"Progressive Stack": A Scholarly Paper from The Grievance Studies Project

The Progressive Stack: An Intersectional Feminist Approach to Pedagogy

A SCHOLARLY PAPER FROM THE GRIEVANCE STUDIES PROJECT

Summary

In the name of Maria Gonzalez, Ph.D. (fictitious) of the (fictitious) Feminist Activist Collective for Truth (FACT) by Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose.

Discipline/subdiscipline: feminist pedagogy (philosophy of education)

Summary: This is our most appalling paper, and it’s deeply concerning that how it is being treated at the highly respected journal Hypatia. It forwards that educators should discriminate by identity and calculate their students’ status in terms of privilege, favor the least privileged with more time, attention and positive feedback and penalize the most privileged by declining to hear their contributions, deriding their input, intentionally speaking over them, and making them sit on the floor in chains—framed as educational opportunities we termed “experiential reparations.”

Purpose: Patently unfair, inhumane, and abusive treatments of students will be acceptable in educational theory if it is framed as an opportunity to teach them about the problems of privilege.

Note: This paper insists that the most privileged students shouldn’t be allowed to speak in class at all and should just listen and learn in silence throughout the term. Even more, it insists that students with high privilege could benefit from adding on “experiential reparations,” such as sitting in the floor, wearing chains, or intentionally being spoken over, as an educational “opportunity” within the class. The reviewers’ only concerns with these points so far have been that (1) we approach the topic with too much compassion for the students who are being subjected to this, and (2) we risk exploiting underprivileged students by burdening them with an expectation to teach about privilege. To correct for this, the reviewers urged us to make sure we avoid “recentering the needs of the privileged.” They asked us to incorporate Megan Boler’s approach called “pedagogy of discomfort” and Barbara Applebaum’s insistence that the privileged learn from this discomfort rather than being coddled or having their own experiences (suffering) “recentered.” It also utilizes Robin DiAngelo’s now-famous concept of “white fragility” to explain why students subjected to this treatment will object to it, and uses that to justify the more cruel treatment suggested by the reviewers. The reviewers acknowledged that they believe this “fragility” is the correct interpretation for student pushback against being told to stay silent and sit in the floor, possibly in chains, throughout the semester.

Notes on Status:
Three times “reject and resubmit” at Hypatia
(This status means that the journal is interested in the paper but does not consider it successful enough to put on track for acceptance. It’s weakly positive.)

Selected Reviewer Comments:
“This is a solid essay that, with revision, will make a strong contribution to the growing literature on addressing epistemic injustice in the classroom. The focus on the Progressive Stack is interesting yet focused and it is great that the author is trying to suggest some specific approaches.” -Reviewer 1, first review, Hypatia

“I like this project very much. I think the author’s insights are on target and I think that the literature on epistemic injustice has lots to of er classroom pedagogies, I encourage the author to continue working on this project.” -Reviewer 2, first review, Hypatia

“This is a worthwhile and interesting project. The essay is just not ready yet.” -Reviewer 2, second review, Hypatia

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Abstract

The “progressive stack,” a heuristic that arose in progressive social movements, has recently gained traction as pedagogical technique, although currently there is virtually no peer-reviewed scholarship surrounding its use in the classroom. This paper aims to establish an ethical infrastructure governing the progressive stack’s adoption as a pedagogical technique while also theoretically engaging common objections. First, it explores recent scholarship on epistemic injustice, oppression, and exploitation and its applicability to the educational environment. Second, it explains the progressive stack and how it can temporarily address and remediate injustices in the classroom. Third, it replies to objections for using the progressive stack by applying Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” and offers suggestions for conditions of solidarity through experiential reparations in the classroom setting. Finally, it argues that educators should engage these objections by means of critically compassionate intellectualism without recentering the needs of the privileged.

Keywords
progressive stack; epistemic oppression; epistemic exploitation; privileged fragility; pedagogy of discomfort

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Epistemic Oppression in the Classroom

Over the last two decades, considerable attention has been paid to issues of social justice in relation to epistemology. This is a particularly difficult and complex area of study, not least due to its intangible nature and the difficulty of evaluating an epistemological system from within. This paper considers social justice and epistemology in relation to pedagogy and offers a simple, user-friendly framework known as the progressive stack that has the potential to remediate epistemic injustice in the classroom.

Of considerable importance to social justice, epistemology, and their combined pedagogical application is the work of Miranda Fricker, particularly her investigation of epistemic injustice (Fricker 2003, 2006, 2007). For Fricker, epistemic injustice can be categorized into two primary types: “testimonial injustice, in which someone is wronged in their capacity as a giver of knowledge,” and “hermeneutical injustice, in which someone is wronged in their capacity as a subject of social understanding” (2007, 5). She argues,

Testimonial injustice occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word; hermeneutical injustice occurs at a prior stage, when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences. (2007, 1)

Both injustices constitute chronic and challenging problems within education, which are exacerbated by the fact that they can be self-fulfilling or self-augmenting (Fricker 2007, 57–58). Moreover, these injustices “can cramp self-development, so that a person may be, quite literally, prevented from becoming who they are” (Fricker 2007, 5). We see this often in classrooms where non-white students are expected to abnegate the authenticity of their cultural heritage to adopt the “correct” vernacular, diction, spelling, and grammar of (white) received (American) English. Of note, Fricker identifies that there is no epistemic injustice unless there is (identity) prejudice (Fricker 2007, 2017). It is of relevance, then, that it has been conclusively established that prejudice exists in classroom discourses, both by subjective measures like Students of Color self-reports and by empirical data (e.g., Chesler, Wilson, & Malani 1993; Hutchinson 2014; Jacoby-Senghor et al. 2016; Solorzano, Ceja, & Yosso. 2000). Likewise, it is well established that marginalized knowers confront epistemic oppression and injustice: “For marginalized persons in dominant institutions, unjust conditions and unequal bargaining power are the rule, not the exception.” (Davis 2016, 8).

Fricker’s conceptualization of epistemic injustice, however useful and groundbreaking, has been limited in its capacity to lead to justice in the classroom environment. As such, Kristie Dotson is
recognized among the most influential voices in discussions taking place at the intersection of applied epistemology and social justice, especially as she identifies irreducible problems within epistemic systems themselves. Dotson’s concept of epistemic oppression, which subsumes and expands much that was observed by Fricker, “refers to a persistent and unwarranted infringement on the ability to utilize persuasively shared epistemic resources that hinder one’s contributions to knowledge production” (Dotson 2014, 116). Going beyond Fricker, then, Dotson demonstrates three orders of epistemic oppression experienced by marginalized groups as a result of prejudiced assumptions about their capacity as knowers. For Dotson, Fricker’s testimonial injustice represents the core of first-order epistemic oppression, while hermeneutical injustice underlies that of the second order. In this, however, Dotson spots an important absence: a third-order form of epistemic oppression that is “caused by an epistemic agent’s situated ignorance, in the form of willful hermeneutical ignorance, in maintaining and utilizing structurally prejudiced hermeneutical resources that result in epistemic harm to the epistemic agency of a knower” (2012, 31). This yields a useful separation of reducible and irreducible forms of epistemic oppression.

Both reducible and irreducible forms of epistemic oppression are products of socially and historically contingent power relations, but the former is a consequence of social and political oppression while the latter is a feature of the epistemological system itself. Dotson’s analysis therefore provides an explanation that epistemic exclusion impedes the ability for the epistemically oppressed to produce knowledge by excluding certain situated knowledge from the realm of shared epistemological resources. These include, for example, the lived experience of oppression, the affective, and epistemological approaches that fall outside of the “rational” Western philosophical tradition (cf. Wolf 2017). (This precise sort of exclusion was codified in that tradition nearly from its beginning in Symposium, which begins with Socrates ejecting all women and slaves.) Despite recent advances in justice-oriented pedagogical research, epistemic oppression in its various forms remains a demonstrated problem within the classroom setting. It is therefore of particular interest because it puts marginalized students at a disadvantage and perpetuates a stunted epistemological system that restricts learning (Bailey 2014, 2015, 2017; Dotson 2011, 2014; Wolf 2017).

Any meaningful attempt to address irreducible epistemic oppression requires what Dotson (2012, 2014) describes as a third-order change of organizational schemata, in which the (privileged)
knower becomes aware of the limits of her (dominant) epistemological system. To get a sense of this, imagine the situation in which someone, student or instructor, insists that a marginalized student explain the affective or spiritual content of her lived experience in terms deemed suitable only in the Western logic-centric mode of interpretation (cf. Wolf 2017). Specifically, consider the case from my own class in which a South Asian Hindu immigrant student attempted to describe her complex relationship with her racial experiences across two cultures, her religion, and dharma. She was met with incredulity and dismissal by white students who possessed the epistemic resources (1) only to understand accounts in terms of “reason” and “evidence” as prescribed by the Western philosophical canon and (2) only to understand knowledge that draws upon the symbols and beliefs of (white) Protestant religious narratives. They could not comprehend or give credibility to a South Asian Hindu knower or recognize the limits of their own epistemic system as causing this credibility deficit. They thus simply regarded her account as incredible. Only by understanding the limitations of the dominant epistemological system being imposed—which, if it can be done at all from within, is extremely rare—might such a third-order change be possible and thus this demand be rightly rendered illegitimate. Dotson therefore describes such a change as “extraordinarily difficult” and “impossible for many” (2014, 131–132).

