Georgetown University’s new “Pathways to Social Justice” core requirement for undergraduates came into effect with the beginning of the Fall 2024 semester.
Beginning with the Class of 2028, all undergraduates will take three courses to fulfill the requirement: a mandatory one-credit seminar, “Race, Power, and Justice at Georgetown,” and two additional courses that draw upon themes such as marginalization, inequity and identity. The new requirement replaces current sophomores’, juniors’ and seniors’ “Engaging Diversity” core requirement of two of a wide array of courses — one each for “Engaging Diversity: Domestic” and “Engaging Diversity: Global.”
University faculty began working to revise the undergraduate diversity requirement in 2020; the main campus executive faculty approved the change from “Engaging Diversity” to “Pathways to Social Justice” in February 2023. The university also held a pilot class for the “Race, Power, and Justice” course last semester.
Heidi Elmendorf, an associate professor of biology and the co-chair of the main campus Core Curriculum Committee, which approves university core curriculum classes, said the committee found after surveying Georgetown students and faculty that they wanted more from the diversity requirement.
“They wanted there to be some self-examination,” Elmendorf told The Hoya. “They wanted the course to allow them to move beyond initial conversations. They thought that there were a lot of initial conversations, but they weren’t really gaining the skills to move forward and do new things.”
Elmendorf said the community members the committee surveyed also thought the diversity requirement should better ensure students engage with contemporary issues of racism and injustice.
“They thought that the focus was always other people’s struggle with these issues and they wanted it to be self-referential in part: look at Georgetown, D.C., local issues,” Elmendorf said. “They thought that it was often discussed historically, and they wanted more of the conversations to be about present-day and future-looking.”
Each week, the seminar will focus on a different theme: slavery, memory and reconciliation at Georgetown; Georgetown and its neighbors; Georgetown as a global institution; challenging inequalities; and faith that does justice. The course will discuss marginalized communities, approaches to understanding identity and how to imagine rectifying injustices.
The course will also spotlight Georgetown’s history of participation in slavery — including the history of the GU272, the 314 enslaved people whom the Maryland Jesuits sold in 1838 to continue financing the university — and its relationship to historic African-American cemeteries located underneath university buildings.
Adam Rothman, a history professor and the coordinator of the “Race, Power, and Justice” course, taught one of the pilot classes and is teaching a class this fall. Rothman said the seminar is a unique opportunity for students to get a broader understanding of their place at Georgetown.
“I think it’s really important to know where you are in a deep way and not a superficial way,” Rothman told The Hoya. “And I think it’s too easy for students to float around Georgetown’s campus without really understanding where they are, what the history of the place is and how that translates into the mission of the university. So I think this is an opportunity for students to get an introduction to that in a serious kind of way.”
Rev. Gregory Schenden, S.J., the director of Campus Ministry, said the updated requirement and new first-year seminar reflects Georgetown’s Jesuit mission.
“The Georgetown Core Curriculum is a unique expression of our identity as a student-centered research university rooted in our Jesuit and Catholic tradition,” Schenden wrote to The Hoya. “This course furthers our values of a Community in Diversity and a Faith that Does Justice and deepens the university’s ongoing commitment to understand and respond to our involvement in the institutional sin of slavery. Our desire is that our community members engage with this history and work towards racial justice.”
With the changes to the core requirement, the “Race, Power, and Justice” seminar will become the only class at Georgetown which all students across the five undergraduate schools must take to graduate.
Wilson Sederman (MSB ’28) said he was looking forward to learning more about Georgetown’s complicated legacy with the practice of slavery.
“I’m excited,” Sederman told The Hoya. “I think that it’s an important part of Georgetown’s history, and it’s something that I haven’t really dealt with, in class or outside the classroom. And so I think that I’m looking forward to hearing more about Georgetown’s history and learning about this important part of the school’s foundation.”
Kristina Khrimian (MSB ’28) said that the course offers the opportunity for Georgetown to make progress in confronting its history.
“This course is an amazing way for Georgetown students to become more aware of the racial challenges minorities have faced and continue to face today,” Khrimian wrote to The Hoya. “Recognizing that these issues are still present in our community is already a step towards the right direction.”
Beyond the meetings for the one-credit seminar, students must take two overlay courses, classes that focus on a specific discipline and aim to further the “Race, Power, and Justice” seminar’s learning objectives in a specific setting.
To be considered a “Pathways to Social Justice” overlay course, a class must incorporate at least three of five of the pathway’s instructional priorities — inclusive scholarship; intersectional approaches to power and identity; discussions of historical inequality and its contemporary legacies; national, regional and global comparisons; and imagining justice in relation to oppression — a more stringent set of requirements than those of the previous “Engaging Diversity” curriculum.
Rothman said that when the review for the “Engaging Diversity” requirement began, students and faculty alike reflected on the requirement to create “Pathways to Social Justice.”
“It was a process to create this new Pathways to Social Justice,” Rothman said. “A lot of people have gone into this.”
Elmendorf said the language difference between “Engaging Diversity” and “Pathways to Social Justice” reflects the university’s and the Jesuit tradition’s commitment to social justice.
“One thing is that we’re a Jesuit school and social justice, being a Jesuit institution, it’s part of our genetics, right?” Elmendorf said. “That’s just who we are. And so that felt very authentic for Georgetown to name it that.”
Sederman said the requirement for all students to fulfill the “Pathways to Social Justice” requirement, in particular the “Race, Power and Justice” course, is crucial for first-year students to learn about Georgetown and all of its history.
“I think this class is what every first-year needs to fully grasp the founding history and the formation of this school and all that came with that,” Sederman said.