During the Cold War, whistle-blowers and dissenters were threatened and penalized; they lost jobs, faced social and governmental harassment, and often lived thankless and persecuted lives. It was never entirely clear where the speech boundaries lay, or when one might get sanctioned. Today, the “War on Terror” is becoming a hegemonic framework, the Patriot Act has been made permanent, and there are ongoing revelations about increased surveillance in the United States. Along with these developments, there are increasing efforts to punish academics for expressing contentious views. At a minimum, teaching topics that disrupt the comfort zone can be emotionally draining and may produce some negative reactions in the classroom. Under such pressures, self-censorship can be a natural consequence. Yet open democratic deliberation, well-rounded education, and intellectual freedom are prerequisites for best serving our world.

The APSA TLC Diversity and Inequality track provided a civic forum for engagement and deliberation on this question. Civic forums have the potential to provide solidarity, combat debilitating isolation, and promote policy critiques and alternatives. As such, they can reduce perceived barriers to successful challenges and change. This can be troubling to those with vested interests in some status quo. Track participants agreed that alternative and minority positions are under siege in many contexts and examined strategic response to palpably hostile environments in disciplinary, institutional, and classroom contexts.

As a group, we agreed that our conference track provided a welcome and much-needed space for both the presentation of research and the discussion of pedagogical issues concerning diversity and inequality. Many felt that APSA as an organization might usefully boost its efforts in this area through the construction of additional sites of solidarity and inspiration, integrating these issues into a broader disciplinary discussion including a greater number of our fellow political scientists. Likewise, many participants voiced the need for political science as a discipline to do more to enhance the link between such research and disciplinary-based pedagogical training. Efforts should be made as a discipline to tap into longstanding intellectual traditions, foster a safe environment where all topics might be discussed, and recognize how newly resuscitated debates about academic freedom disproportionately affect non-traditional faculty and those who teach topics regarding race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and nation. Last, a consensus emerged regarding the need for political science to improve textbook offerings for introductory U.S. politics courses. Track participants' anecdotal observations that current U.S. politics textbooks contain systematic inadequacies that hinder instructors' ability to address diversity and inequality were confirmed by systematic investigation (Travis et al.).

Participants on our track came from large public universities, small liberal arts or religiously affiliated institutions, and many places in between. Our discussion of diversity and inequality thus reflected these varied origins, and made evident the need for a diversity of innovative teaching strategies taking account of these varied sites, with their concomitant institutional goals and classroom compositions. Yet, some common needs also surfaced: the need for both the core and broader curriculum of the university to support diversity and equality, as well as the necessity of institutional support of vulnerable faculty, as teaching controversial topics like race and gender becomes equated with bias and threatens to seriously impact the teaching of diversity and inequality in the classroom (Sampaio). To protect future tenure and promotion, consensus emerged that non-traditional faculty specifically must be careful to balance their classes explicitly based on race and gender with other courses, invest in honing pedagogical skills, and develop better tools of assessment: producing one's own evaluation forms, doing pre- and post-surveys about class content, getting colleagues to peer review and write supportive letters, as well as push for the ability to reply to falsities in one's evaluations.

As in many tracks, classroom engagement was a topic of considerable concern. Teaching methods were highlighted as key. Those who taught with an eye to diversity in the classroom repeatedly stressed the more difficult position of those who teach standing in the position of vulnerability where students are encouraged and pushed into the discomfort zone. In that zone, there is sensitive and engaged response from faculty. This tension between fierce initial response and loving application of wisdom once confusion or discomfort has set in was identified as a critical window of opportunity for innovative turns in supporting students. Admittedly, such turns are emotionally and energetically challenging.

The Diversity and Inequality Track represents one form of additional support to accomplish such teaching. Track presenters enumerated a bevy of strategies to assist in staying open to the radical vulnerability created in the space between confrontation with new perspectives and encouragement. The Socratic Method (Haddad) and cooperative inquiry (Hirst) push students beyond their own perspectives and place them on an equal footing. Cooperative inquiry was in fact the primary method of the track itself, which served as a crossroads for the interrogation of Whiteness (Mohan), turning student ethnic diversity on its ear (Judd), curricular changes to enhance Latino student retention (Huerta), and engendering trust and growth through technology when the teacher, identified as Other, is viewed with suspicion (Malik).

The Diversity and Inequality track was an energizing and renewing experience for everyone, and more so for those who felt isolated, marginalized, and at risk. A clear strategy that emerged in this context was to draw strength from our group members, and to translate our camaraderie into ongoing mutual support. Track participants departed convinced of the necessity of this track at future TLCs, both for their ongoing intellectual preservation and that of their colleagues who remain isolated across the discipline.