IUP is pleased to welcome Peggy McIntosh as the keynote speaker for the IUP Diversity and Inclusion Symposium. Her presentation is titled “Coming to See Privilege Systems: The Surprising Journey.”
In her address, she will describe how she came to see her unearned privilege, which is at the other end of unearned disadvantage. McIntosh will describe some effects of privilege systems on curriculum, teaching methods, social climates, and university policies, and she will discuss some of the benefits of using power to share power.
Deciding to be a teacher when she was in first grade, McIntosh has made society-changing contributions in the areas of education and social equity throughout her career.
A former associate director of the Wellesley Centers for Women, McIntosh founded the National SEED Project (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) on inclusive curriculum in 1987. The SEED Project energizes teachers to improve their school climates, teaching methods, and curricula to make them more gender fair and multiculturally equitable.
She also directs the Gender, Race, and Inclusive Education Project, which addresses privilege systems, diversifying workplaces, and education reform.
She is well known for her influential essays, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" and "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women's Studies." In her essays, she describes white privilege as "an invisible weightless knapsack."
McIntosh studied English at Radcliffe College and at University College London. She went on to receive her PhD at Harvard University.