Chapter 20: An Interdisciplinary Social Justice Minor: How Do You Create University Level Curriculum Change?

As the popular words from Audre Lorde remind us, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (Lorde, 1984). This chapter is not only about developing culturally responsive curriculum in the form of a new interdisciplinary “Social Justice Minor” but importantly it is about addressing the master’s tools and the social justice work needed “behind the scenes” to dismantle university systems that make creating culturally responsive curriculum, in particular interdisciplinary curriculum, difficult (and sometimes impossible). We define social justice based on the ideas of Fernandez et al. (2020), “Social justice … is committed to the break down, challenge, and change of social structures that perpetuate marginalization, discrimination, and oppression [and exploitation of the human and nonhuman] from its start to its finish” (p. 3).