Janet Napolitano, former secretary of Homeland Security and current president of the University of California, has been offering training to faculty members so that they can identify and correct any implicit bias, or microaggressions, within themselves so that all students feel included and accepted on campus.

The seminars define implicit bias and microaggressions as such:

Implicit Bias: "A positive or negative mental attitude towards a person, thing, or group that a person holds at an unconscious level."

Microaggressions: “The everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.”

A spreadsheet distributed to attendees helped professors identify their own microaggressions and helped them understand what messages they may be unconsciously sending to their students. Here are just a few examples:

• Asking any non-white student, "Where are you from or where were you born?" is like saying, "You are not a true American."
• Saying to a woman of color, "I would have never guessed that you were a scientist," is really telling them that, "It is unusual for a woman to have strong mathematical skills."
• If a professor says, "America is a melting pot," they aren't acknowledging that race exists and therefore are really denying individuality and demanding them to "assimilate to the dominant culture."
• If a student of color is roaming around the hallways and a faculty member asks if they are lost, they would thus be making the assumption that this person is trying to break into one of the classrooms. The message sent is, "You are a criminal," or "You are dangerous."
• Saying, as President Obama often does, "America is the land of opportunity," or "Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough" could somehow be translated as meaning "people of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder." (Perhaps Napoltiano should send the president an invite to one of these seminars to correct his microaggression.)
• Using the pronoun "he" in reference to all people is off limits because it makes the statement that the "male experience is universal" while the "female experience is invisible."

Here is the suggestion on how to recognize "impact" (intended or not):

In as diverse an academic environment as the University of California, we cannot assume to know everything about what is appropriate for every culture. If we keep in mind that “we do not know what we do not know” and that sometimes our actions may inadvertently cause people pain, we can acknowledge that pain and take the opportunity to learn from our experiences.

And this only scratches the surface of the depth at which Napolitano is helping "UC campuses build and sustain a culture of inclusion." See the entire seminar program here.