Steps to strengthen ethics in organizations: research findings, ethics placebos, and what works

Diversity Wanted! Utilizing Transdisciplinary Scholarship on Structural Inequality to Educate Psychology Graduate Students

INTRODUCTION

The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) should promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice for the next generation of psychologists.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

I worry that the SoTL propagates an exclusionary field that becomes increasingly irrelevant in our diverse society given that graduate curricula largely exclude scholarship on structural inequality.

LITERATURE REVIEW

I detail the process of graduate curricular changes in my current department, with a focus on my new required graduate course, Diversity, Systems, and Inequality. I utilize scholarship from law, sociology, philosophy, women and gender studies, education, and psychology.

TEACHING IMPLICATIONS

I provide the structure and content of the course-including syllabi and lecture slides-as well as modes of assessment that promote inclusivity and critical thinking. I detail how current faculty can learn to incorporate the content of this work into their own teaching and scholarship through weekly journal clubs.

CONCLUSION

SoTL outlets can publish transdisciplinary, inclusive course materials regarding structural inequality, thus mainstreaming and amplifying such work for the benefit of the field and our world.

Collusion, torture, and inequality: Understanding the actions of the American Psychological Association as institutional betrayal

The Hoffman Report (Hoffman et al., 2015) documented devastating information about the American Psychological Association (APA) and the profession of psychology in the United States, prompting a public apology and a formal commitment by APA to correct its mistakes (APA, 2015). In the current article, we utilize betrayal trauma theory (Freyd, 1997), including betrayal blindness (e.g., Freyd, 1996; Tang, 2015) and institutional betrayal (Smith & Freyd, 2014b), to understand and learn from APA's behaviors. We further situate this discussion in the context of inequality, both within APA and in American society generally. We detail how the impact of APA's institutional betrayals extended beyond the organization, its members, and the psychology profession, highlighting the potential for disproportionate harm to minorities, including those who were tortured; Muslims, Middle Easterners, Afghans, and non-Americans who were not tortured; and other minority individuals (Gómez, 2015d). Acknowledging, understanding, and addressing its institutional betrayals offers APA the opportunity to take meaningful corrective and preventive measures. We propose several institutional reparations, including making concrete changes with transparency and conducting self-assessments to inform further needed changes (Freyd & Birrell, 2013). By engaging in institutional courage, APA has the potential to grow into an ethical governing body that fulfills its mission to "advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives" (APA, 2016).