Alison Bailey is another scholar who addresses epistemic concerns within the classroom but, for Bailey (2009; cf. Dotson 2011), Tuana and Sullivan’s (2007) concept of willful ignorance on the part of the privileged is the more pressing issue. In that light, she painstakingly sets out the source of the most common form of resistance put forth by students in classrooms that adopt diversity and inclusion initiatives. This is the problem of privilege-evasive epistemic pushback, which Bailey defines as “the variety of willful ignorance that many members of dominant groups engage in when they are asked to consider both the lived experience and structural injustices that members of marginalized groups experience daily” (Bailey 2015; cf. Wolf 2017). Immediately coming to mind is a classroom discussion in which a white male student demanded of a black female student that diversity and inclusion initiatives be justified in terms of “equality of opportunity” or else be considered “(reverse)-racist.” This kind of resistance, which assumes a (non-existent) level societal playing field, is common in such situations. Take for another example the student who insisted, in reply to a black student talking about her uncomfortable lived experiences with Whiteness, that she is being “racist” because “racism is discrimination based upon race,” thus revealing a willful ignorance of the significance of social power structures to experiences of racism (cf. Applebaum 2017). By pushing back in this way, as comports with the observations of Dotson (2014), privileged students avoid understanding the perspectives of marginalised students and/or recognizing them as knowers because doing so threatens their epistemic security, which undermines their sense of themselves and their access to a belief that society is just and fair.

To consider marginalized students simply “disadvantaged” epistemically, however, is to risk understating the magnitude of the problem and further inflict psychological harm. To be asked to justify one’s knowledge and then be undervalued as a knower and dismissed is not merely epistemic exclusion; it is epistemic abuse. Nora Berenstain (2016) makes this clear in her development of epistemic exploitation, which is a problem inadvertently attendant to many diversity and inclusion pedagogies that seek to forward marginalized perspectives within the classroom. Such exploitation occurs when privileged persons feel entitled to demand that marginalized persons justify their claims or expect them to educate the privileged on the oppression they face. These recenter the needs of privileged groups while enabling their assumption that they are both better able and entitled to evaluate marginalized knowledge under “legitimate” epistemologies. This occurred in my class when a black student spent nearly fifteen minutes answering questions about how rape culture affects black women differently than it does white women due to racialized assumptions around gender, sexuality, and male entitlement. She found the apparent interest in understanding her account encouraging at first but soon became upset and exhausted as white women and men pressed to to explain in ever-increasing detail how she knew that a certain behavior arose due to racist assumptions (from white women mostly) and why she read it as male entitlement and sexual harassment (from men mostly). Not only was her credibility immediately put up for questioning, but also other students then felt entitled to increasingly detailed accounts of traumatic experiences from her (and others) and for the analyses of these experiences to be put in terms they understand. As a result, I ended the interrogation. Epistemic exploitation therefore can be seen to maintain structures of oppression by pressing marginalized students into providing a free and often painful and demeaning service to privileged ones. This injury is intensified when the shared experience goes on to be dismissed, which is what led Spivak (1988) to identify it as a kind of “epistemic violence.” As Berenstain (2016) makes clear, epistemic exploitation is very commonly witnessed by those working within pedagogy, and strategies to prevent it are currently underdeveloped.

It is therefore important to consider the need for a solution which incorporates both the structural and individual element of epistemic injustice and acknowledges both reducible (socially-based)
and irreducible (epistemically-based) epistemic oppression—without relying upon the epistemic exploitation of marginalized students. This is no small task! To avoid oversimplifying the issues or
placing too much confidence in the capabilities and good faith of individuals, the structure should be informed by Bailey’s observations about pushback, Boler’s advice on utilizing discomfort
pedagogically, and Davis’ warning that rigidity can lead to unwitting perpetuation of oppression. One direct way to approach this complex problem is by a means that levels the field within the classroom; that is, by de/reprivileging the classroom environment so that systemic inequities and injustices can be overcome. A progressive stack pedagogy can offer this as a starting point; an initial, relatively simple and user-friendly framework for addressing endemic epistemic problems in classroom environments that retains enough versatility to combine and enhance with other established justice-oriented pedagogical methods.

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A Progressive Stack Pedagogy

“Progressive stacking” is a practice developed by social activists (and used during the Occupy Wall Street Movement, hereafter OWS) as a way of navigating movement politics and for determining
which people deserve to stand nearest to the front of public venues, such as meetings and concerts (Friend 2017; Quintana and Supiano 2017). As described by Brucato, it is a heuristic “in which people from historically oppressed groups talk first, and when frequent contributors to the discussion are moved back in the speaking order” (2012, 81; cf. Maharawal 2013, 179). In general, a progressive stack, in this sense, is a heuristic (or set of heuristics) by which members of oppressed and/or privileged groups can be appropriately prioritized in access or opportunity in a way that can counteract, disrupt, or remediate prevailing social injustices. In agreement with Maharawal, I deem that the impact of a progressive stack architecture depends specifically upon “the inclusivity of decision-making structures [which] may be judged by the metric of how they either enable or restrict participation by working class people, minorities, women, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and those who are differently abled” (2013, 180). Particularly, forwarding these qualities defines the progressive stack in terms of its capacity as a tool of remediation, as Maharawal went on to argue in the context of the OWS movement:

My argument is that it is only through its radical politics of inclusion that Occupy recognized this political imperative and strove (with varying degrees of success and failure) to move beyond an exclusionary liberal universalist interpretation of the 99 percent. This is the strand within Occupy wherein organizational forms took seriously privilege and uneven power relations, wherein those involved were self-reflexive and deconstructed/dismantled their own forms of privilege and power, indeed, wherein the work of anti-oppression and dismantling privilege were considered fundamental political work. (2013, 180)

More specifically, a progressive stack is applied whenever privilege-salient (i.e., intersectional) variables such as race, gender, class, and other identity statuses form the basis for selectively providing marginalized individuals greater opportunity to be heard, considered knowers, and granted access to shared epistemic spaces. This is not just theoretical. As demonstrated by Maharawal (2013), progressive stacking was effective in this capacity where it was applied within the OWS movement. Similarly, Juris et al. also observed that, in practice, the progressive stack constituted an effective means for navigating power and difference within the OWS movement in Boston, particularly for generating “an awareness of internal differences, privilege and intersecting racial, class, gender and other forms of domination typical of the wider society” (2012, 436). Their analysis indicates the progressive stack may be especially useful for avoiding (epistemic) exploitation of marginalized knowers, as it addresses a need for “a self-reflexive, adaptable approach toward negotiating and bridging such differences” (p. 435). As further noted by Picower, educators played one of the most significant roles in facilitating successful organizational efforts within the context of political movements: “TAs [teacher activists] used an additional tool called a ‘progressive stack’ to ensure that patterns of racism and marginalization were not reproduced within their space” (2013, 52). In practice,

a ‘stack keeper’ was designated to keep the ‘stack,’ a list of people who want to speak. Rather than chronological order of who indicated they wanted to speak, they used a ‘progressive stack’ prioritizing the voices of historically marginalized people (i.e., people of color, women, people who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Bisexual, Questioning (LGTBQ), youth). (2013, 52)

In that context, the progressive stack was effective. As described in Picower by an educator named Xiomara, “The benefit… is that people who are members of dominant groups are made aware of their privilege and are reminded to step back … Historically marginalized groups of people are encouraged to have their voices heard and to step up” (Picower 2013, 53). Moreover, the progressive stack achieves this through a recognized and intersectional prioritization schema that fluidly de/reprivileges the (learning) environment.

Though criticized in the movement environment for “act[ing] as a Band-Aid solution covering over pervasive power dynamics that are hard to pinpoint and resolve” that can lead progressive activists to “feel slightly better” about themselves while eschewing real work (Seltzer 2011, n.p.), there are compelling theoretical and demonstrable reasons to embrace the progressive stack in educational arenas. These are bolstered by the effectiveness documented by Picower’s (2013) teacher activists when applied by educators, even within the movement environment. Furthermore, as demonstrated by Daniels, a progressive stack pedagogical approach has the capacity, in practice, to mitigate biases even if only within the classroom, both implicit and explicit (Flaherty 2017). This successful application may follow because, as a pedagogical tool, the progressive stack is specifically designed to align with Dotson’s (2014) observations about organizational schemata and decrease epistemic oppression within that space by increasing the range of the shared epistemic resources in the space. It would accomplish this by drawing from and applying an intersectional hermeneutic in order to de/reprivilege the classroom environment to create learning opportunities in line with José Medina’s (2012) Epistemology of Resistance. That is, it can offer an equitable opportunity for speech from all voices in the classroom space—especially voices that are frequently discounted, submerged, marginalized, or im/explicitly discredited/excluded from dominant discourses (cf. Maharawal 2013; Picower 2013). In so doing, it aims to improve the likelihood that marginalized voices within classroom spaces will set the modes of interpretation and form the shared epistemic resource within the space (cf. Dotson 2014) while more privileged ones will find themselves in an ideal learning environment for challenging their own views (cf. Boler 1999, 2004; cf. Medina 2012).

Though the pedagogical literature has given this promising tool virtually no attention, it has been employed in some classrooms at least since the 1990s (Flaherty 2017). For example, as described
by University of Pennsylvania teaching assistant Stephanie McKellop, “I will always call on my black women students first. Other [people of color] get second-tier priority. [White women] come next. And, if I have to, white men” (quoted in Flaherty 2017, n.p.). Despite its intersectional merits, however, the progressive stack has not transferred to the classroom without significant pushback and controversy. McKellop was, for instance, asked by the University of Pennsylvania to desist from using a progressive stack classroom architecture after complaints (Flaherty 2017), which led to her story becoming the epicenter of a (largely reactionary) media spectacle. As McKellop explained, “Penn thinks I’m racist and discriminatory towards my students for using a very well-worn pedagogical tactic which includes calling on [people of color]” (quoted in Flaherty 2017, n.p.). Daniels described this pushback against McKellop’s progressively stacked classroom as being “ripped from the ‘playbook’ of the far right” and observed it came in response to McKellop trying to “uphold [the University of Pennsylvania’s] values” (Flaherty 2017, n.p.). Indeed, the backlash produced an intense tempest-in-a-teapot social media reaction among reactionary voices, particularly those situated on the (far) political right, including “classical liberals,” the “alt-right,” and contemporary Nazi sympathizers who view the pedagogy as “reverse” discrimination toward privileged groups (Cowart 2017; Flaherty 2017; Mitchell 2017; Saul 2017; Ubiñas 2017). While it is important to unpack and examine these claims, before doing so I will now take a more in depth look at the application of the progressive stack.

