Integral Education: The CIIS Blog

Ravi Shankar's Connection to CIIS

Internationally renowned Indian musician and composer Ravi Shakar died yesterday in San Diego at the age of 92, following a year in which he had grappled with heart and upper respiratory illnesses. Shankar was a virtuosic sitar player who began touring the United States in the mid-1950s and is widely credited with helping to popularize Indian music in the West. (Read Ravi Shankar's full obituary.)

Shankar had deep connections to CIIS and to the Institute's founding family, the Chaudhuris. Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri arrived in San Francisco in 1951 and quickly established themselves as intellectual and cultural beacons in the city. They gained a reputation within India as a good connection in the Bay Area, and received and hosted many visitors from India including spiritual teachers and artists. In the late 1960s and beyond, the Chaudhuris became key members of the growing local Indian community in the Bay Area. Shankar and many of his fellow touring Indian musicians become close with the Chaudhuris over the years.

Shankar visited the Institute many times, and in May 1987 he was invited to play a concert in conjunction with a fundraising gala organized by Board Member Zeppelin Wong. He returned in an official capacity in 1989, when the Institute awarded him an honorary doctorate of philosophy.

Over the next week, we hope to update this post with more information about Shankar's long connection to CIIS, its founders, and its community. 

Bina Chaudhuri with Ravi Shankar

Artist Laurel Burch designed and made this print to promote Ravi Shakar's concert at a CIIS gala in 1987.

 

Ravi Shankar at CIIS in 1986

Reasoning the MFA

By CINDY SHEARER, professor and program chair, MFA in Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts and MFA in Writing and Consciousness

In 1978 in London, I had a tan mid-length suede coat, chocolate brown Frye boots, a large leather handbag and daily practice of poetry. I lived in Highbury in North Islington in a basement flat with a small twin bed, a weak shower, and darkness all times of day. I often walked from Euston station to the Reading Room of the British Library on Great Russell Street, rather than take the Tube to Tottenham Court Road, so I could stroll Bloomsbury. Walking Virginia Woolf’s neighborhood was an experience of art for me.

British Museum Reading Room

I carried my notebook everywhere and wormed my way into a mentorship with Elliott Coleman, who’d founded and then directed the Writing Seminars at John Hopkins. Retired, a bit lost, afraid of death after a recent stroke, Elliott shared stories of writers and writing and lessons about visual art, Proust, opera, BBC radio, and the newly installed Pope—John Paul II. Elliott showed me art practice meant paying attention to every detail in the physical landscape and mind’s eye—and absorbing oneself in art.

In London, art was everywhere I was—at the market stalls in Covent Garden or Notting Hill Gate, in Foyles, the ICA, RADA (so many museums, bookstores, galleries!), the West End and Fringe theaters, the rock and classical musicians in the Tube stations, the jazz at Ronnie Scott’s, and part of the pub lunches and take-out dinners I had with artists in my creative writing program.

I immersed myself in art, absorbing it through my skin into my bloodstream—so it could travel through my heart.

Art was in what I read, saw, experienced, touched, related to—every art and all arts were a teacher to me. I didn’t focus on a skill or develop a technique. I took in everything. I learned specifically and generally, within a genre and discipline, and beyond discipline, across discipline and in relationship to everything.

The Integration of Psychology and Spirituality at CIIS

By BRENDAN COLLINS, core faculty in the East-West Psychology and Integral Counseling Psychology departments. Collins is also the co-director of the Chaudhuri Center for Contemplative Practice, Interreligious Dialogue, and Social Justice at CIIS.

CIIS Professor Brendan Collins

Today a doctoral student in our East-West Psychology program, Dave Odorisio, sent me a link to an article in the New York Times on Columbia University's new concentration in spiritual psychology, the first time an Ivy League university has offered a master's degree integrating psychology and spirituality.

CIIS was mentioned as already teaching from a "similar perspective" (the reference to the Institute of Transpersonal Studies was actually an error—the reference should have been to ITP, now known as Sofia University); but CIIS has pioneered in the integration of psychology and spirituality for over 40 years; no university has been doing it longer or more comprehensively.

I appreciated the distinction made by Julie Exline, president of the APA's Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, who pointed out that Columbia's (and CIIS') approach to psychology and spirituality is very different from that offered by faith-based schools, and it is rare in academia.

