Equity Matters

Sep 15

Diversity Should Power Science Research and Innovation

Scott E. Page, University of Michigan and Santa Fe Institute
Guest contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on diversity, creativity and innovation / diversité, innovation et créativité.

Scientific inquiry proceeds most fruitfully when sufficient funding is spread across a complexity of disciplines to a diversity of researchers.

Whether put forth by Vannevar Bush, one of the godfathers of the military-industrial complex, or Richard C. Atkinson, the long-...

Sep 12

Difference Matters: Diversity, Complexity and Innovation

Scott E. Page, University of Michigan
Guest contributor

This entry is part of the CFHSS’s VP Equity Issues series on diversity, creativity and innovation / diversité, innovation et créativité.

Most people believe that innovation requires smarter people, better ideas. That premise, though intuitive, omits what may be the most powerful but least understood force for innovation: Diversity.

Diversity usually calls to mind differences in race, gender, ethnicity, physical capabilities, and sexual orientation – social or political differences that at first glance have little to do with innovation. Yet the key to innovation, in...

Aug 25

Able People, Disabling World: Unequal Access to Water

Verlyn Leopatra, Jacqueline Noga and Emily Hutcheon, University of Calgary
Guest contributors

This entry is part of a collaborative series on disabilities between the Federation’s Equity Issues Portfolio and the Canadian Disability Studies Association/ Association Canadienne des Études sur l’Incapacité.

At the Ignite Change Now! Global Youth Assembly 2011, hosted by the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights in Edmonton in July, some 500 youth explored the connections between water and an array of national and global issues.

We presented a workshop, “Able...

Aug 23

For Aboriginal people education is the ‘new buffalo’

Malinda S. Smith, Canadian Federation for Humanities and social sciences
Vice-president, Equity Issues

This entry is part of the Equity Issues Portfolio’s series on Indigenizing the academy and Indigenous education.

We laud ourselves for supporting education of children in Afghanistan, while First Nations children get 60 to 80 per cent of government education investment received by non-Aboriginal children here.

Canada is celebrated for its contributions to human rights: a beacon of hope for immigrants, a safe haven for refugees, a country of...

Aug 18

Disabilities, Aging and Sibling support: Tending a precious resource

Bonnie Lashewicz, University of Calgary
Guest contributor

People with disabilities, like Canadians in general, are living increasingly long lives. This sub-set of our aging population has specialized needs given that when the effects of age are superimposed on pre-existing disability, age related physical changes are more likely to occur and to occur earlier and with greater intensity. Although the arbitrariness of numbers is open to debate,...

Aug 16

Multiculturalism, Pluralism and Policymaking

Catherine Neumann-Boxer, University of Saskatchewan
Guest Contributor

This blog entry is part of the Equity Issues Portfolio’s series on ‘interculturalism and pluralism’.

Policy in a multicultural society cannot be made without actually incorporating multicultural and pluralistic epistemologies into policy making frameworks. By using...

Aug 11

The Becoming Crisis of Disability Studies

Tanya Titchkosky, OISE/University of Toronto
Guest contributor

The heat wave of July 18^th to 23^rd in Toronto was accompanied by the high pressure of the international Disability Studies Summer Institute hosted by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. By invitation, 50 emerging and established scholars from Ontario, the United States and the United Kingdom and...

Aug 9

Close encounters of the urban Aboriginal and multicultural kind

Meenal Shrivastava, Athabasca University
Guest Contributor

This blog entry is part of the Equity Issues Portfolio’s series on ‘interculturalism and pluralism’.

One of the first things I noticed on my earliest trip to Canada in 1998 was the presence of remarkable Aboriginal art in so many public places. For years after that I admired and bought gifts of Canadian Aboriginal art as the most appropriate Canadian souvenir. As a tourist to Canada, I knew about the historical and contemporary injustices that the Aboriginal people have been...

Aug 4

Sport through a disability studies lens

Jeremy Tynedal, University of Calgary
This entry is part of a collaborative series on disabilities between the Federation’s Equity Issues Portfolio and the Canadian Disability Studies Association/ Association Canadienne des Études sur l’Incapacité

Participation in sport is seen to have health, social, economic and environmental benefits that include self-concept, self-esteem, reduced depressive symptoms, decreased stress and anxiety, improved self-acceptance, changes in anti-social behaviour and enhanced...

Jul 21

Ethnic Studies, Pluralism and Democracy

Christine Sleeter, California State University Monterey Bay
This blog entry is part of the Equity Issues Portfolio’s series on ‘interculturalism and pluralism’.

In a multicultural society, is ethnic studies separatist? Is it harmful to students? Does ethnic studies threaten social unity? Is ethnic studies academically weak? I often hear these questions answered in the affirmative to justify eliminating various forms of ethnic studies curricula, or not allowing ethnic studies to be established in the first place. But objections to ethnic studies actually fly in the face of the research evidence.

Before highlighting the research evidence – which...

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