Since its inauguration in the 2024-2025 academic year, all new undergraduate students are required to take a one-credit seminar titled “Race, Power, and Justice at Georgetown.” The seminar was created to encourage conversations around race and to advance Georgetown University’s Jesuit values by confronting instances of injustice both within and beyond campus. 

However, many of the assigned readings and videos required for class discussions are outdated, failing to represent recent and more pressing social justice issues we have seen in Washington, D.C., and around the world. To truly uphold values like “faith that does justice” and “people for others,” Georgetown must ensure the “Race, Power, and Justice at Georgetown” curriculum is updated regularly to reflect changes and progress in the pursuit of justice.

For a pass-fail seminar, “Race, Power, and Justice at Georgetown” is structured in an efficient manner to expose students to primary sources, testimonials and dialogues related to social justice, all within a six-week time frame. Weekly discussion questions and reflection assignments are simple yet effective ways to ensure students are engaging with the material. Seminar faculty excel in providing students with various opportunities in or around campus for the course’s culminating Experience assignment, which asks students to participate in an event related to the course content and share their reflections. 

While the class emphasizes Georgetown’s legacy of slavery through the GU272 Memory Project, a project aimed at telling the story of the over 270 enslaved men, women and children sold in 1838 by Georgetown University, it does not claim to cover the entirety of the institution’s history of social justice. Rather, the goal of the course is to equip students to engage in meaningful dialogues surrounding pressing issues of justice both at Georgetown and beyond.

However, the impact of these conversations is weakened given the relevance of the content students are expected to engage with. For example, week three of the curriculum requires students to watch the 2005 Living Wage Campaign documentary, a more than 20-year-old video that highlights student-led activism that achieved livable wages for campus workers at Georgetown. 

While it is important to learn about the history and legacy of activism on campus, the curriculum fails to recognize current issues pertaining to labor rights and employment at Georgetown. Most notably, this includes recent proposals to subcontract Georgetown University Transportation Shuttle bus drivers to third-party vendors and efforts taken up by student organizations like the Georgetown Coalition for Workers’ Rights to combat these changes. Omitting recent developments provides students with an incomplete picture of pressing social justice issues at Georgetown, rendering the mission of “Race, Power, and Justice at Georgetown” unfulfilled.

Similarly, week four of the curriculum delves into Georgetown’s global connections and the responsibilities our institution has worldwide. One of the assigned readings is School of Foreign Service Dean Joel Hellman’s statement on Georgetown professor Badar Khan Suri’s detainment. Yet, assigned discussion items fail to address any developments in Khan Suri’s case, including his experience in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers and his ongoing immigration case. The choice to omit this information feels particularly consequential, especially given the current precarious state of immigration both in D.C. and the United States as a whole. Khan Suri’s story is one worth mentioning and would provide students with invaluable insight into the rapidly changing nature of citizenship in the United States and what that means for Georgetown students and faculty.

None of this is to say “Race, Power, and Justice at Georgetown” is a poor class. It is certainly a justified graduation requirement and succeeds at offering students a short yet comprehensive overview of injustice in D.C. and around the globe. However, the seminar curriculum must be updated prior to the start of each iteration to reflect changes and ongoing developments in discourses surrounding social justice and advocacy at our university. For a course directly centered on tackling systemic issues, its content must incorporate a balance between the past and the present; only then can students truly engage in “faith that does justice.”

Talia Arcasoy is a first-year in the School of Foreign Service. This is the second installment of her column “Life on the Hilltop.”