The most wide-ranging approach to the integration of psychology and spirituality at CIIS is actually in the School of Consciousness and Transformation, particularly in East-West Psychology, because there are limits to how much spirituality can be formally incorporated into the curriculum of license-eligible clinical degrees. In our clinical programs the spiritual component is typically, and notably, embodied in the teachers (and students). Still, I believe it is possible to make spirituality even more explicit in our clinical training programs (as we are doing in the Mindfulness and Compassion in Psychotherapy certificate offered through CIIS Public Programs & Performances).

Profile of Noor Najafi: “Not Simply Passing Through”

By PAULINE E. REIF, alumna of Writing and Consciousness MFA program

Noor Najafi is a first-year MA student in the Integral Counseling Psychology (ICP) program. Noor, an Afghan American, was born in Florida and raised in the Southeast. He graduated from Emory University in Atlanta in 2011 with high honors and awards that included the Robert Woodruff Scholarship, Emory’s highest merit award. A teacher described him as “not simply passing through, but actually forming and shaping the world he would like to live in.”

When asked how his journey led him to CIIS, he spoke of his desire to bridge his traditional academic career with the integral education that the Institute offers: “I want to be at a place where I’m not only engaging intellectually and academically at a mind level, I want to be somewhere where I’m also engaging myself psychically and exploring my own human issues, challenges, and limitations—unearthing what needs to be unearthed. I was seeking the exploration and cultivation of both mind and heart and of all the places I looked, I perceived CIIS to best accommodate these needs."

From a young age Noor experienced life as a continual learning process that did not begin or end with school. He longed to engage his “whole being,” to dive beneath the surface of the known to explore the spiritual questions of the unknown, “the questions that had plagued humans for eons of existence”—What is truth? What is reality? What are we evolving into? As a part of his spiritual quest, he majored in religion at Emory, which gave him the opportunity to investigate in-depth comparative religions, world religion, and mystical philosophy. Wanting more than the intellectual and theoretical, he carried his exploration out of the classroom into holy shrines, places of worship, various spiritual circles, and mystical lineages where he learned different styles of meditation and gained a respect and appreciation for the different ways in which people communicate and express devotion.

He did not think there was a place for him to combine his academic and spiritual dimensions in an institutional setting until a transpersonal psychologist told him of CIIS. Here he’s found a place that “holds space for the human as an individual with all of their subsets, acknowledging the spiritual dimension, which is so important to human life and existence”; a place where the individual is supported in growth and healing.

Noor’s deep interest in the spiritual dimensions of life and his desire and commitment to alleviate the suffering of others as a therapist and a teacher has grown from his own suffering. He struggled with Crohn’s disease from a young age and was in and out of the hospital during his high school years, using every allopathic medical intervention possible. Western medicine did not offer him the complete healing he longed for that would allow him to be free from drug dependency. He wanted a curative, not palliative, path that went below the surface and addressed him as a whole person: “I’m not just this human being who is suffering with an isolated illness that is somehow separate from my whole existence. All of me has to be addressed, and that begins with my self-exploration. I want to be working and studying with people who address all the dimensions of being, not just one aspect because that, I think, is the most effective solution to deep transformative healing work.”

He knew there had to be another way and so his self-exploration took on new forms. He began to work with a transpersonal psychologist, and this experience opened him up in “a very important way.” He came out when he was in college, an essential step in his authenticity and self-expression. His healing process began in full. Since then he has committed to healing all aspects of himself and devoting his life to “empowering others through healing.”

For Noor, this means using and applying the skills he’s previously developed, along with integrating what he’s now learning. It means he will keep pondering the questions, “How can I help others come home to themselves?” and “How can I come home for myself?” Noor wants to help people enter into a practical and experiential awareness of the “indivisibility of the One life that runs through me, you, and all of existence—the idea of Oneness."