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Applying the Progressive Stack Pedagogy

A prerequisite objective for applying a progressive stack is identifying extant structures of privilege and inequality, especially those contributing or related to epistemic injustices. These inequalities are best understood intersectionally. That is, oppression within the classroom proceeds from an appreciation that power dynamics embedded in race, gender, and a suite of other intersecting variables that make up one’s identity work in concert. Intersecting oppressions, as such, tend to multiply oppressions at the same time as obscuring their precise sources. In addition to those already mentioned, these include immigration status, weight/body composition, sexual orientation, age, ability status, socioeconomic status, mental health factors, and others, and they can be difficult to counter because they form a matrix of oppression for which there rarely is any single source (cf. Collins 1990; Crenshaw 2012). A progressive stack classroom architecture therefore begins by collecting and coding this information before attempting to de/reprivilege the classroom environment accordingly.

In this way—by engaging directly and materially with the intersectional reality of students in a classroom ecosystem—the progressive stack seeks to de/reprivilege the ancestral, historical, gendered, and other systemic oppressions, inequalities, disadvantages, and advantages embedded in students’ lived experiences (thus statuses as knowers) to improve educational opportunities and outcomes. In theory, it would effect this goal by expanding the set of shared epistemic resources within the classroom in accordance with concerns identified by various researchers, particularly Dotson (2014) and Medina (2012). Specifically, marginalized students in progressively stacked classrooms could gain greater opportunity to share knowledge while privileged students have an opportunity to experience a reformed classroom environment, reflect on the ways they have been complicit in maintaining unequal power relations, and momentarily undo the epistemic injustices these dynamics impose. As such, a progressive stack pedagogy would provide a means to interrupt problematic hegemonic processes while simultaneously offering those who benefit from privilege an opportunity to temporarily relinquish them to others who are the beneficiaries of fewer systemic advantages. This result has been, if imperfectly, corroborated by many experiences in the OWS movement environment (esp. Picower 2013).

In practice, applying the progressive stack requires little more than classroom organization and logistics. At the beginning of every semester students would be encouraged to volunteer information about the facts of their personal identities, while being left free not to. Perhaps the most successful pedagogical method currently in use for determining such information through an educational and interactive framework has been a (popular) “step forward, step back”/“privilege walk” methodology (Privilege Walk n.d.; cf. Seltzer 2011; Step Forward n.d.), which I have applied in my own classes. These activities, which students self-report enjoying, invite learners to participate in an interactive event in which they physically or symbolically (say, on a game board or scorecard) step forward by a given numbers of steps whenever they meet certain privileging conditions and step back when described by certain known oppressive features.

Because privilege and oppression can present themselves in both obvious and subtle ways that may not have been critically examined, the specific markers of privilege and oppression employed in each case may be revealed best when queried in both direct and indirect ways. Still, all prompts should be salient to intersectionally material variables like race, gender, sexual orientation, cis/trans* status, ability, credentials, ancestry, and immigration status, among others. Direct means for assessing these variables can include noting such privileging and marginalizing factors explicitly; for instance, “take W steps forward if you are white,” “take B steps backward if you are Black,” “take M steps forward if you are a man,” “take T steps backwards if you identify as trans*,” and so on (cf. Privilege Walk n.d.; Step Forward n.d.). Indirect means could assess these variables more subtly by employing statistical assessments applicable to structural inequalities in society; for example, “take R steps forward if you had more than fifty books in your house when you were growing up” and “take S steps backward if you had to explain your sexuality to your parents” (Privilege Walk n.d.; Step Forward n.d.). When tallied, these scores can effectively code students’ background levels of oppression and privilege for “stack keeping,” as it was termed during the OWS movement.

The machinery of the progressive stack then indexes those scores from highest (more privilege/opportunity) to lowest (more oppression) as a means of determining an order of priority for calling upon or otherwise engaging students within the classroom/educational space. Roughly, these scores order students in a way reflective of Dotson’s (2014) Analogy of the Cave, in which the most oppressed are imagined positioned farthest on the left while the most privileged are farthest on the right. It then resets their status as knowers accordingly. This therefore creates a functional tool by which the pre-existing organizational schemata within the classroom can be approximately assessed and intervened upon. Of note, by assessing advantage and oppression numerically according to some appropriately (preferably institutionally) established rubric (such as those in the “Step Forward, Step Back”/”Progressive Walk” documents [Progressive Walk n.d.; Step Forward n.d.]) that could be further tailored to each institution or classroom, subtle and implicit biases (cf. Flaherty 2017) can be avoided and overcome in a fair and inclusive way that takes into account the full spectrum of advantages and disadvantages in any specific educational space.

Consistent with Dotson’s (2014) analysis of disrupting epistemic oppression, implementation of the progressive stack thus employed would entail that students with the lowest scores (most oppression) would be preferentially selected to speak first/most during classroom discussion or questions (potentially extending to access/depth/timeliness of email responses from the instructor, etc.), moving up the scale until it came to those students with very high scores (e.g., affluent straight white cisgendered men from stable households). (Students who opt out could be provisionally assigned maximal scores until the instructor feels confident in modifying them, solving the problem of attempted avoidance of the progressive stack pedagogy while gently encouraging participation.) Under a progressive stack pedagogical architecture such as this, all high-privilege students above a (reasonably determined) threshold would be invited to continue listening and learning throughout the semester. Further, they would be asked to enhance the educational opportunity therein by engaging in certain educational experiences which I have called experiential reparations, as detailed below, that aim to further increase the set of shared epistemic resources in the classroom through direct experience.

In theory, by giving marginalized students priority, the shared epistemic resources of the classroom can be expanded while minimizing some of the usual difficulties attendant to such an effort. Typically, overcoming privilege in the classroom has to rely upon privileged students’ capacity to recognize a problem within their own epistemic system (Bailey 2017; Dotson 2014) which, for them, works (according to the Western reason-dominated tradition [cf. Wolf 2017]). Instead, it may rely upon their willingness to confront their own pernicious/willful ignorance (Dotson 2011), experience discomfort (Applebaum 2017; Boler 1999), or experience epistemic friction (Medina 2012). Ultimately, this often results in resistance through privilege-evasive epistemic pushback (Bailey 2017) and for undue expectations as in epistemic exploitation (Berenstain 2016). These, however, can be diminished within a system led voluntarily by marginalized persons in a de/reprivileged learning environment in which the classroom architecture itself allows them to take the lead in setting modes of interpretations. That is, the progressive stack offers marginalized students the opportunity to be heard while reifying for more privileged students the self-reinforcing sources of marginalization and oppression. Because the progressive stack accomplishes this by de/reprivileging the classroom rather than by compelling marginalized students to give testimony about their oppression for the benefit of the privileged, it can facilitate the first of these goals while avoiding many circumstances that fall into Berenstain’s (2016) category of exploitation.

Thus, among the advantages of a customizable rubric within the progressive stack is the emergence of a capacity for educators to view manifestations of privilege in classroom participation regarding who volunteers to speak, who gets called upon, and how frequently members of different groups are invited to participate. These estimated parameters can then be written into their customized stack inventory to reorganize participation in a dynamic classroom environment (cf. Banks 1988; Baxter 2002). For example, though a fitting progressive stack could be designed within the uniquely situated context of any cultural milieu, white, cis, hetero, able-bodied, middle/upper class, and male privilege would generally act as a normative standard that grounds and selects for participatory engagement. Of note, then, classrooms in which progressive stacks are applied not only do not reproduce social hierarchies of power and privilege (like hegemonic masculinist norms, implicit white supremacism, or heteronormativity), they also make educational tools out of them (Banks 1988; Baxter 2002; DiAngelo and Flynn 2010). In this sense, the progressive stack pedagogy opens a door for marginalized students to gain epistemic resources and justice while providing privileged students a (passive) opportunity to experientially learn Medina’s (2012) epistemic virtues of intellectual curiosity, humility, and open-mindedness. Following from Medina’s insights, it can achieve this by putting privileged students in a position where they are not “epistemically spoiled,” generating educational opportunities through epistemic friction, and teaching them to operate within an epistemic system that was not set by them.

A progressive stack pedagogy thereby offers an easily applied potential means to de/reprivilege classroom environments and, in some cases, creates a less skewed learning field that increases the total set of available shared epistemic resources. Of note, although this paper focuses on the philosophy classroom in particular, a progressive stack pedagogy can be applied in essentially any classroom setting, regardless of course content. Indeed, if it is true that the progressive stack provides an applicable means to remediate oppression, resolve criticisms of overly individualistic approaches, and offer marginalized students access to epistemic justice in classroom environments, institutionalizing it may be a moral imperative not just for feminist, critical race, and postcolonial educators but also for academic institutions.

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Addressing Objections

The progressive stack as a pedagogical tool has inspired and will continue to inspire resistance, as do all methods that engage and promote diversity and inclusion. In this section, I characterize this resistance and detail ways of engaging with it in two subsections. The first characterizes resistance to the progressive stack as a pedagogical tool, while the second argues for why the progressive stack can be successful at overcoming this issue while avoiding some circumstances that induce epistemic exploitation that can limit justice-oriented pedagogies.

