Today on college campuses in the U.S., “social justice” is everywhere—a bright signal of some institutional wokeness in institutions that have not always been good or awake to the needs of many in their communities. In 2014, I joined the trend, as part of a small group of faculty and staff at Portland Community College, that created a concentration of courses called the Social Justice Focus Award and, the next year, built a curriculum for a capstone class called “Social Justice: Theory & Practice” (SJ210). This article shares this experience for faculty considering building such a course, program, or major; maybe you can learn from our successes (and our mistakes). But in telling this story, I am also tracing the contradictions tied up in the proliferation of “social justice” on college campuses. Even as a marking strategy, for higher ed to claim it’s doing social justice sparks off massive institutional identity conflicts. Higher education’s long-term investment in (scientific) objectivity, neutrality, of teaching students ‘how to think not what to think’ stands in direct contrast to doing the work of justice. So claiming to teach social justice—to grant degrees in it!—begs important questions about the kinds of promises we’re making to our students and our communities, to say nothing of our conception of who we are as institutions. I’ll argue here that if we teach social justice in the framework dictated by traditional higher ed commitments, we probably do a bad job. But we can make good on the promise of social justice if our courses and programs are (1) centered on a student-led, class-defined, campus-based project that (2) involves collective action. That work must be grounded in a classroom that is (3) explicitly not neutral. In our program, we don’t aim at global justice; we aim at making the changes we can make on campus. And what we’ve learned is that by starting there, our students are actually making the world more just. As our students learn to identify injustice, talk about it with others, and enact strategies for change, they are meeting the course’s learning outcomes while improving life for many on campus, including undocumented students, nonbinary students, and students living without housing. Their work has made “social justice” more than a slogan on our campus.

中文翻译：

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不仅仅是口号：或者，我们如何建立一个社会正义计划，使我们的校园更加公正

今天在美国的大学校园里，“社会正义”无处不在——这是一个明亮的信号，表明机构中的一些机构觉醒，这些机构并不总是很好或对社区中许多人的需求不敏感。2014 年，我加入了这一潮流，作为波特兰社区学院一小群教职员工的一部分，创建了一系列名为社会正义焦点奖的课程，并在第二年为一个名为“社会正义：理论与实践”（SJ210）。本文为考虑开设此类课程、项目或专业的教师分享了这一经验；也许您可以从我们的成功（和我们的错误）中学习。但在讲述这个故事的同时，我也在追溯大学校园中“社会正义”泛滥的矛盾。即使作为标记策略，高等教育声称它在做社会正义会引发大规模的机构身份冲突。高等教育在（科学）客观性、中立性、教导学生“如何思考而不是思考什么”方面的长期投资与正义工作形成鲜明对比。因此，声称教授社会正义——授予它学位！——引出了关于我们对学生和社区做出的承诺类型的重要问题，更不用说我们作为机构的概念了。我会在这里争辩说，如果我们在传统高等教育承诺所规定的框架内教授社会正义，我们可能会做得不好。但是，如果我们的课程和计划 (1) 以学生主导、班级定义、基于校园的项目为中心，并且 (2) 涉及集体行动，那么我们就可以兑现社会正义的承诺。这项工作必须以 (3) 明确非中立的课堂为基础。在我们的计划中，我们的目标不是全球正义；我们的目标是做出我们可以在校园里做出的改变。我们学到的是，从那里开始，我们的学生实际上正在让世界变得更加公正。当我们的学生学会识别不公正、与他人讨论并制定变革策略时，他们正在满足课程的学习成果，同时改善校园内许多人的生活，包括无证学生、非二元学生和没有住房的学生。他们的工作使“社会正义”不仅仅是我们校园里的口号。我们的学生实际上正在让世界变得更加公正。当我们的学生学会识别不公正、与他人讨论并制定变革策略时，他们正在满足课程的学习成果，同时改善校园内许多人的生活，包括无证学生、非二元学生和没有住房的学生。他们的工作使“社会正义”不仅仅是我们校园里的口号。我们的学生实际上正在让世界变得更加公正。当我们的学生学会识别不公正、与他人讨论并制定变革策略时，他们正在满足课程的学习成果，同时改善校园内许多人的生活，包括无证学生、非二元学生和没有住房的学生。他们的工作使“社会正义”不仅仅是我们校园里的口号。