Currently he is trained and certified in movement work, energy work, and alchemical healing work with the goal of becoming a licensed psychotherapist and teacher. He shares these various healing modalities within the CIIS community by offering workshops that align with the goals of helping people to begin to explore their potential for authentic freedom. Through the Student Alliance, Noor currently offers two workshops that meet on a regular basis here on campus:

Expressive Movement Exploration (EME) offers workshops/classes that explore different styles of creative movement and themes relevant to life—both individually and universally, in a safe and sacred container. Through creative inquiry, and by connecting with one’s authentic self-expression, participants are afforded the opportunity to “heal through dance, through embodying their lives, wisdom, visions, hopes, and dreams, their journeys merging together.” The next workshop will be held on Friday, July 13, from 6:30–8:30 pm in Namaste Hall in the CIIS Main Building.

Noor also facilitates a monthly Belvaspata group healing session at CIIS. Belvaspata, which means “Healing of the Heart,” is a sacred healing modality brought through by the seer Almine. His next workshop will be held at CIIS on July 27, from 6:30−8:30 pm, in room 210. For both events and information, RSVP to Noor at noornajafi101@yahoo.com.

These words from Krishnamurti provide Noor Najafi with a fitting context for his continued educational, spiritual, and embodied journey at CIIS: “the biggest gift we can give to humanity is our own felt realization.” In Noor’s spiritual quest, he is currently studying the teachings of the mystic-teacher Almine. In Noor’s own words, “We teach by example. We teach by expressing our full potential and that’s my commitment. I want to live truth. I want to live in integrity in my life. I can’t say I’m perfect at it but I want to help others discover home, which is what I’m starting to discover.”

Integral Dreaming: A Holistic Approach to Dreams

By FARIBA BOGZARAN, PhD, East-West Psychology alum, and DANIEL DESLAURIERS, professor in the Transformative Studies PhD program

We are often asked how we came to the idea of writing Integral Dreaming. The book is our collaborative attempt to reveal the complexity and multidimensionality of dreams. Having been part of the dream studies movement since the early 1980s, we realized early on that dreams are a phenomenon too complex to be narrowed down to one discipline or a single author’s theoretical stance. We set ourselves the task of integrating the rigor of science with the wholeness of the multidimensional being.

The concept of Integral Dreaming evolved out of twenty-five years of dialogue, co-teaching and research. We met at the inaugural conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) in 1984 in San Francisco.  At the time, we both were graduate students living in Canada, Fariba studying psychology, researching consciousness and dreams at the University of Regina, and Daniel a doctoral student at Université de Montreal, working on a project marrying cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence and dreams. We were both also practicing artists: Fariba trained in the visual and multimedia arts and Daniel in music and dance.  Every year we met at the IASD conference and attended each other’s presentations. It became apparent early on that each of us, in our unique ways, understood the value of dreaming not only from the perspective of the “hard sciences”, but also from depth psychology and creativity. Before naming it, our approach was already integral.

The intellectual and artistic common ground we shared brought us together as colleagues. At IASD conferences, we participated in dream theater presentations that merged science, archetypal exploration and cross-cultural music and dance (Santa Cruz, 1988 and London, 1989).

At the 1985 IASD conference, Fariba met psycho-physiologist and lucid dream researcher Stephen LaBerge who introduced her to CIIS. Fariba joined his lucid dream team at Stanford Sleep Laboratory. Transferring her courses from the University of Regina to CIIS, she received her MA and PhD in East-West Psychology. Her research explored transpersonal experiences in lucid dreaming. Trained in somatic psychology, art and shamanic studies, she developed Dream Creations as a set of integrative and creative methods to explore dreams. She was appointed as faculty member at JFK University where she founded the Dream Studies program in 1996. Simultaneously, she continued her career as an artist, exploring the connection between arts and consciousness.

Making a Film About the Evolution of Human Consciousness

By ALAN BAISS, Integral Counseling Psychology alum and filmmaker. Learn more about Alan and his films at Integral Inspirations.

Alan has been running an online fundraising campaign for his new film, Conscious, at Indiegogo. If you would like to support his campaign, you have until May 28.

Imagine creating movies that highlight the deep philosophies taught at CIIS in collaboration with a group of alumni who are passionate and dedicated to the vision. We are doing just that, and it’s a dream come true.

"Conscious," our current production, asks about the profound meaning of our moment in time as well as humanity’s great potential to participate with Nature in the next turn in the evolution of consciousness.

