables an organization like FTE to take into the future the best from its history, legacy, and identity.

• Make Visible Invisible Capital.

As Chris Rabb reminds us in Invisible Capital: How Unforeseen Forces Shape Entrepreneurial Opportunity, “Invisible capital insidiously allows us to mistake privilege and opportunity for talent and merit by obscuring who is being prepared to excel and whether they are given such an oppor tunity (or can feasibly create one). Invisible

capital is a set of tacit assets that are invaluable to aspiring entrepreneurs. It includes ascribed capital, economic capital, cultural capital, social capital, and what is often, in macroeconomic and corporate circles, termed human capital.”

• Choreographed Governance.

How executive management choreographs the development, shaping and execution of policies, practices, decisions, and priorities set by their boards.

• Hustle Lab. It’s a daily podcast, a traveling workshop series, and an action-packed book—all designed to help you create a new source of income without quit ting your job. If you’re trying to make a big change, a hustle can help you build a foundation to move on to something else. If you love your day job, that’s great too—the hustle will provide a creative outlet and a backup plan.

- Animal lover breeds rabbits; graduates college debt free.

- An introverted Denver transplant learns new skills and creates a networking group that now includes a podcast, magazine, and $30,000 inside income.

- University lecturer earns $2,000/month writing children’s books.

- A Presbyterian minister turns to his lifelong interest in role-playing games to set up a sustainable second-income source making a $2,800 month hustle.

• Escape Your Echo Chamber.

Leaders can’t observe clearly if they can’t see anything outside of their own organization or industry. In order to drive real change, leaders must escape their bubbles and make space for outside perspectives.

• System Healers.

Ayi Kwei Armah, Ghanian author of the book, The Healers, reflects the life of Densu, a skillful fighter from a small kingdom in Ashantiland.

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FTE Director of Strategic Partnerships for Doctoral Initiatives Patrick B. Reyes

Densu faces an important choice at the beginning of the novel: he can seize the throne and collaborate with the British, who have been spotted moving forces towards the Ashanti, or he can live as a little-known but socially indispensable healer. The kind of healing that Densu is being trained to do has the potential to save the Ashanti peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s way of life. Armahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vision of healing comes from people who are deeply spiritual but who are regarded by the elite as powerless. The traditional healers who train Densu have spent their lives trying to resolve the conflicts between people and to restore health to the Ashanti polity.

Their healing work is small scale, long-term, and hard to see, but Armah sees this work as the only way to transform people and community.

The Ashanti healers work on three levels: - Physically: They work to reverse bodily break down and disunity.

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- Psychosomatic: They work to restore the broken unity of bodies alienated from their soul.

- Socially: They work to reawaken the lost sense of a common humanity between divided groups.

What attracts Densu to healing as a lifetime profession is that healers have a practical philosophy of life that is based on love. That philosophy is articulated in terms of wholeness as a life-giving value. Choosing to work as a healer means that Densu, like other young people, must commit to searching constantly for ways of restoring wholeness.

That is our task. To work as system healers.

The question remains though, will we, the collective leaders within our system, do this work of healing?

our way forward A Reflection on the 2018 FTE Doctoral Consultation by Dr. Patrick B. Reyes

P

eople of color are undeniably the future of theological education. The current education model was designed by and for white, male, and largely future pulpit pastors. A white theological education— white leadership informed by their imagination and their history—will simply not do in the future. White is far more violent, oppressive, and creatively limiting for people of color than the discomfort felt by reading a simple linguistic redundancy.

tions have a limited imagination in the fields and domains of critical inquiry. The limitations of white imagination can no longer translate into the delegitimization of experimental, prospective, and other fields of inquiry that directly transgress and resist white systems of power. The reproduction of white knowledge—even if performed by people of color— perpetuates white systems of domination and colonization.

People of color need the freedom to design for their own thriving within theological education.

The times necessitate experimentation of new models focusing on the contributions of people of color at every level of the enterprise. There will be some white institutions that have the financial and political capital to do business as usual, perhaps with a program or a recruitment focus on people of color. Those institutions are not going to bring about necessary change for people of color. At best, they are pouring molasses into milk.

To do this work well, people of color need the resources, freedom, and authority to create new education and business models—not renovate, support, prop-up, or even revitalize 20th-century models. People of color need the support of financial institutions (philanthropy included) to create viable incentives for change and to mitigate the disproportionate debt people of color have and will continue to incur in the current model.

Leaders of color need accrediting bodies to lean into experimentation and recognize the histories and knowledge centers that already exist within communities of color. We need courageous leaders of color who are not going to settle for the white way of doing things and to resist the shackles—guised as opportunities—of white debt, white guilt, and white colonial imagination.

Writing directly to future and current scholars of African, Latinx, Asian-Pacific Islander, and First Nations descent, this is our future. Let us not wait for white institutions and leaders to do the right thing. We can build the systems, institutions, and programs that will serve our communities. Our ancestors and elders provided the frameworks, resources, and opportunities for us to create in this moment.

It is our turn to create the conditions for the next generation of people of color to thrive.

Students of color need the freedom to investigate new fields and domains of knowledge. The primary function of doctoral programs is, after all, to prove knowledge in a given field and deliver a unique contribution. It is clear that primarily white institu-

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Definition of Conditions Necessary for Scholars of Color to Thrive Research is driven by scholars of color.

Data-informed decision making is the norm.

White allies and leaders participate in the thriving of people of color with measurable and achievable benchmarks.

The culture of an institution is shaped by people of color at every level.

Communities promote empathy and trust over competition and title.

People of color and women receive fair and just compensation.

Space for reflection and creativity is part of institutional culture.

Definitions of Thriving; Scholars of Color Are: Academically Strong • Financially Secure Community Oriented

• Vocationally Clear • Holistic in Their Sense of Self Prepared to Be Change Agents

D E S I G N FO R O U R F U T U R E

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CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR SCHOLARS OF COLOR TO THRIVE

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