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Privileged Fragility

One feature that sets the progressive stack pedagogy apart from other justice-oriented pedagogies is its capacity to de/reprivilege the learning field within the classroom. This, in turn, by temporarily and partially reversing patterns of dominance and oppression, provides epistemic opportunities for marginalized students (cf. Medina 2012). In my experience and in agreement with theory, especially that of Medina (2012) and Dotson (2014), this often results expanding the set of shared epistemic resources in the classroom. Specifically, it achieves this by improving access to traditionally marginalized epistemic resources and providing experiential learning that makes those resources more readily accessible without the need to inflict oppressions upon any students.

Predictably, the primary criticism of the progressive stack in a pedagogical context has been motivated by privilege-evasive epistemic pushback (Bailey 2017). Much of this criticism has occurred outside of the classroom (where students often seem interested in learning more when these tools are applied correctly) and has taken the form of outrage on social media and in the popular press (Cowart 2017; Flaherty 2017; Mitchell 2017; Saul 2017; Ubiñas 2017). Among these negative reactions, perhaps most obvious thematically emerges by claiming the progressive stack reinforces “reverse racism.” This criticism seeks to (mis)lead people to believe that a pedagogical application of the progressive stack discriminates against students from dominant social, sexual, racial (perceived), educational, ability, and other systemically privileged circumstances for insufficiently just reasons. That is, nearly all criticism of the progressive stack as a pedagogical tool is based upon a fundamental (defensive) misunderstanding of the role of systemic power dynamics defining oppression parameters.

This criticism must therefore be understood in a scholarly context. What is needed, in particular, is a theoretical lens that can account for and properly situate such criticisms and the reactionary vitriol that accompanies them. One fitting lens is that of privileged fragility, which naturally expands Robin DiAngelo’s (2011) concept of “White Fragility.” DiAngelo’s observations about White Fragility extend naturally, mutatis mutandis, through the systemic dynamics underlying white privilege to other forms of unearned societal privilege, including male privilege (generating “male fragility”), straight privilege (generating “straight fragility”), and cisgendered privilege (generating “cis-fragility”), and so on. Particularly, DiAngelo’s development of White Fragility provides an interpretative framework that clarifies why many people who benefit from systemic social, economic, and educational privileges become outraged over the pedagogical application of a progressive stack. In defining White Fragility, DiAngelo observes:

White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, leading to what I refer to as White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium. (2011, 54)

In other words, hegemonic social constructs, entrenched and hierarchical power dynamics, unearned social and economic advantages, and an ingrained history of privilege tend to make privileged people more susceptible to “trauma” from equity-based ideas. These include the progressive stack. This trauma pushes them toward defensive/aggressive postures and anxiety concerning their loss of privileged status (DiAngelo & Flynn 2010; Hart, Straka, & Rowe 2017; Matias & DiAngelo 2013), the forfeiture of security in their own epistemic systems, and disruption to viewing their own identity group(s) as “good” (Bailey 2017, 878). This experience is stressful for these individuals, as mere thoughts about the absence of privilege can cause confusion, backlash, rage, disorientation, and even grief (DiAngelo 2010; Flynn 2015; Matias 2016b; Montgomery 2013).

Particularly, as often occurs when engaging diversity in a way that promotes opportunities for marginalized groups and knowers, applying the progressive stack provokes privileged fragility. It, in turn, engenders the production of privilege-preserving epistemic pushback (Bailey 2017). This, as characterized from within the dominant epistemic system, often manifests specifically as accusations of “reverse-racism.” (Though it falls beyond the scope of this paper to determine precisely why pushback takes this form in the currently privileged epistemic system, it is plausible that it follows from the fact that the prevailing system does not admit present and historical power dynamics as central to the generation of social realities. Thus, something that superficially appears to be prejudicing upon factors including race is mistakenly branded “racist.”) This sort of reaction, of course, is not surprising to anyone familiar with similar pushback against other diversity initiatives perceived to threaten the privilege of dominant groups, including Affirmative Action (Dietrich 2015; Premdas 2016), Title IX (Curtis 2017), and efforts to increase the proportion of women in STEM fields (Howe-Walsh and Turnbull 2016; e.g., Seron et al. 2018).

Speaking practically, educators therefore should expect the progressive stack to appear threatening in its invitation for privileged students to remain silent in the presence of those with whom they are accustomed to speaking over/for. Privileged fragility predicts that when, after a lifetime of discharging speech urges with the impunities of privilege, those with power are suddenly asked instead to listen (testimonial justice), to be placed within the interpretive modes of others who have less privilege (hermeneutic justice), or to recognize the limits of their own epistemic system (third-order epistemic justice), the result often induces rage and backlash, especially in those with the most privilege (DiAngelo 2010; Flynn 2015; Matias 2014, 2016a, 2016b).

This, however, is less a reason for avoiding the progressive stack pedagogy than an opportunity for learning embedded within it. As DiAngelo explains, this resistance arises from the influence of
pervasive privilege. For DiAngelo, pervasive privilege germinates the opposite of resilience in the privileged and, over time, erodes their psychological capacity to understand that privilege itself does not confer any inherent or unlimited rights (DiAngelo 2010, 2011). Concurrent with the loss of fortitude is the emergence of fragility and a concomitant nearly irresistible urge not only to speak (rather than listen) but also to silence those invited to speak in their stead. These reactions stem from the erosion of psychological resilience due to habitual epistemic privilege which are sometimes made salient by progressively stacked architectures. That is, these reactions support Fricker’s concept of testimonial injustice being perpetrated by privileged groups that are accustomed to being “constantly epistemically puffed up” (2007, 20) (or “epistemically spoiled” [Medina 2012]). In this, they present an educational opportunity rather than a liability because they generate the sort of “epistemic friction” Medina (2012) indicates is necessary to overcoming epistemic oppressions and cultivating epistemic virtues in their place. As such, we are reminded of Dotson’s (2014) assessment that attempts made from within to rectify the epistemic exclusion and oppression of marginalized groups are crucial to manufacturing circumstances that can induce third-order changes in organizational schemata.

DiAngelo, Bailey, and others, then, offer cogent explanatory mechanisms for understanding why men, whites, and other traditionally and systemically privileged groups resist the progressive
stack. As seen through this lens, it is only incumbent upon educators to be mindful enough of this sort of fragility while generating epistemic friction not to shame or alienate privileged students, which will produce greater and entrenched resistance. At the same time, however, educators must also take considerable care not to validate privilege, sympathize with it, or reinforce it and in so doing, recenter the needs of privileged groups at the expense of marginalized ones (Applebaum 2017). The reactionary, verbal protestations of those who oppose the progressive stack are verbal behaviors and defensive mechanisms that mask the fragility inherent to those inculcated in privilege. That is, individuals from dominant groups do not complain because they actually think the progressive stack is unfair; rather, they complain because they think it is unfair that they cannot continue to exercise their (speech) privileges from a place of epistemic dominance (Matias 2017).

Nevertheless, while the progressive stack’s pedagogical architecture is already suited to avoid alienation and shame and to elude epistemic exploitation by making de/reprivileging the classroom its main mode of operation, further measures may be necessary to its implementation because privilege can be fragile. To minimize student alienation while maximizing educational engagement for privileged students in a progressively stacked classroom, two potential pragmatic and pedagogically applicable approaches are critically compassionate intellectualism (CCI) and articulating the method as a pedagogy of discomfort (Boler 1999).

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Engaging Privileged Fragility

Educators implementing a progressive stack pedagogy are likely to find that de/reprivileging the classroom will trigger fragility-based resistance and epistemic pushback, as the generation of epistemic friction often does (Medina 2012, esp. 23–25). They thus bear responsibility to turn outrage-based responses and emotional fallout from “fragile” individuals (who are being asked to momentarily relinquish discursive speech privileges) into instructive opportunities without causing student alienation. This begins by acknowledging that the progressive stack pedagogy creates a de/reprivileged classroom architecture, which privileged students will often perceive at first as unfair. It also requires recognizing that every such moment of pushback produces an opportunity to instruct about privilege and oppression. Within this is the further recognition that the progressively stack classroom minimizes compelling marginalized students to become epistemic resources for the privileged. It does because it does not compel any marginalized student to explain oppression or lived experiences to more privileged ones (thus also avoiding that oft-trodden road to instances of privilege-preserving epistemic pushback and thus any of the three orders of epistemic oppression) and does not permit more privileged students to demand it of them. Consider again my black student who attempted to explain the racial components of rape culture to a class in which white women and men continually asked her to justify her experiences and knowledge. In a progressively stacked classroom, she could have enjoyed the opportunity to volunteer that information so far as she wanted (as she did in the traditional classroom she was actually in), but the opportunity for more privileged students to challenge her view and demand more of her would be curtailed by deprioritizing their access to comment. That is, because it primarily de/reprivileges voluntary classroom engagements without calling upon marginalized students to explain oppression to the privileged ones—while preventing them from demanding such explanations in a classroom-structural way—the progressive stack pedagogy is able to avoid much epistemic exploitation of marginalized students (Berenstain 2016).

