University Seminar in Race, Power, and Justice

Beginning in the 2024-25 academic year, all new undergraduates at Georgetown University will be required to take UNXD 1200 Race, Power, and Justice at Georgetown as the foundation of the new Pathways to Social Justice curriculum requirement. This one-credit course will be offered four times per year, twice in the fall semester and twice in the spring semester. Each session of the course will meet twice per week for six weeks, and will be graded on a pass/fail basis. It will be taught by a diverse, interdisciplinary team of faculty from all of Georgetown’s undergraduate schools, including GU-Q.

Justice is one of Georgetown’s core values. It is central to the idea of “Faith That Does Justice” and informs other key concepts, especially “Community in Diversity,” “Interreligious Understanding,” and “People for Others.” But what is justice, and what does it have to do with Georgetown and its students? These are urgent and timely questions, as the university community reckons with our history, confronts pressing crises of injustice all around us, and works to imagine a more just future on local, national, and global scales. 

This course begins at home, with issues of race, power, and justice connected to Georgetown itself. The course will introduce students to the university’s history and situate Georgetown in relation to its neighbors, the United States, and world. Students will hear from university experts and discover resources that address issues of race, power, and justice at Georgetown. The course will model constructive conversations on difficult issues with people who have differing perspectives.

A pilot version of the course will be offered in the Spring 2024 semester to give students currently at Georgetown an opportunity to take the class and help make it the best possible course for future cohorts of Hoyas.

Faculty who want their courses to count for Pathways to Social Justice credit must submit a short application form by February 21, 2025.

Pathways to Social Justice Course Application

The Oversight Committee will notify instructors of the approval status of their proposed Pathways course prior to the start of student registration. Per the curriculum guidelines ratified by MCEF in 2023, please note that the final syllabi for approved PSJ overlay courses must include a version of the following statement for enrolled students:

This course is designed to fulfill the Pathways to Social Justice requirement in the context of [insert unit/discipline]. This course will complement the foundation provided by the Seminar in Race, Power, and Justice at Georgetown by engaging with the concepts and language you learn in that course and deepening your understanding and application of those concepts as they apply to [insert this course’s subject matter].

In this course, we will focus on the following instructional priorities of the Core Requirement: [three of the five priorities above should be listed here; a brief statement of the rationale for each should be included].

Pathways to Social Justice Curriculum Oversight Committee

Myriam Vuckovic (chair), Associate Professor of Global Health, School of Health

Katherine Chandler, Associate Professor of Culture and Politics, School of Foreign Service

Justin C. Smith, Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives, School of Business

Shareen Joshi, Associate Dean, School of Foreign Service

Ivana Komunjer, Professor of Economics, College of Arts & Sciences

Amanda Phillips, Associate Professor of English, College of Arts & Sciences

Carla Shedd, Associate Professor of Sociology, College of Arts & Sciences

Javier Jimenez Westerman, Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion