Mindful Practices to Interrupt White Supremacy in Higher Education: Opportunities for Educators in Service Learning and Community Engagement

This thesis proposes reflective practices for educators to interrupt white supremacy in higher education service learning programs. It is relevant today as higher education institutions look more closely at their history, often upholding or benefiting from slavery, racism, indigenous removal, and other forms of race-based exploitation. Other work on this topic demonstrates the power of reflectivity and mindfulness practices in reducing the impact of racial biases. The heart of this creative thesis is a research-based curriculum for a learning community of educators to develop capacity to incorporate reflectivity, meditation, and liberatory pedagogies into their classrooms. This curriculum is designed for implementation within higher education settings over the course of an academic year, but could be easily tailored for other settings. While studying the impact of this curriculum on implicit biases is beyond the scope of this thesis, future study is warranted in measuring the effectiveness of this curriculum and its components