The politics of diversity

Arriving at Trinity this fall felt like coming home for Stefanie Chambers, an assistant professor of political science and a Milwaukee native. The vibrant ethnic communities in Hartford as well as the city’s efforts to address racial and ethnic issues remind her of her home town, she says. A specialist in urban politics, women in politics, urban education, and racial and ethnic politics in the United States, Chambers immediately tunes in to issues of race and ethnicity when she arrives in a new place, and her personal perspective enriches her academic expertise.

What she has found at Trinity, she says, is a stimulating, diverse urban setting; eager, bright students; and the chance to bring the setting and the students together. Even in the short time she has been on campus, Chambers has helped students to feel invested in the political world, think critically about their views, act on their political beliefs, and understand the role multiculturalism plays in politics. As she becomes more familiar with Hartford, she plans to bring her students even closer to their political surroundings, with forays into community learning.

“I don’t know why you’d go to Trinity if you didn’t want to be involved in this,” Chambers says of the city that is her new community.

Approachable and involved
Chambers plans to engage her students in politics at the grass roots. She has begun to familiarize herself with local organizations that have political objectives and might welcome student involvement. This winter, for instance, she has talked to the Urban League and the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice about worthwhile ways in which her students could participate.

Community learning comes naturally to Chambers and reflects her accessible teaching style. “I found that she was very willing to get involved in the community,” says Shannon Stormont ’02. “As cochair of COLT (the Community Outreach Leadership Team), I was really excited that she was one of the professors who signed up to participate in ‘Do-It Day’ last September.” This annual community-service event at Trinity exposes students to volunteer service opportunities with organizations throughout Hartford.

Stormont, who took “The American Presidency” with Chambers this fall, praises the genuine interest Chambers shows in students’ ideas. “She allowed us a great deal of discretion in choosing paper topics and seemed truly interested in our reflections on the course material,” says Stormont, a political science major. She has decided to work with Chambers on her senior thesis, which will concentrate on educational policy.

With a neck-and-neck U.S. presidential campaign and a hotly contested election as the backdrop, “The American Presidency” drew on daily events as jumping-off points for many compelling class discussions. Chambers’s students say her openness encouraged them to strike up political discussions with her outside of class as well. “She’s very personable, very approachable,” says Joseph “Russell” Fugett ’01, a political science major who took “The American Presidency.” The course and discussions of political events with Chambers keenly interested Fugett, who is president of the Student Government Association at Trinity and says he aspires to a political career some day.

Race, culture, and politics
Chambers’s approachable manner makes the sensitive, often politically charged issues of ethnicity and race less threatening for her students. These issues arise frequently at Trinity, not only in political science discussions but also on campus, notes Karla Spurlock-Evans, dean of multicultural affairs. Chambers “is particularly valuable in a community like ours that’s trying to take advantage of the diversity we have,” Spurlock-Evans says, adding that Chambers moves with ease across the artificial boundaries of race and culture without denying the existence of these boundaries. “There’s an openness and a warmth, a candor, a sensitivity in the way she interacts with me and with students,” Spurlock-Evans says. “She has a certain giving quality, a quality of spirit that makes you feel relaxed and comforted in her presence.”

Although her scholarly work has brought issues of race, culture, and politics into sharp focus, Chambers always has been immersed in these matters. Her father is black, her mother is white, and the family lived in the inner city when Chambers was very young. “So the issue of race was something I was aware of even as a child,” she says. As she grew older and her family moved to a suburb, she recalls, she still was aware of racial conflict and the exclusion of some people from policy-making in Milwaukee.

Chambers took a keen interest in race, culture, and ethnicity as an undergraduate student at Marquette University in Milwaukee. She says she started to learn about people’s rights and politics at Marquette, where her mentor taught courses like the ones Chambers teaches today. In graduate school at Ohio State University, she decided to focus on race and ethnicity in politics, especially urban politics, where the issues are perhaps most strongly felt. Her doctoral dissertation looked at urban educational reform and its impact on minorities in Chicago.

Chambers’s expertise in urban and minority politics gave her insights into the 2000 presidential election that her students might not have uncovered on their own. She offered views, for example, into allegations of violations of voting rights during the election, especially as these irregularities affected minorities and poor precincts. More affluent, sophisticated precincts could better protect their voters’ rights—with access to computerized voting lists, for instance—than their less-affluent counterparts. And minorities with language barriers, such as Haitians who understand Creole, sometimes were denied their voting rights because their ballots were not in their language and no translators were available at their voting precincts.

“I found the whole election pretty depressing by the end,” she says, but she tried to downplay her views in the classroom. She strives to remain objective in her classes so her students can develop their own ideas. “I hope I provide them with tools they can use to think about political issues in the future. I want them to feel free to express their views,” she says. She stresses to students that she is not evaluating what they think but rather is assessing whether they articulate their ideas logically and convincingly. The ability to analyze their world and develop sound arguments is a skill her students will continue to find valuable long after college. They need only to look at Chambers to see this is true.

--Becky Purdy