Further educational opportunities available within moments of pushback can be accessed by engaging criticism of past approaches to diverse and inclusive pedagogies, especially those of Megan Boler (1999, 2004, 2016) and Barbara Applebaum (2017). For Boler, a key concept to teach privileged students is “critical hope,” which, in contrast to naïve hope (an optimism that things will naturally improve), is dependent upon reflexivity. Explaining, she writes,

Critical hope requires seeing one’s self within historical context, reevaluating the relationship of one’s privilege to others in the world. It entails as well seeing how these relations of power shift and change over time and in one’s lifetime. The pedagogical relation is a negotiation of the hegemonically constructed habits, internalized as attachments to particular beliefs and corresponding emotional reactions to change. (Boler 2004, 130)

It is in this sense that critical hope connects moral outrage to an impetus to relieve undeserved suffering, which makes it central within a broader pedagogy of discomfort (Boler 1999) that can
ethically “shatter worldviews” (Boler 2004). Under Boler’s pedagogy of discomfort, privileged students encountering social justice-oriented perturbations of experience and thus experiencing their own privileged fragility are motivated to sit with their discomfort and tolerate it in the hope of becoming more human. Because this discomfort is essential to the pedagogical goal, privileged
students will be encouraged to do so ideally without offering absolution or redemption, which risk allaying consciousness-changing guilt and introspection (Boler 1999, 2004).

It is, in fact, in this sense that Applebaum (2017) draws on the concept of critical hope in her assessment that angry responses to diversity initiatives are best understood as an expression of imagined invulnerability, and instead students should be encouraged to embrace vulnerability. The importance of critical hope, she suggests, is that it enables educators to support privileged students without comforting them. Thus, for Applebaum, educators making use of diversity and inclusion-oriented pedagogical tools should do so without being complicit in alleviating discomfort, which would re-center the privileged students’ needs. Instead, they should offer motivations to endure and learn from it, which centers the marginalized. By de/reprivileging the classroom environment, however, this is precisely the opportunity an educator applying the progressive stack creates.

In order to prevent shame and alienation in privileged students and instead induce critical hope, Boler’s pedagogy of discomfort within the progressive stack pedagogy may be best received if
tempered partially in light of “critically compassionate intellectualism” (CCI) (Rector-Aranda 2017; Romero, Arce, & Cammarota 2009). CCI was developed within social justice-oriented programs
designed to counter racial injustices faced by Latinx and other minority students the United States’ education system, but it provides a useful framework for counterbalancing the apparent unfairness” many will perceive within a progressive stack pedagogy.

CCI is predicated on Freire’s (1970) classic The Pedagogy of the Oppressed and more recent work in authentic caring (Valenzuela 1999), which must be judiciously balanced when working instead
with privileged students by taking into account Boler’s (2004, 2016) and Applebaum’s (2017) concerns about giving absolution or comfort. Rector-Aranda, with a qualifying quotation from Mintz (n.b.: cf. Applebaum 2017), sums up the goals of CCI as follows,

“The alleviation or eradication of suffering is a goal of social justice education while, simultaneously, students suffer in the process of learning about the suffering of others” (Mintz 2013, 215), which can be partially mediated by compassionate relationships in which instructors make conscious efforts to support their students through this process. (Rector-Aranda 2017, 20)

Supporting privileged students who suffer without re-centering their needs can be accomplished by forming compassionate, empathetic relationships that help privileged (especially cis, straight, white, and male) students “find comfort with discomfort” (Rector-Aranda 2017, 20) without alleviating it (Applebaum 2017; Boler 1999), while they remain silent. For example, this can be applied by identifying moments of pushback/fragility and calling upon it, such as by asking the student directly if he is uncomfortable. If he responds that he is, he can be compassionately reminded that this discomfort is, in fact, an educational tool and urging him to find comfort within it while he listens silently. “I understand. It’s hard. Acknowledge your discomfort as part of your privileged fragility and try to become comfortable with it while you listen to what she is saying about how white men are a problem in society,” I have urged many of my white, male students, many of whom have expressed appreciation for it later.

Listening and learning in discomfort are invaluable skills and active—not passive—means by which privileged students can learn to do the important work of learning empathy, expanding their
epistemic resources to include those of marginalized students (cf. Dotson 2014), and thus desiring to engage in classroom exercises that undo systemic oppression (cf. Boler 1999). This reveals that, under a CCI implementation, the progressive stack allows educators to forestall privilege-evasive/preserving epistemic pushback (cf. Bailey 2015, 2017). By centering the testimony and modes of interpretation of marginalized/oppressed students, this also allows the progressive stack to overcome the problematic side of what Wolf (2017) terms the “reason/emotion divide” that “pervades current philosophical discourse,” this being the belief that philosophers (who are by extension educators) should adopt what Phyllis Rooney (2014, 35) refers to as “the default skeptical stance” with regard to the testimonies of marginalized people.

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Experiential Reparations

Because of its inherently palliative impacts and orientation against shaming or alienating students, CCI enables pedagogies to provide progressive educators with an opportunity to extend and enhance the pedagogical (of discomfort) potential of the progressively stacked classroom without inducing the sort of epistemic entrenchment and resistance that accompanies shame. Particularly, privileged students may benefit from experiencing a simulacrum of immersion into the roots of those systemic oppressions that the progressive stack attempts to reverse. These could take the form of what might be called experiential reparations, in which privileged students are encouraged to experience simulated injustices in the classroom that provide additional opportunity to sit with their discomfort and learn from it. The goal of incorporating experiential reparations into a progressive stack pedagogy aligns perfectly with creating opportunities for students to reflexively (Boler 2004) engage with pedagogical discomfort in an experiential way while the progressively stacked learning environment provides further insights into the limitations of their epistemic paradigm (Dotson 2014). Specifically, where the prioritization heuristic intrinsic to any progressive stack architecture elevates the opportunities and epistemic resources of marginalized students, experiential reparations seek to partially open privileged students to those resources by giving them simulated experience of relative oppression through a safe and voluntary learning experience.

In this way, an opportunity arises to maximize the set of shared epistemic resources and induce a third-order change in organizational schemata within the classroom. Further, though it often inspires resistance initially, it can take this opportunity without inducing shame or alienation by approaching these measures with CCI. In practice, many students report this approach as “uncomfortable at first” but later express gratitude for it effecting a “worldview shattering” pedagogy of discomfort, as detailed by Boler (1999, 2004) and Applebaum (2017). Of particular value, because experiential reparations do their instruction experientially, they can teach privileged students about oppression without epistemically exploiting marginalized students by making them into epistemic resources for privileged ones (Berenstain 2016). As one student remarked in my end-of-course evaluations, this practice was the one that “changed everything” (cf. Boler 2004) about her/his view about “how marginalized groups have been subtely [sic] and intentionally excluded from discussions and opportunities.”

Specifically, then, experiential reparations added into a progressive stack pedagogy can be applied to better clarify the historical injustices faced by Students of Color, women, and other
marginalized groups within the student body while providing a condition of solidarity with marginalized students (cf. Applebaum 2017). For example, white students are unlikely to be
epistemically qualified to understand the historical injustices of slavery, which presents a unique educational opportunity within a broader pedagogy of the progressive stack. On this point, experiential reparations in the classroom environment could be effected, for example, by inviting in an educational context white students to sit on the floor, or, to engage even more profoundly, to wear (light) chains around their shoulders, wrists, or ankles, for the duration of the course. My own students have found this initially awkward but highly instructive after explaining its pedagogical role and inviting them to find comfort in the discomfort of it. Similarly, male students could be instructively spoken over and skeptically questioned about their qualifications to speak authoritatively on academic subjects in order to provide insight into problems commonly and historically faced by women, inter alia, in professional and educational settings. In my experience, privileged students are slower to warm to this experience and need its educational purpose made explicit in terms of the pedagogy of discomfort and de/reprivileging architecture of the progressive stack, including that the intent is not to shame or embarrass them. In this sense, to effect these goals in accordance with CCI and a pedagogy of discomfort, my experience has been that gentle reminders from the instructor (and other students) that they are voluntary and that it is a part of the justice-oriented educational process to be made to feel uncomfortable tend to suffice.

Here, it is essential to make clear that these educational experiences could never replicate the injustices about which they seek to educate, nor must they be understood as a path to redemption or absolution (Boler 2016, 26–29), and further that steps must be taken to avoid the opportunity for performativity and recentering the privileged individual and their experience (Applebaum 2017). Rather, a progressive stack pedagogy equipped with experiential reparations should be understood as a way to generate Medina’s (2012) epistemic friction and initiate Dotson’s (2014) third-order changes in organizational schemata. This occurs by expanding marginalized students’ access to determine classroom epistemologies without exploiting them for those while simultaneously preventing privileged students from automatically taking a dominant position. The experience of literally sitting with discomfort (Boler 1999, 2004) in a classroom that de/reprivileges the learning environment offers an accessible means to open a first door to communicating oppression in a compassionate yet poignant way. This can provide unique avenues toward overcoming epistemic exclusion within classroom discussions by increasing the totality of shared epistemic resources available to students. Obviously, to prevent student alienation, such measures demand only to be entered into willingly in a safe environment by students who wish to begin work on dismantling their own internalized white supremacist and patriarchal assumptions and must be applied as pedagogical tools by trained facilitators, with clear explanations to their educational worth and purposes. Under such circumstances, experiential reparations offer a way to multiply the impact of the progressive stack within classroom spaces as it operates through a pedagogy of discomfort.

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Confirming Pedagogical Commitments

As outlined, and in my experience, the progressive stack is a pedagogical tool that can improve educational environments and outcomes according to metrics of social justice, inclusion, diversity, and equity by: offering a temporary reprieve from epistemic injustice (both testimonial and hermeneutical), increasing access to shared epistemic resources and self-censorship in oppressed students (thus challenging epistemic oppression), reversing dominant power dynamics, countering systemic privilege by offering a pedagogy of discomfort, amplifying (the most) disadvantaged voices, and promoting greater opportunities for fairness in the classroom. Speaking broadly, in my experience students are often resistive at first to its application (even marginalized students) but rapidly come with instruction to appreciate the definite remediative structure, novel learning opportunities, and epistemic insights it provides.