Filmmaker Alan Baiss

We are making films under the banner of Integral Inspirations; maybe you have seen "Integral Consciousness," our film about Haridas Chaudhuri, the history of CIIS, and the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. Maybe you have heard of the film "Conversations with Bina," which we had the great honor of making after Bina Chaudhuri passed away. "Conscious" is our third and undoubtedly most ambitious project.

Creating a quality film on a shoestring is a journey loaded with challenges, but when that film is spiritual in its basis, the production takes on elements of a spiritual practice.  Over and over we are being challenged to let go of desired outcomes and to exercise faith in the grace that is present in the production. Imagine flying to India and filming magnificent interviews, only to make the difficult decision of putting most of the interviews in abeyance because of an unanticipated and unrelated situation that arose after filming, and then feeling challenged to trust that somehow this is taking the film in a better direction.

How about our current funding campaign? We are barely over 10 percent of what we need and hoped for. Maybe the invitation is to trust that something greater is arising from our efforts. It could be that the support of the amazing individuals we have connected with as a result of our reaching out will provide vaster riches for the film than achieving our funding goal could; maybe, but of course it would also be nice to reach our goal. Somehow the film "Conscious" insists that we practice the yoga as an integral part of our participation in the production.

We have been interviewing Jerry Schwartz and Pravir Malik for "Conscious." These are two men who are greatly respected in the world of economics and whose philosophy about money grows out of Integral Yoga. Can I present their wisdom on a potential alternative relationship with money in the film with integrity while retaining my familiar values?

"Conscious" is inviting me to act congruently with the film, to have faith in a consciousness far greater than my small "I," and to release what resources I have into service for the realisation of a deeper aspiration, in this case, to make a film with the potential to participate in the evolution of human consciousness.

I graduated from the Integral Counseling Psychology program at CIIS and had a good 12 years in private practice; I really loved this work. Then, after the deaths of my parents, a close friend, and narrowly escaping from a house fire, I realised I did not want to look back on my life and wonder what might have been possible for me if I had taken a chance. I soon closed my practice and returned to San Francisco, and it was here that a series of synchronicities landed me in the unlikely role of producer of films featuring Integral Yoga. I came into this knowing nothing about filmmaking or about Integral Yoga, but thankfully, I have been deeply honored to have been joined on this journey by talented and respected individuals, many of whom, much to my delight, are CIIS alumni.

Please have a look at our campaign and watch some of our videos. If you like what we are aspiring to achieve, please send the film your gift and see what we have for you to show our appreciation. We would also love to hear from you.

CIIS at Top of the List for MFT Licensing Exam Pass Rates in California

By PAULINE E. REIF, alumna of Writing and Consciousness MFA program

CIIS Master of Counseling Psychology students taking the Behavioral Board of Sciences  (BBS) exams for their Marriage and Family Therapy license consistently put CIIS at the top of the list for pass rates in the State of California.

With 96 percent of our students passing the test on their first attempt, CIIS rates as number one for schools in California having more than 20 students. It is also interesting to note that CIIS is among the largest single-campus programs in California with approximately 580 students in attendance.

“These excellent results are reason to be proud and reflect on the quality of our curriculum, faculty, and students,” says Steven Tierney, EdD, chair of the Community Mental Health program (CMH) at CIIS and former president of the San Francisco Health Commission. Tierney believes that our consistent success in licensing exams is due to three primary guiding principles upon which the Institute builds the foundation of its clinical programs, and our high pass rates are a direct result.

The first guiding principle is to train students to be the best clinicians that they can be, concentrating on both theory and clinical practice from the beginning to the end of their programs. The Department of Counseling Psychology degree at CIIS offers five concentrations: Integrative Counseling Psychology, Drama Therapy, Expressive Arts Therapy, Somatic Psychology, and Community Mental Health. According to Tierney, “each of these programs spends a great deal of time putting together a curriculum built on a foundation of student learning objectives—what we want the students to know, which includes an awareness at all times of what’s on the BBS exams.” This creates a strong foundation for effectiveness with their clients as well as providing a theoretical base that prepares them to do well on the BBS exams.

Transformative personal experience provides the second guiding principle, a value that aligns with the Institute’s integral educational philosophy. “People come to CIIS expecting a powerful personal experience, so we build the curriculum and the clinical experience around that,” Tierney says. As a result students become effective advocates for themselves, their careers, and the people they’ll be working with as clinicians. Their evolving self-knowledge enhances their interpersonal relationships, and enables them to help themselves and each other in moving through the rigors of their education, including the BBS exams and their profession.

