The College of Liberal Arts exemplifies Temple University’s core values of diversity and inclusion: creating and sustaining a teaching, learning and research community that not only includes but welcomes and values differences based on religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, veteran status, age and family/marital status. To harness the value that diversity and inclusiveness have within the CLA community, the Diversity, Equity and Anti-bias Advisory Board was established in 2018. Members of the board are the dean, two senior associate deans and four faculty members of different ranks. Four times a year, the dean’s office reports to the board on initiatives and progress on achieving a diverse and inclusive faculty, staff and student body. You can read an article from the dean’s newsletter about the college's diversity and anti-bias mission. For more information about diversity initiatives for faculty and students in the College of Liberal Arts, please see below.

Faculty Diversity Initiatives

• Postdoctoral Diversity Fellowship Program

Student Diversity Initiatives

• Diversity Predoctoral Diversity Scholarships
• Future Faculty Fellows Events
• Mid-Atlantic Neuroscience Diversity Scholars Program (MiNDS)

Selected CLA Sponsored Events

• Is This Time Different? Social Movement for Racial Justice
• Envisioning an Anti-racist Sustainable Philly History and Practice for Environmental Justice
• The Rise in Anti-Asian Sentiments: Racism, Xenophobia, and COVID-19
• Race in Core Conference

Postdoctoral Diversity Fellowship Program

The Postdoctoral Diversity Fellowship Program supports the development of early career scholars from diverse backgrounds, with particular attention to historically underrepresented groups among the professorial faculties of colleges and universities in the United States, as well as to increase the diversity of the community of scholars devoted to academic research at Temple University. These are one-year positions with a 0-1 teaching load designed to give diversity and inclusion scholars time to begin research immediately after completing their PhDs in an intellectually rich and supportive environment.

ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowship in Philosophy of Race

The College of Liberal Arts was one of only three initial national recipients of the Postdoctoral Partnership Initiative grant from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Our postdoctoral fellowship search was in philosophy of race. The Department of Philosophy is thrilled to welcome César Cabezas, from Columbia University.

ACLS Postdoctoral Partnership Initiative

ACLS is pleased to announce three new partnerships that reflect our commitment to supporting institutional efforts to increase the diversity of college and university faculty. Through this program, The City College of New York, Haverford College, Temple University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Kentucky were each offered a two-year postdoctoral fellowship for promising early career scholars from historically underrepresented groups such as Black/African American, American Indian, Alaskan Native and Hispanic/Latino scholars. The institutions appointed these fellows with the intent to promote them to assistant professor roles at the end of the fellowship period. Support for ACLS’s Postdoctoral Partnership Initiative is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more information about this initiative please visit the ACLS website.

Diversity Predoctoral Fellowships in Liberal Arts

The purpose of the Diversity Predoctoral Scholarship program is to enhance diversity in the College of Liberal Arts and the higher education community by providing college students with additional professional support and mentoring as they enter their graduate fields. The program is envisioned for students who have applied for a PhD program, but who will benefit from an additional year of training before pursuing a doctoral degree. Student nominations should be members of racial and ethnic groups that have historically been underrepresented in the humanities and social sciences. The scholarship will cover tuition costs for up to 12 credit hours (four courses) during their first academic year. Incoming scholars will have the opportunity to study with advanced doctoral students, work closely with a faculty mentor or/and graduate director, and receive training in research methods for specific departments. 

CLA Future Faculty Assistantship Program

In 1987, the Future Faculty Fellows Program (currently known as the Future Faculty Assistantship Program or FFA Program) was established at Temple University to promote and increase diversity among the American professoriate through fellowship awards to newly admitted underrepresented domestic graduate students. In 2019, the fellowship program was redesigned, and colleges now oversee the selection process. The CLA Future Faculty Assistantship Program also offers annual assistantships that ensure summer funding.

Academic Affairs in CLA has created a new multifaceted mentoring approach for the participants in the program. This new initiative includes the following.

Group Mentoring
Participants attend regular meetings of the new cohort in a given year (organized by the senior associate dean for academic affairs and the director of graduate studies). These meetings are intended to provide opportunities for incoming fellows to share insights, discoveries and questions. We feature former Future Faculty Fellows; members of the faculty; administrators or external seasoned experts addressing issues of interest to new participants, including professional development opportunities.

Mentoring Support from an Experienced Future Faculty Fellow
Since 2020, all incoming fellows are invited to participate in the new CLA FFA Mentorship Program. Through the program, graduate students receive mentorship and constructive support from former Future Faculty Fellows. The mentoring partnership is purely voluntary on the part of both parties, and it may be ended at either’s request. It involves no formal review of each mentee’s performance, and all information shared with the mentor is to be considered confidential.

CLA-sponsored Events

The College of Liberal Arts hosted a series of panel discussions. Watch the event’s recorded streams below to see how the college responded to these critical issues.

Is This Time Different? Social Movement for Racial Justice
On June 18, the College of Liberal Arts hosted the webinar, Is This Time Different? Social Movement for Racial Justice, organized by the Center for the Humanities at Temple and the Public Policy Lab. The webinar was moderated by Benjamin Talton (history) with panelists Heath Fogg Davis (political science; gender, sexuality and women’s studies), Ajima Olaghere (criminal justice), Celeste Winston (geography and urban studies) and Sean Yom (political science).

Envisioning an Anti-racist Sustainable Philly History and Practice for Environmental Justice
A panel discussion focused on understanding sustainability from the perspective of diverse and often marginalized communities. These communities have long been engaged with promoting equitable practices that support solutions to pressing social and environmental justice issues. Our panel of community leaders and practitioners discussed their past and current work with communities of color and offered insights into environmental justice and sustainability efforts in Philadelphia.

The Rise in Anti-Asian Sentiments: Racism, Xenophobia and COVID-19
The College of Liberal Arts’ annual signature event focused on the disturbing rise in anti-Asian racial inequities amplified by COVID-19 within the United States’ long-standing history of racism and xenophobia.

Race in Core Conference
General education courses in the liberal arts offer students the chance to engage with texts that have shaped the world we live in today. Yet even as scholars in the fields of literary studies, history, philosophy and political theory have expanded the scope of their inquiries to include previously marginalized voices, many core programs rely on a fixed canon of authors from the Western European tradition while neglecting the intellectual achievements of non-European peoples and, crucially, the ways in which the West has long been shaped by contact with non-European peoples and their lifeways. Over the course of the week, educators from around the country will discuss ways to widen the lens and to help students envision a future free of racial hierarchies.

• Race in Core Conference Website