As a learning tool, the progressive stack pedagogical approach can be effectively used to follow in Paulo Freire’s wake and reinforce and preserve the integrity of intersectional feminist and critical
race education, safe and inclusive spaces, and the dignity of the lived experiences of marginalized individuals. This, more than anything else, most students seem to appreciate immediately, especially as the change from the expected “egalitarian” norm and utility of the pedagogy of discomfort become familiar. In particular, it can be enhanced by the application of experiential reparations as classroom learning exercise, though not all eligible students tend to make use of these. (The number often increases after more eager volunteers have embraced them for a few weeks.) Drawing upon theory to explain this effect, it may achieve this by offering both educational experiences and an inversion of traditional power dynamics embedded in communicative milieus, even when participants lack an awareness of their own biases. In such, it concurrently provides a natural means for challenging privileged fragility (cf. DiAngelo 2011) by balancing Rector-Aranda’s (2017) CCI with Boler’s (1999) pedagogy of discomfort and Applebaum’s (2017) recognition that our impulses toward compassion not recenter the needs of the privileged over those of the oppressed.

As a pedagogy, the progressive stack has the power to address structural and individual elements within Fricker’s (2007) notion of epistemic injustice and Dotson’s (2014) generalization to epistemic oppression. It does so specifically by palpably de/reprivileging the classroom environment, which many students report tending to favor, even if grudgingly and only in retrospect, in comparison to classrooms that, by virtue of doing nothing in particular, reproduce the extant matrices of power ubiquitous throughout society. Because progressive stacking is a heuristic for prioritizing voluntary classroom engagement, it also does so without converting marginalized students into epistemic resources for privileged ones, thus avoiding the epistemic exploitation inadvertently attendant to many diversity and inclusion pedagogies. This is evidenced by the fact that, rather than becoming exasperated by their interchanges with privileged students, marginalized students report feeling more empowered to volunteer their experiences and share their epistemic resources on their own terms without concerns that students from dominant groups will be able to dominate the discussion in return.

Thus, rather than framing the progressive stack in the garb of privilege-preserving accusations such as “reverse racism,” it should be characterized as an opportunity to modify prioritization within the classroom to de/reprivilege its environment. Its use should be viewed as an educational opportunity for listening, reflecting, relinquishing privilege, and gaining some limited insights into the lived experiences of those individuals—and their ancestors—who have been systemically disenfranchised and victimized. As educators, we need to police our own epistemological and moral commitments by wedding theory to praxis. The progressive stack and experiential reparations are two such interrelated tools that allow epistemic ideals to manifest in real time, and because they can be used in conjunction with other pedagogical techniques and are independent of course content, they make ideal adjunct modalities for educators.

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Saul, Josh. 2017. Stephanie McKellop, Teacher who calls on Black women, not male students, becomes latest culture war battle. Newsweek, October 20. Retrieved from http://www.newsweek.com/culture-war-academia-troll-conservative-infowars-ivy-league-race-689735

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Reviewer Comments

Summary: It has been reviewed three times. All three times have returned the same decision, “reject and resubmit.” This decision means that the journal is willing to consider it again and has some preference to see it again but is not willing to put it on the usual track for publication yet.

For context, this is the paper that argues privileged (specifically white, male) students in college classrooms should remain silent, be talked over, and learn from sitting in the floor in chains.

The alias used for this paper is Maria Gonzalez, Ph.D., who works for the non-existent Feminist Activist Collective for Truth (FACT) in New Mexico

First Review: January 18, 2018

Dear Dr. Gonzalez:

We have now received the referees’ reports on your manuscript, “The Progressive Stack: An Intersectional Feminist Approach to Pedagogy” (Manuscript ID OA-2017-0122); you will find their comments in two attached documents. I regret that, given these reports, we are now declining your manuscript for publication in Hypatia in its current form.

Although we recommend against acceptance at this time, both referees and I recognize in your manuscript the potential for an important contribution on the issues you address. At Hypatia, we have an odd decision category called “reject and resubmit” which means that you are under no obligation to submit the revised manuscript to Hypatia but that the manuscript queue will remain open for a year to allow you to resubmit it if you wish. (It is something like an “extensive revise and resubmit” that also allows authors the freedom to go elsewhere if they so choose.) I do, however, strongly encourage you to consider submitting to Hypatia after substantially revising the manuscript in light of the recommendations of the referees.

I think you will find both of the referees’ comments clear and helpful. They covered all the bases I would have myself, had I been a referee. And both of the referees have expressed willingness to read your revised version (though we can’t promise that, as circumstances can change). If you do resubmit, we will send the new manuscript out for review by two external referees and will consider the full range of decision options. Please ensure that your resubmitted essay conforms to Hypatia’s style; information is available on the journal website.

To resubmit, log into your Manuscript Central account (within 12 months) and, under “Author Center,” select the “Manuscripts with Decision” queue. From there, select “Create a Resubmission.” I would also encourage you to resubmit a revised manuscript much sooner than this if your schedule will permit. There are a number of “open” issues starting in Fall 2018 into 2019 that will have space in them.

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to Hypatia. Feel free to contact me with any questions at [REDACTED].

Sincerely,
[REDACTED]Interim editor, Hypatia
_________________________

Referee(s)’ Comments to Author:

Referee: 1

Thanks for working on this project. It’s a good one, but needs some polishing. I hope you find the comments helpful. See attached report.

ATTACHED REPORT:

Review of MS OA-2017-0122

General Comments
This is a solid essay that, with revision, will make a strong contribution to the growing literature on addressing epistemic injustice in the classroom. The focus on the Progressive Stack is interesting yet focused and it is great that the author is trying to suggest some specific approaches. The major concern with the article is the lack of engagement with the work of women of color writing on epistemic injustice, specifically Kristie Dotson. I think incorporating some of her stuff would really enrich the essay. Below are specific comments and suggestions.

Specific Suggestions

INTRODUCTORY SECTION
• Rather than simply cite some studies, the author may want to detail some of the findings of various forms of prejudice in the classroom
• The author refers to the obvious fact that “epistemic oppression” exists. Given the controversy about what epistemic oppression is, I think expanding the discussion of epistemic oppression to include Dotson’s work would be beneficial as well as expanded discussion of Davis

PROGRESSIVE STACK SECTION
In general, this section felt rushed – it is unclear to someone unfamiliar with the pedagogy why it would be seen as so promising or effective. Many conclusions in the section are too quick.
• Explain what “The Progressive Stack” is in more detail. Readers unfamiliar with it would benefit from an extended definition/explanation.
• Similarly, why is this pedagogy catching on? In what sorts of classrooms? For what purpose? How does it work to include voices of marginalized groups in practice?
• Similar comments for the explaining the nature of the controversy around the practice
• Maybe put some of the descriptions in the next section up into this section

APPLYING PROGRESSIVE STACK
• The extended discussion of mindfulness does not seem needed – the author is trying to show that Progressive Stack can be useful to addressing epistemic injustice, but does not need to claim that it is the only method
• In the section’s summary that author states that “the Progressive Stack exists to identify and invert all forms of epistemic injustice and hierarchical dominance …” I think this is too strong and not necessary. Again, I think the author would benefit from softening the claim

PRIVILEGE FRAGILITY
There is something off about this section – yes, privileged folks are fragile but are we re-centering them by focusing on their objections? Or, is the author saying that we ought not do this but this explanation can better prepare us for dealing with this in the classroom? Make this more clear

ENGAGING PRIVILEGED FRAGILITY
• I am still concerned that the issue of complicity is not fully addressed. Maybe rearrange section to put the discussion at the end about the importance of not alienating privileged students earlier.
• Describe CIC more
• How, exactly, does CIC (potentially) help avoid privilege evasive epistemic pushback? Avoid the reason/emotion divide?

Referee: 2

Comments to the Author
See attached report

ATTACHED REPORT:

Does this paper make a significant, original contribution to feminist philosophy?

The author’s project in general is to offer the progressive stack social practice used in political contexts, as a possible way of addressing epistemic injustice in classroom settings. The author begins with the claim that classrooms are sites of epistemic injustice, and following Fricker’s account of epistemic virtue, suggests that one way to get members of dominant groups to listen, or be mindful of these injustice is to employ ‘progressive stacks’ and ICC methods. I like this project very much. I think the author’s insights are on target and I think that the literature on epistemic injustice has lots to offer classroom pedagogies, I encourage the author to continue working on this project.

• Is the scholarship sound? Does the author engage the relevant literature(s) effectively?

This paper is still too young for publication. It suffers from some of the basic issues that all young papers suffer.

(1) Organization: The paper needs a much stronger introduction– one that outlines the author’s project clearly and situates the project in the context of the existing feminist pedagogy literature that engages questions of epistemic injustice in classroom settings. As it stands the author hints at what they are doing throughout the paper (pp. 1, 6, 7) but the author’s project should be clearly articulated up front so that readers don’t have to sort this out as they read. I would recommend: (a) strong introduction, one that makes clear the connections between EI, the problems that EI generates in classroom settings, and why the progressive stack offers a useful corrective. (b) the author should explain more clearly the usefulness of applying epistemic injustice concepts to the classroom and maybe mark how their treatment of this topic is different from (Applebaum 2017 or Bailey 2017). (c) Highlight specifically the problems of EI in the classroom with examples. What moves to privileged students continue to make? (d) Introduce the notion of progressive stacks, explain it then illustrate it’s use… maybe by giving a short review of the literature and why others find this useful, (e) raise objections, and replies.