The third guiding principle is concerned with closing the loop between theory and the clinical experience. Faculty and CIIS trained supervisors in the field collaborate in tying what happens in the student’s practicum back to their theoretical foundation. “We do it really well,” Tierney says. “We work hard to make sure that our students not only hang on to the lessons learned in their academic experience but are also able to effectively integrate those lessons into their practicum within the community.”

Tierney believes that our efforts to integrate theory and clinical practice in the practicum are paying off in pass rate numbers and in the ways in which our students implement and practice their skills in the community.

Many students develop new theories for their practice. CMH alum John Prochnow exemplifies this viable goal: He wanted to work with homeless veterans, but at the time there was no practicum that provided for this. Tierney supported Prochnow and worked with the CIIS placement office to create a practicum with Swords to Ploughshares, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that works with veterans. Prochnow created an effective mental health service program for Swords to Ploughshares that still exists, and he continues to work for the organization.

Rev. Alvin Bernstine, another CMH alum, saw a significant need in his Oakland community for a substance abuse program that really worked. He used his life and pastoral experience in combination with what he’d learned in his classes and through his practicum to create a whole new program that continues to operate effectively in his community today.

Clinic Without Walls is another example of the Institute’s successful implementation of engaged theory and practice. A Community Mental Health program, it operates in three of San Francisco’s public housing communities: Valencia Gardens, Rich Sorro Commons, and Nihonmaci Terrace, providing services at the community level right where people live. Clients don’t have to go out to find services; the services are in their buildings. The Clinic Without Walls offers student interns a chance to work in a practicum at the grass roots level in a non-traditional mental health service environment that’s being created, designed, and tested with supervision and support right here at CIIS.

The high pass rates at CIIS consistently validate the effectiveness of the Institute’s Master of Counseling Psychology programs. The proven curriculum objectives and guiding principles lay the groundwork for our students’ success in the classroom, in the community, on the licensing exams, and in their chosen professional careers. CIIS continues to train excellent clinicians, offer a personal and transformative experience, and integrate clinical and theoretical knowledge for the benefit of our students and those in the Bay Area communities that they serve.

Interview: Bryant Welch, Chair of the Clinical Psychology Program

By PAULINE E. REIF, alumna of Writing and Consciousness MFA program

Bryant Welch, JD, PhD, chair of the Clinical Psychology (PsyD) program, comes to CIIS with more than 30 years of experience as a nationally prominent psychologist. A Harvard College and Harvard Law School graduate, he received his PhD in clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976. He’s held faculty appointments at the University of University of North Carolina and George Washington University. He is a research associate graduate of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. From 1986 to 1993, Welch initiated and ran the American Psychological Association Practice Directorate, leading organized psychology through one of its most successful advocacy eras.

Much can be said of Dr. Welch’s broad experience and leadership in law, psychology, and politics. As a clinician, researcher, teacher, advocate, activist, and author he brings to the CIIS community a wealth of knowledge, skill, and passion.

I recently spoke to Welch about what brought him to CIIS and why he views it as a “wonderful home” in which to continue his work.

Pauline: Let’s begin with how you came to CIIS. Why CIIS for you?

Bryant: I came to CIIS because this is a uniquely exciting time in psychology. For the first time in my career as a psychologist we have this very exciting convergence of neuroscience and spirituality and what was at one time dismissed as “West Coast Woo-Woo” is now, lo and behold, being substantiated by Western neuroscience. That is a huge intellectual development with all kinds of implications. I think for CIIS it represents an astonishing validation for the vision of its founding fathers, namely that Eastern thought had a lot to inform Western psychology and Western culture. This leads to a variety of implications for the practice of psychology. We’ve now got a critical mass of integrated information that we’ve just not had in the past. And we’ve got new treatments that are flowering as a result of this convergence. So, I was looking for a place where I could work and integrate this new information and disseminate it into the mental health field and also into the larger world community. 

