With the increasing diverse student population in the United States, schools across the country face the challenge of addressing cultural diversity in the classroom. While this topic is not new in the field of music education, researchers argue that voices of minoritized groups remain absent in most music programs. Even if different music cultures are introduced, they often reinforce existing racial/ethnic stereotypes. In this column, I would like to share one concept that I found helpful in addressing diversity in the classroom. Through my own work, I learned that the music with which students engage outside the classroom affords rich potential to discuss issues related to diversity. Inviting students to bring in music that matters to them helps them develop their own voices and to recognize and respect different voices, through which we acknowledge the complexity and multiplicity of how diversity plays out in human experiences.

The author discusses the presence of multiculturalism in music education. She first considers the ways race is embedded as coded language in discourse, and the ways the use of coded language hinders the ability to talk about race directly. She addresses the silence that sometimes results when one names race and racism explicitly. The author then looks at official multiculturalism and multiculturalism within music education as racialized discourses. Lastly, the author investigates motivations in North America for engaging in multiculturalism in music education.

Social justice work typically challenges us to cross-cultural fluency. Our formal (European-derived) training as choral conductors too seldom equips us to meet this challenge—or even to recognize any blind spots that may hinder our success. In this article, a cohort of thirteen conductors of color working both within and beyond dominant choral culture share their observations on these effects, along with their recommendations for developing stronger engagements with less familiar musics and the people whom those musics represent.

Contemporary music education leaders suggest ambiguous definitions of “diversity,” often assuming it both unquestionably good and compatible with equity. The purpose of this inquiry is to explore the assumptions underlying such discourse. First, I use the legal history of diversity in education to examine the American National Association for Music Education's statements on equity, access, inclusivity, and diversity. Second, drawing on Thomas Green's educational systems framework, I analyze the political strength of arguments surrounding diversity and equity. Third, considering instances when white parents deem diversity “best” for their children, I investigate the advantages and limitations of what Natasha Warikoo calls the “diversity bargain.” While not condoning unbridled self-interest, I posit how music educators might use parents' self-interest to support more ethical practices. Designed to benefit all students, diversity initiatives conflict with efforts aimed at equity. Music education diversity and equity rhetoric rely on either a troubling misreading of a politically strong state rationale or on the weak political positions of societal interests or educational goods valuable for their own sake. Rather than focusing on diverse content, teachers and students might experiment with how artistic expressions enable the exchange of individuals' stories and insights. The music education profession might also provide attention to equity apart from diversity.

The place of Stephen Foster and the music of American minstrelsy should be reconsidered for the music classroom. Some of this repertoire can be offensive because of its historical context and racially insensitive language. Critical theory can provide a framework for choosing repertoire that creates dialogue about racial structures in music. The use of critical theory in studying Stephen Foster's music can engage students in praxis and work toward ending racial injustices in the classroom.

The current study sought to determine whether holding targeted marginalized identities was associated
with greater experiences of distress related to Trump’ s presidency and whether participants’ level of Trump-
related distress predicted decrements in mental health. Participants in the current longitudinal study included 338
underrepresented college students attending a predominantly White institution. Results indicated that
individuals who held targeted marginalized identities reported greater Trump-related distress compared to their
non-targeted counterparts, and that holding multiple targeted marginalized identities was associated with
greater levels of Trump-related distress. Findings also indicated that Trump-related distress was associated with
increases (relative to previous trajectories) in anxious but not depressive symptoms. Overall, our results suggest that
a shift in sociopolitical circu mstances that promulgates bigotry may be harmful to those who possess targeted
marginalized identities

This article describes how admissions auditions at schools of music may demonstrate and participate in what critical race theorist t Gloria Ladson-Billings, calk the full social funding of race. Julia Eklund Koza argues that the construction of musical difference, which is an effect of power and is accomplished by the materialization of styles of music, plays a role in the systemic inclusion or exclusion of people whose bodies have already been raced through a similar process of sorting and ordering. Focusing on the equity implications of an access conundrum that is making many public colleges and universities more exclusionary, Koza advocates listening for Whiteness in admissions processes, not to affirm it, but to recognize its institutional presence, understand its technologies, and defund it.

The Problem
Members of organizations often struggle to grasp the importance of social movements and to understand the affective dimensions of the injustices that inspire them to be organized.

The Solution
We argued that combining artistic expression with social movement learning (SML) in human resource development (HRD) can help members of the dominant culture to better empathize with those who experience marginalization. This will help organizations to better relate to social movements and to more effectively address related injustices.

The Stakeholders
HRD scholars and practitioners as well as those engaged in social movements.

The article talks about the history of music teaching, its social and cultural aspects, and the teaching of music in the 21st century in U.S. universities under President Donald Trump. Topics discussed include the extension of the high culture in the 19th century, declined popularity of classic music among the masses, and the racism and religious intolerance in society. Also mentioned is a statement issued by the Directors of the American Musicological Association regarding white supremacy.

A Statement of the Board of Directors of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (Adopted June 2013, in support of its expanded mission)

The faculty job market plays a fundamental role in shaping research priorities, educational outcomes, and career trajectories among scientists and institutions. However, a quantitative understanding of faculty hiring as a system is lacking. Using a simple technique to extract the institutional prestige ranking that best explains an observed faculty hiring network—who hires whose graduates as faculty—we present and analyze comprehensive placement data on nearly 19,000 regular faculty in three disparate disciplines. Across disciplines, we find that faculty hiring follows a common and steeply hierarchical structure that reflects profound social inequality. Furthermore, doctoral prestige alone better predicts ultimate placement than a U.S. News & World Report rank, women generally place worse than men, and increased institutional prestige leads to increased faculty production, better faculty placement, and a more influential position within the discipline. These results advance our ability to quantify the influence of prestige in academia and shed new light on the academic system.

Non-Black faculty members have the power to help dismantle educational inequities, argue Viji Sathy, Kelly A. Hogan and Calvin M. Sims, and they suggest some practical ways for how to start.

Higher education institutions in the United States are failing to fully buy in to an equitable and just society for all. Although affirmative action is meant to redress former policies and practices that excluded or limited Black and brown people (and women) from obtaining postsecondary educations and good jobs, racial disparities persist in both arenas.

New paper explores just what faculty candidates include in their statements, which are currently the subject of debate.

Scholars discuss what it’s like to be a Black professor in 2020, who should be doing antiracist work on campus and why diversity interventions that attempt to “fix” Black academics for a rigged game miss the point entirely.

Black lives in the United States are surrounded by memorials to people who did not think that black lives mattered. That is a fact of black life in America. That is a fact of black life in American academe.