(2) Vagueness: Asserting without Explaining. There are a number of confusions in the paper.
(a) the notion of a ‘progressive stack’ needs to be much more clearly described and explained. The read gets glimpses of it throughout the ms., but the concept really needs to be fleshed out clearly from the start. There are lots of claims about what this does (e.g. it enables students and teachers to identify inequality in classroom, to intervene in epistemic injustices, to privilege marginalized voices, it acts as a corrective mechanism, it gives voice to marginalized, etc.) but these are mentioned in passing and I found myself wanting more evidence about how this works, and where it gets stuck.
(b) Fricker’s conceptual tool kit is powerful for the purposes of this project, but the author should be more aware of the critiques of her ‘virtuous hearers’ model. (e.g. it’s too listener-speaker dyadic, it places solutions exclusively in the hands of hears and makes it sound as if EI can be solved if privileged hearers would just listen harder). Avoid adopting Fricker’s view wholesale without looking at some of the critiques of her view.
(c) Small errors in use of terminology: intersectionality is a heuristic device, not a theory, avoid blurring epistemic injustice (Fricker) and epistemic oppression (Dotson), and the terms ‘educational arena’, and ‘educational program’ are used, but it’s unclear if these all refer to classrooms, or something else. Also when you say ‘prejudice’ do you mean Fricker’s ‘identity prejudice’?

• Does the author reflect an awareness of the diversity of women’s lives, and of feminist perspectives relevant to the topic?

• In general, the author’s awareness of diversity and injustice is central to their project. However, I think the author’s project would strongly benefit from looking more carefully at the recent literature that addresses epistemic injustices in the classroom. The author recognizes that classrooms are what Bailey calls ‘unlevel knowing fields’ (2014). The author also mentions recent authors writing on this topic in passing, but Hypatia’s found cluster (especially (Applebaum 2017, Bailey 2017 and Wolf 2017) do collectively offer a more robust account of how to navigate resistance in the classroom. I would dig a bit deeper into these papers.
Two additional sources that might be of help are:, Beth Berila. 2016. Integrating mindfulness into antioppression pedagogy: Social justice in higher education. New York: Routledge. And Megan Boler,. 1999. Feeling power: Emotions and education. New York: Routledge.

• Is the paper well written, accessible and clear?

Again, the paper is young, so it needs more organization, clearer connections between ideas, sharper articulation of concepts, a solid introduction, and a firm conclusion. But, I do like the project and hope that the author will continue to work on it and resubmit something.

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Second Review: May 28, 2018

Dear Dr. Gonzalez:

We have now received the referees’ reports on your manuscript, “The Progressive Stack: An Intersectional Feminist Approach to Pedagogy” (Manuscript ID OA-2018-0025); you will find their
comments below. We regret that, given these reports, we are declining your manuscript for publication in Hypatia.

Although the referees recommend against acceptance — a recommendation that might be frustrating to you –theyboth recognize in your manuscript the potential for an important contribution on the issues you address. Please note that the referees were the same in both rounds. They both acknowledge great improvement but still believe that your key points need much more support. Referee 1 gives more detailed suggestions than referee 2, but their central comments are similar. We would be willing, therefore, to consider a new submission from you that builds upon those aspects of your manuscript that the referees find promising. If you do resubmit, we will send the new manuscript out for full review by two external referees and we will consider the full range of decision options.

To resubmit, log into your Manuscript Central account ([WITHIN 12 MONTHS]) and, under “Author Center,” select the “Manuscripts with Decision” queue. From there, select “Create a Resubmission.”

Thank you for considering Hypatia.

Sincerely,
[REDACTED]Interim Editor, Hypatia

Referees’ Comments to Author:
Referee: 1

Comments to the Author
General Comments: Thanks for the opportunity to re-evaluate this paper. I’d like to begin by congratulating the author on having explored the pedagogical literature more deeply and having given lots and lots more consideration to the thesis in light of the extended scholarship. I really hope the author re-writes this. The ideas are really interesting, but the paper needs a much more cohesive and central argument. I know that my comments are extensive and I offer them in the spirit of moving the project forward. I hope that author is not overwhelmed! It’s a new project and new uncharted territory, so major re-working might be necessary.

I’d like to mark my general concerns, because there are too many particular issues to address at this time. In general, I’m concerned that: (1) There are dozens of claims that are asserted and never argued for. I would recommend that the author try to structure their paper in a way that covers less ground, but that focuses more deeply on the progressive stack and its pedagogical usefulness. (2) The author’s original insights get blurred by the number of in-text citations that (while helpful), are sometimes used in place of clearer explanations of key ideas and discussions. (3) Terms are introduced rapidly without minimal explanation. I felt myself being overwhelmed by the amount of terminology and the speed at which it was introduced. I’m worried that readers unfamiliar with the literature will find this hard to follow. (4) There are too many awkward dense sentences. (5) The progressive stack, what it is, how it works pedagogically, and how it corrects for epistemic injustices, biases and oppression is still far from clear. I’m sure that the author has actually used this in class, so maybe some anecdotes about how this works would clarify the concepts.

In summary, this paper covers too much ground too quickly. It trades clear arguments and extended discussions for a broad sketch of an interesting project. My recommendation would be to re-organize the paper into three sections: (1) The Problem: How to address epistemic oppression in classrooms; specific problems that happen related to this in classrooms. (2) An extended discussion of the progressive stack (history, what it does outside the classroom in social justice movements, what it does IN the classroom, specific ways that it’s employed, and most importantly HOW (you need arguments and evidence her) this corrects for epistemic injustices. You’ll need to explain and not assert this connection. (3) A deep engagement with the white fragility objection and how the PS engages this.

Section One: The author’s intention is to provide a background for the readers. They want to point the epistemic injustices that circulate in the classroom and to argue that PS offers a powerful pedagogy for doing so. The author promises to explore key terms and explain why they are applicable to the classroom. They introduce: epistemic violence, epistemic oppression, epistemic violence, testimonial smothering, privilege-evasive epistemic pushback, epistemic exploitation, testimonial injustice, hermeneutical injustice, willful ignorance, virtuous listening, and strategic ignorance. This is too much ground to cover!! And, the connections between the terms, their pedagogical uses, and connections to the progressive stack are not clear. Also, the author’s account of strategic ignorance is wrong. SI is a resistant tactic in response to epistemic harm. It’s how people of color manipulate white ignorance to their advantage. It is not a form of willful ignorance. Also, willful ignorance is not Bailey’s term. It is used by Mills, Tuana, and Pohlhaus). My suggestion would be to start with basic examples from classroom exchanges and then to bring in the concepts. Pick a few good ones. Don’t do them all.

Section Two’s goal is to explain the Progressive Stack and to explain who it temporarily remedies or relieves classroom injustices. But, the author can’t make good on the claims that “PS is a compelling and transformative tool. compatible with intersectional feminist….” And, that it “ensures that marginalized voices in classrooms set the modes of interpretation. “And, that it “provides a means of remediating oppression” (9) without a detailed description of what the PS is. Readers will be unfamiliar with this term, like me, only get a few glimpses of what it is and what it does. I’m still not sure. You need a full section on this concept’s (history, basic practices, how it translates in the classroom, and how it corrects for epistemic oppression). There are hints of this: letting marginalize groups speak first, classroom seating arrangements, and having students sit on the floor). Too many claims are asserted and not defended.

P. 11. Please say more about the intersection checklist. Do you have one? What does it look like? How is it scored? What about it is intersectional? You need more description here.

p.12. I’m not clear what work the “mindful meditation” does here. Consider deleting it or showing clearly how it supports the goals of the PS.

Section Three (objections): The author correctly identifies a central objection to the PS is that it will trigger resistance (privilege-evasive epistemic pushback, white fragility, privileged fragility). But all methods that engage diversity do this, so say something clearly about why PS is the best at engaging this resistance. The section does a fair job as explaining why discussions trigger resistance. The abstract presents this as a problem of ‘reverse racism,’ but the section treats it as an issue of fragility. They are connected, but the section does not spell this out, so it’s a bit confusing. But, I think your biggest challenge in this section is to explain why the PS pedagogy is not a form of epistemic exploitation. I know you save this for the next section, but maybe make it clear in this section that you want to point to the behaviors [[EDITOR’S] editorial note: at least give the reader a hint that it will be coming in the next section]. This section should just define and address the strengths of the PS. You can address weaknesses in the objections.

Section Four: Pushback is a privilege-protective behavior to avoid discomfort. The author explains what happens, but needs to say more about how PS can turn these discomforts into teachable moments. To do this, I think this section needs more focus. At is stands the section throws “critical hope”, “pedagogies of discomfort”, “critically compassionate intellectualism” at the reader. It would be helpful if these terms were (1) defined and that (2) the author spent some time explaining how these are connected to your PS pedagogy. If you goal in this section is to argue that educators should take up the objections as form of CCI the connections should be much clearer. These methods are presented quickly and I’m still unsure as to how these methods fit with PS and how they correct for epistemic injustices you mention in the introduction.

What are experiential reparations? Say more about this. Also, some of your suggestions strike me as “shaming.” I’ve never had much success with shaming pedagogies, they seem to foment more
resistance by members of dominant groups. Can you say a bit about the parameters of discomfort? How do instructors walk a line between making privileged students feel genuinely uncomfortable in ways that are humbling and productive and so uncomfortable (shame) that they resist with renewed vigor.

Section Five: Confirming Pedagogical Commitments: This section could be tighter. It’s nicely summative in that it asserts what PS pedagogies do, but you’ll need to argue for these claims more
extensively and maybe cite some examples from your experience. Don’t assert, explain instead. This conclusion needs to be more than a summary.

Referee: 2

Comments to the Author
You do a much better job with the opening literature review, but then seem to dismiss it on the grounds that Fricker is most “useful in a pedagogical setting.” Why is that? Must it be this way if one will be discussing epistemic injustice? Given the introductory remarks, the answer seems to be negative. So, I would suggest altering that transition to make Fricker more on par with the other authors you cite, especially Dotson.