I’ve also always been interested in social justice and politics and been particularly intrigued by the psychological consequences of injustice and oppression. In my book written a few years ago called, "State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind" (Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martins Press, June, 2008), I explore how people are being manipulated and trying to show psychologically how that kind of manipulation exploits psychological vulnerabilities but also makes people sicker in the process of doing it. So I’m very interested in the psychology of what oppression does to people whatever form it’s in and hope to build a strong social justice component focusing on answering the psychological questions surrounding these issues. I see CIIS as an incredible place to address these goals.

Also, when I first came here for interviews, I loved the faculty and thought that the administration seemed to be very, very trustworthy and so, it felt like a potentially wonderful home and I feel that it is.

Pauline: So CIIS is the kind of place one comes home to, a community of like minds, but it’s also a place where one is stretched as well.

Bryant: Yes. I’ve been to some really good schools and I’ve been with some really good institutions and I’ve never been in a place as stimulating as this…never. You know, I was on the Harvard campus in the 60s and the early 70s and that was pretty exciting but I’m telling you it’s nothing compared to this.

And then you’ve got the people here, an extremely bright faculty who actually practice what they teach. It’s just a remarkable place, an extraordinary culture, that’s very different from others I’ve been a part of.

Pauline: Can you address in a little more detail what makes the PsyD program at CIIS unique? Why come here?

Bryant: Yes. There are a lot of things I can say about why it’s unique. I think the most unique thing about the culture here is that thing that’s hardest to put into words that I don’t think a person can understand by reading a course catalog.

(Visit CIIS' YouTube channel to watch Bryant Welch talk more about the PsyD program)

Second, issues like cultural diversity, social justice and subjective human experience are revered here and people here—actually—live their respect for those aspects of human experience.

In terms of our program compared to other programs, our students have tremendous academic flexibility. The range of things our students can study here wouldn’t be allowed in other more conventional programs. This is evident in their dissertations, written on subjects that include spiritual issues and subjective human experience.

It’s also important to note that we’re one of three Clinical Psychology Doctoral program facilities in the State of California that’s been approved for Mental Health Stipends to support graduate students who are working in underserved populations. These internships meet the APA standards even though serving this population is not an APA requirement. These programs tend not to have as much money nor provide as big a stipend as the APA programs offer, but our students want to work in these programs and we support them in these situations. As I’ve said, this is a very, very humanistic and spiritual place with just tremendous emphasis on subjective human experience.

The Roots of CIIS: The Early Colloquia

By ZACK ROGOW, senior editor at CIIS. His writings include a recent book of poems, "My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers," from Kattywompus Press. 

California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) is the successor to another university, called the American Academy of Asian Studies (AAAS). The Academy was founded in 1951 in San Francisco, and it was celebrated in its heyday for the Friday night colloquia that were conducted by three of its most popular professors, Alan Watts, Haridas Chaudhuri, and Frederic Spiegelberg.

Michael Murphy, who was a student at the academy at the time and went on to cofound Esalen Institute and the human potential movement, describes Watts, Chaudhuri, and Spiegelberg: “They were all charismatic, spirited, and knew a lot. All three of them were very eloquent.”

AAAS Founder Louis Gainsborough (far left) and AAAS Faculty Frederic Spiegelberg, Judith Tyberg, Dr. Haridas Chauduri, and Alan Watts.

The colloquia were packed every Friday evening at the Academy, initially located on First and Sansome streets in San Francisco. Even to get in the room, you had to arrive an hour early. The attendees included many of the brightest young minds of the time: poets Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Phillip Whalen, and Michael McClure; Esalen cofounder Richard Price; and Richard Hittleman, who first widely popularized yoga in North America through the TV show he hosted. Enormously influential, the colloquia on topics related to Asian religion, art, philosophy, and politics helped stir and warm up the broth that heated to boiling during the San Francisco Renaissance.

A Letter to a Colleague: Some Thoughts on Responsibility

By NICK WALKER, adjunct faculty member in the BAC program, an alumnus of the BAC and Somatic Psychology programs, and a doctoral candidate in the Transformative Studies program. Nick is senior instructor at Aikido Shusekai, an aikido dojo in Berkeley, and also works as a speaker, trainer, and consultant on embodiment, diversity, neurodiversity, and integral practice.

