education
TEACHING THE
TEACHERS
Dr. Khyati Joshi trains educators to promote social justice
WRITTEN BY CINDY SCHWEICHHANDLER
Dr. Khyati Joshi became
interested in the systemic
nature of bias the hard
way: She was avictim of
it herself. Anaturalized
citizen who emigrated with her family
to the U.S. from Gujarat, India,
when she was 18 months old, she
says that, as a“brown girl,” she didn’t
fit into her Atlanta community. “Folks
didn’t know what to do with me,”
she says. In middle school, she was
bullied so relentlessly that her
academic work suffered.
“A good day was when nobody
talked to me because then nobody
harassed me,” she says. “I’d leave
school and think that the only
communication Ihad was with
teachers, but atleast Iwasn’t made
fun of. Nowonder Imade all C’s.”
Though she grew upalongside
many Hindu community members,
it was reading Night by holocausts
survivor Elie Wiesel that changed her
life. “I was obsessed,” she says. “It
drove my history and English teachers
crazy.” Joshi majored in religious
studies at Emory University, studied
at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
for ayear and returned to America
to pursue her doctorate in Social
Justice Education atthe University of
Massachusetts-Amherst.
Joshi was then a visiting assistant
professor at the Center for the Study
of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia
University, where she taught Asian
American Studies and Comparative
Ethnic Studies; she also taught in
the American Studies program at
Princeton University. Currently, she is
a social science researcher and professor
of education at Fairleigh Dickinson
University. She lives in Wayne.
With more than 20 years’ experience
teaching students about race,
religion, immigration and social justice,
Joshi is well-suited to share her
insights with other educators, which
she has been doing for most of those
years. “My students are current teachers
and soon-to-be teachers,” she says,
at public, charter and private schools.
Many of the educators are aware
of Joshi’s expertise because they have
attended the Institute for Diversity
and Social Justice, a summer
program she runs that began as
a collaboration between Fairleigh
Dickinson and the American
Conference on Diversity (this year’s
session was canceled due to COVID-
19). Joshi has trained teachers in the
Hackensack, Teaneck and Florham
Park school districts, and has given
JOSHI: COURTESY OF CHARMI PEÑA; BOOKS: COURTESY OF NYU PRESS
16 BACK TOSCHOOL 2020 WAYNE MAGAZINE