Still, the paper lacks a solid, easy, direct description of the “Progressive Stack.” This must be explained

Related, the paper needs more defense of why/how the Progressive Stack accomplishes (or can) what you claim it does. This part of the paper is still really lacking.

This is a worthwhile and interesting project. The essay is just not ready yet.

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Third Review: August 20, 2018

Dear Dr. Gonzalez:

We have now received the referees’ reports on your manuscript, “The Progressive Stack: An Intersectional Feminist Approach to Pedagogy” (Manuscript ID OA-2018-0080); you will find their
comments below. We regret that, given these reports, we are again declining your manuscript for publication in Hypatia.

The referees again recognize the great progress you’ve made with your manuscript and still see in it the potential for an important contribution on the issues you address. (We have so far been able to use the same referees for your revisions, but I ‘m not sure how long that can last!) We would still be willing to consider a new submission from you that builds upon those improvements that the referees ask for; it is clearly referee #1 who has a more deep continuing critique that requires more work from you. At the same time ref #1 is encouraging about your revisions. You’ll note that ref #1 says, for example, that it’s your earlier improvements that have generated some of the new problems that need attention!

You were very gracious in your comments about how helpful the referees were on your earlier revision(s). I hope these are helpful as well. Nevertheless, I could certainly understand if this
discourages you and makes you want to send the paper elsewhere. Let me know if you have any questions.

If you do resubmit, we will send the new manuscript out for full review by two external referees and we will consider the full range of decision options.

Thank you for considering Hypatia.

Sincerely,

[REDACTED]Interim Editor, Hypatia

Referee(s)’ Comments to Author:
Referee: 1

Comments to the Author

As I understand it the author is making the following argument. They want to make the case that the progressive stack’s use in social justice education has implications for (philosophy) academic
classrooms with social justice content. To make this case the author reviews how many of the concepts from the epistemic injustice literature have implications for the epistemic dynamics of the classroom. They make a case for the value of practice in classroom settings arguing that the PS will level the knowing field by making visible and expanding epistemic resources. The author then raises two “objections”: (1) the problem of resistance to the PS practice from privileged knowers, and (2) the problem of epistemic exploitation. The final sections seem to suggest that these obstacles can be overcome by amending the PS with CCI and other popular critical pedagogy techniques that center compassion, listening, and pedagogy of discomfort pedagogies. The paper wonderfully centers the concerns of students of color and other marginalized intersectional identities.

I do like the author’s project. I think that more philosophers need to think beyond traditional philosophical pedagogies. Those pedagogies work well to teach traditional material, but fail when we teach social justice topics. So, I do think the author’s intuition about the progressive stack (and their suggested amendments to that practice) has promise. I’ve read multiple versions of the paper, and it’s considerably improved since my first read. I think that the paper has the potential to make an original contribution to the feminist pedagogy literature, but it still has far too many problems, and these currently prevent me from recommending that it be published.

The author has done an immense amount of work to bring themselves up to speed on the literature that reviewers recommended during the last round of comments.

The author demonstrates a basic fluency with the recommended literature, The literature is engaged, but not as effectively as it could be. As it stands the paper is overpopulated with terminology and too many of the terms introduced fail to make significant contributions to moving the argument forward. Also, terms are evoked in hand-wavy gestures to reference the other sections of the paper, but their relationships are never really spelled out and it’s not clear that the references to earlier points move the argument forward.

The scholarship is not as sound as it could be; that is, the basic structure of the argument is plausible and interesting, but the submission has far too many issues that get in the way of a clear and sound presentation of the author’s argument. I address these below.

The paper is much improved from the first version. It’s somewhat better organized and easier to follow. The author has really done a wonderful job at reading all of the recommended sources, but this has generated a new set of problems that the paper less than a smooth and even read. I hope that the author will find the following comments helpful.

(1) Conceptual clutter. The conceptual vocabulary in section one is introduced in a rapid and sequential way with minimal explanation. For example, in the first section (a literature review), readers are introduced to ‘epistemic injustice, testimonial injustice, hermeneutical injustice, epistemic oppression, 1st-2nd-3d order epistemic oppression, epistemic exploitation, and epistemic abuse. This is too much. I’m wondering if the author needs this section, or perhaps it could be paired down a bit. I would also suggest bringing in terms when you need them as the argument progresses. Next, some of the terms are referenced throughout the text in ways that are confusing to me. Too many of the concepts introduced at the start of the paper are referenced (e.g. epistemic friction, third-order schemas) as asides to those readers familiar with the literature, but they have no formal place in the argument. I understand that the author is putting all of their conceptual tools on the table to begin, but it’s overwhelming and distracting from the project. Avoid cluttering your text with conceptual tools that you won’t use. Next, connections between the terms and ideas that are in play are often suggested but never explored (e.g the relationship between the PS and broadening shared epistemic resources is important but the author never clearly explains how PS does this) . Also, I’m curious about “intersectionality” in the title, because you never directly make the case for PS as an intersectionally-inspired heuristic in the paper.

(2) Connecting ideas: Again, I understand that the author wants to put all of the conceptual tools on the table in advance, but the work they during the paper is sometimes less than clear and there are far too many hand-wavy gestures at their relations applications to the progressive stack pedagogy. There are far too many claims about the PS that are asserted, but never clearly and convincingly argued. For instance, it’s asserted that the progressive stack pedagogy will: expand the set of share epistemic resources within the classroom in accordance with Dotson’s and Medina’s concerns (11), expand shared epistemic resources (14,16,24), avoid epistemic exploitation (14,16, 20), provide privileged students experientially learn Medina’s intellectual curiosity (15), help privileged recognized limits of epistemic systems (18), avoid alienation and shame around these topics (20), minimize privilegepreserving epistemic pushback (20-21), repair testimonial injustices (19), induce third-order change in organizational schemata (24), generate epistemic friction (26), etc. I think these are basically good insights, they need to be argued for more clearly and not just asserted as true. They are interesting claims, say more, say how, say why, and don’t just assert…. Explain.

(3) Section Three: Addressing Objections: I think I would frame this section as “resistance and other concerns with PS.” I don’t think these are formally objections to the method, at least they don’t seem to be framed that way in the paper. If they are objections, and you want to present them as such, I think your concerns are these: (a) You worry about how to engage the privilege-preserving epistemic pushback that white/privileged fragility triggers, even in the context of PS. So, the objection would not be “this is resistance,” but “PS does not have the proper mechanisms to engage epistemic pushback effectively.” Like intersectionality, it just makes power visible, it doesn’t tell us how to navigate it. If this is your objection, then your reply must show either that PS does effectively engage pushback, or that PS it needs to be amended. I think you are arguing the later. (b) The second objection could be framed as a general worry about how the PS, because it moves marginalized voices to the head of the queue, might be a form of epistemic exploitation; that is, it puts folks of color on stage and asks them to teach white folks. I know this is not what you are saying. You suggest that PS avoids this, but your argument is quite difficult to pull out of the text. And, I remain unconvinced of this. I also think that this is an important concern and you might consider spending more time addressing this objection.

(4) Amending the PS: I think the section on fragility needs to make it quite clear that you think that the PS in general as a heuristic device needs to be amended to answer these objections. This section is difficult to follow and I think there is too much back story here. Can you just argue up front that the PS has limits and needs to take into account additional factors, and argue that? Find a place for the experiential reparations. This still makes me feel uncomfortable, because it’s shame-y and I’m not sure that student can see it otherwise. Maybe say something about how shame can be overcome by sitting in discomfort. Also, make it clear that experiential reparations are part of CCI, which is an amendment to PS.

(5) Conclusion: Too rushed and asserts a number of things that you have not argued. At it stands it could be much stronger and have a stronger take away.

(6) Style: (a)The paper is far too cluttered with parenthetical remarks, concepts that are not in play, and editorial digressions. Also, the use of in text citations strikes me as too heavy handed. There are pages where over half of the sentences are followed by parenthetical lists of citations. I know this is common in the social sciences, but the usage here seems overly redundant (i.e. not every mention of ‘epistemic exploitation’ needs to be followed by a parenthetical reference to Bernstein). (b) the author should strive for more simplicity and clarity in sentence structure. There are too many run-on sentences, comma splices, and awkward sentence constructions. One idea=one sentence. Avoid editorializing.

Referee: 2

Comments to the Author

I commend the author(s) for their hard work and for taking previous comments seriously. I do think that the paper offers an interesting suggestion for using the pedagogical stack and connecting it to the literature. I would suggest two things be done before publication:

1) expand discussions of Dotson’s conception of epistemic oppression and how it fits into the argument as well as Bailey’s epistemic home turf and Wolf’s discussion of philosophy’s role in perpetuating epistemic injustice and oppression.
2) focus a bit less on objections.

I do not imagine this to be very difficult or long.

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“Progressive Stack”

Summary

Contents:

Abstract

Epistemic Oppression in the Classroom

A Progressive Stack Pedagogy

Applying the Progressive Stack Pedagogy

Addressing Objections

Privileged Fragility

Engaging Privileged Fragility

Experiential Reparations

Confirming Pedagogical Commitments

References

Reviewer Comments

First Review: January 18, 2018

Second Review: May 28, 2018

Third Review: August 20, 2018

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Summary

Contents:

Abstract

Epistemic Oppression in the Classroom

A Progressive Stack Pedagogy

Applying the Progressive Stack Pedagogy

Addressing Objections

Privileged Fragility

Engaging Privileged Fragility

Experiential Reparations

Confirming Pedagogical Commitments

References

Reviewer Comments

First Review: January 18, 2018

Second Review: May 28, 2018

Third Review: August 20, 2018

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