Calls for greater diversity, especially in relation to the appointment of arbitrators, have been prevalent for some time in the international arbitration community, followed by several initiatives being set up to address the issue. While the primary focus of the diversity debate has been on gender, there have also been calls to expand and diversify the profile of the arbitrator pool to include more non-Western and non-White arbitrators. For several years, scholars and practitioners have argued for countless benefits of increased racial diversity, such as an increased acceptability and legitimacy of the arbitration process. There is a consensus that in a deliberative process like ADR, practitioners should reflect their claimants’ demographics. The existence of diverse panels helps further the aims of meticulous and accurate fact-finding approaches. Similarly, they argue that the lack of racial diversity may directly and negatively affect the quality of arbitration awards. This blog post will focus on the lack of diversity of African arbitrators appointed to resolve international arbitration proceedings, as well as initiatives that are being set up to address such issues. The focus on African ethnicity is given for two reasons: 1) African countries are no strangers to arbitration. Nearly 100 arbitral institutions exist across Africa. 2) There has been an increase of arbitration proceedings emanating from African regions, while there has been a minimal growth in the ethnic diversity of arbitrators appointed to resolve these disputes. This article was originally published on https://commercialarbitrationineurope.wordpress.com/2021/06/29/diversity-in-arbitration-the-lack-of-racial-diversity-in-international-arbitral-tribunals/
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BackgroundIn the Netherlands, there has been a strong increase in diversity among students in recent decades. Even though access for previously underrepresented groups based on economic status, ethnicity or culture has been realised to a certain extent, differences in student performance between groups persist. Research shows that teacher performance influences student achievement and that this influence is more pronounced for 'non-western students'. This creates a need for reflection on the way teachers cope with their increasingly diverse student population. This paper explores the attitudes of Dutch teachers in higher vocational education towards their diverse student population and the translation of these attitudes into teaching practice.MethodsTwenty-five teacher teams at two universities of applied sciences participated in this research. The teams came from a broad range of programmes that educate students for different future professions. A mixed method methodology was used to gather data, in which the qualitative method was most substantial. Focus group interviews on diversity and student achievement were held with each teacher team. Additionally, a questionnaire was distributed to all 274 participants, which was completed by 215 teachers. Data from the questionnaire were analysed using SPSS. In order to analyse the qualitative data we used AtlasTI. Because we applied a grounded approach, allowing teachers to form their own ideas on both diversity and student achievement, we used a similar approach in the first analytical phase. In a second phase, we compared the concepts arising from the grounded theory approach with concepts from the literature.Results and conclusionsAround 40% of the teachers repudiated the influence of diversity on student achievement and did not take student diversity into account in their teaching practice. Problems regarding the student achievement of students or groups thereof are considered as something that the students, the educational institution or society at large should cope with, not teachers themselves. Of the teachers, 60% recognised diversity among students, but mainly based on students’ shortcomings and perceived problems. A minority of this 60% not only recognised but also understood diversity’s effect on student achievement. Teachers do not always translate this understanding into their teaching practice. They feel they lack the skills, knowledge or time to do so. Teachers seemingly translate their understanding of diversity into their didactic and pedagogical approaches only when these conditions are met.
In this paper, we present a digital tool named Diversity Perspectives in Social Media (DivPSM) which conducts automated content analysis of strategic diversity communication in organizational social media posts, using supervised machine-learning. DivPSM is trained to identify whether a post makes mention of diversity or a diversity-related issue, and to subsequently code for the presence of three diversity dimensions (cultural/ethnic/racial, gender, and LHGBTQ+ diversity) and three diversity perspectives (the moral, market, and innovation perspectives). In Study 1, we describe the training and validation of the instrument, and examine how it performs compared to human coders. Our findings confirm that DivPSM is sufficiently reliable for use in future research. In study 2, we illustrate the type of data that DivPSM generates, by analyzing the prevalence of strategic diversity communication in social media posts (n = 84,561) of large organizations in the Netherlands. Our results show that in this context gender diversity is most prevalent, followed by LHGBTQ+ and cultural/ethnic/racial diversity. Furthermore, gender diversity is often associated with the innovation perspective, whereas LHGBTQ+ diversity is more often associated with the moral perspective. Cultural/ethnic/racial diversity does not show strong associations with any of the perspectives. Theoretical implications and directions for future research are discussed at the end of the paper.
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The question we have chosen – and been invited – to answer is “What is Europe: Past, Present, and Future.” This sits within the resilient societies theme of the NWA call. The reason for our choice of the ‘resilience’ theme is based on the many disciplines working on the project, which stretch beyond the historic (living history theme) into the societal.It has a deeper conceptual basis, however. It springs from an assumption that a shared sense of belonging and inclusion is one foundation for and aspect of resilience – just as a rope braided together from many strands is stronger than one where the strands are fraying apart. Positive and inclusive expressions of belonging and affiliation are present in education, sports, and music – highly visible sites of representation that have profound reach and impact in society. Racialisation, othering, and selective or stereotypical representations, however, work against resilience. They are circulated widely and generate exclusion and hurt. In these linked work packages, then, we take up the question’s invitation to expand and disrupt, what the NWA’s call itself defines as a normative prior understanding of Europe. In the words of the question, this definition emphasizes Europe’s nature as white, Christian-secular, bounded by the geographic limits of Western Europe, shaped by Greco-Roman heritage and tradition, democratic, and home of the enlightenment. Our consortium seeks to analyze this representation, research and present more expansive and accurate ones in consultative reflective and co-creative processes. Through the process, the new knowledge, and our highly participatory research and dissemination models we will change societal understandings of the bounds of Dutch, and European identities. This will forge a greater sense of belonging across all of the communities, including academia, involved in our project.This project is vital for building resilience through tackling sources of fragmentation and alienation in past and present. It is much needed as we look forward to an increasingly diverse and mixed demographic future.