Yesterday it was my painful duty to write a strongly critical letter to a colleague, a psychology researcher who works at a university far from CIIS (“far” in terms of both geography and institutional perspective), whom I’ve never met and whom I know only by reputation.

Here is the complete and unedited text of my letter:

Dear Dr. ____________,

A colleague forwarded me your survey on autism and sexuality.

I'm shocked – and, frankly, outraged – that any Psychology scholar in the 21st Century, and particularly a scholar who claims "Research Methodology" and "Stereotypes and Prejudice" among her research interests, would create and distribute a survey on sexuality that so blatantly excludes and marginalizes all forms of sex/gender identity that fall outside of the narrow conventions of the "gender binary" model.

Your survey repeatedly conflates gender and biological sex. Your questions assume that there are exactly two types of genitalia and exactly two genders, and that if a person has one type of genitalia, that person is necessarily male, while a person with the other type of genitalia is necessarily female. You ask about the research participants' feelings about being male or about being female, with the assumption that every participant must be either one or the other. You don't even provide the option of answers like "None of the Above," "Other," or "Not Applicable," much less make room for the voices of participants who are intersex, asexual, agendered, transgendered, multigendered, fluid-gendered, etc.

While this sort of binarism and ciscentrism unfortunately remain the norm in mainstream society, one expects better from a scholar of your caliber, especially a scholar in your particular field and with your particular research interests. Those of us who have attained advanced degrees and academic positions in the social sciences incur a certain degree of social responsibility - responsibility to advance human understanding and social justice by uncovering and challenging the biases and prejudices that marginalize any of our fellow human beings. And this process of uncovering and challenging bias and prejudice begins with critical reflection on our own fields and especially our own work.

In addition to the ethical issues here, there is an issue of validity. Having studied the autistic community up-close for over a dozen years, I can tell you that sex/gender identities outside of the "gender binary" are in fact significantly more prevalent among autistic adults than among neurotypical adults. By constructing your survey in a way that shuts out the voices of those outside of the gender binary, you have skewed the results of your research so severely as to render the results of your study invalid.

Should you continue to do research on autism and/or sexuality, I sincerely hope that prior to distributing any surveys or publishing any results, you will have your work thoroughly vetted by scholars within the autistic community (in the case of any study relating to autism) and scholars knowledgeable in the fields of Gender Studies or Queer Studies (in the case of any study relating to sexuality). I would be happy to direct you to some excellent scholars in these fields who I'm sure would gladly assist you.

I believe that your research topic is a very important one, and I applaud your intentions and support your further work in this direction. I hope you will take this letter in the constructive spirit in which it was intended.

Sincerely Yours,

Nick Walker

California Institute of Integral Studies

I wrote this letter for a few reasons, which I believe are worth enumerating here:

First, of course, there is the social responsibility that I mentioned in the letter – the responsibility of each and every member of the worldwide community of scholars to take a leadership role in advancing human understanding and social justice, and to continually uncover and challenge the biases and prejudices that pervade our own fields.

Second, my sense of ethics demanded it on a personal level. I had become involved in two different discussions concerning the flaws of the study in question – one discussion among outraged academic colleagues and one discussion among outraged fellow members of the autistic self-advocacy community. My own code of personal and professional ethics prohibits me from saying anything behind a colleague’s back that I won’t say to that colleague directly, so once people started trying to draw me into discussions of this study, it became an ethical imperative for me to communicate with the study’s author personally.

Finally, I’m not just a scholar and educator, I’m a scholar and educator at CIIS. I’m well aware that CIIS struggles with diversity issues. As an institution, we’re not free of racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, or other forms of prejudice. But the important thing is that we do struggle with those issues. We engage with them; we make a sincere and continual effort to address them. We have genuine commitment to diversity and inclusion, even if we’re not perfect at it. As a disabled (autistic) student and faculty member, I encounter less discrimination here, and more sincere attempts at understanding and inclusion, than I’d be likely to encounter at just about any other academic institution. I’m proud of my school’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, and I believe that our successes in that realm invest CIIS scholars with a certain degree of responsibility to actively serve as voices of conscience in the broader acadmic community.

Which might mean writing the occasional difficult letter.

(By the way, I did hear back from the colleague to whom I sent the letter, and we're now engaged in a very amicable, constructive dialogue on how the study can be reworked for greater inclusivity.)