“The cultivation of belonging should be the goal of all education.”
—Dr. Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging
By: Laura M. Dunn, PhD, Open for Antiracism (OFAR) Director
When I walked through the proverbial doors of Open for Antiracism Program a little over two years ago, I had no idea how deeply this program would shape hundreds of faculty members, thousands of students—and me. To date, the OFAR has served 250 faculty and more than 3,500 students across 116 California community colleges since 2020. Initiated by Una Daly and James Glapa-Grossklag in response to the glaring gap between public pronouncements and actual action—of which the murder of George Floyd became a symbol—OFAR has made meaningful progress in improving educational quality through race-aware, justice- and equity-centered professional development grounded in open educational practices and pedagogies.
I was not new to equity work in higher education when I joined OFAR. My background included academic publishing, interculturality, decoloniality, and academic administration—but I had limited exposure to the transformative potential of Open Education. Before joining OFAR, I served as editor-in-chief of an academic journal, where “openness” was often tied to profit margins and strategic visibility within a highbrow publishing landscape. We took pride in shaping discourse, rather than simply consuming it. With my commitment to intercultural empathy and decolonial work, I found the idea of open access—and especially open co-construction of knowledge—both compelling and urgent, not only for students in the US, but for millions globally who lack access to libraries, broadband, and other pathways to information.
Another aspect of OFAR that has been personally transformative is learning from our coaches and course facilitators. They have shown me and our participants that openness is not only a theory of knowledge-sharing but also a practice: one that nurtures not just “safe” spaces but brave spaces where teachers and students can bring their whole selves without fear of judgment. Over the past five years, coaching has evolved into one of the primary reasons our program is so impactful.
At OFAR, we do two things:
- help release knowledge from ivory-tower constraints, and
- place the power of knowledge co-construction in the hands of those most affected by systemic inequities—students.
Through co-created lesson plans, co-authored OER texts and chapters, and open pedagogy, students are invited to challenge long-standing power dynamics in academia that have historically privileged the few and disenfranchised the many. I have seen the subtle but powerful effect of history lessons that foreground the often-invisible labor of immigrant families in California’s central valley, how a decolonial approach to statistics reveals that numbers are not neutral, and that demographic categories can either illuminate or erase lived realities; how reviving Indigenous languages in botany courses helps students understand the deep connection between cultural and environmental revitalization; and the urgency of open, equity-centered teaching in prison education, where many currently incarcerated students take their first college courses.
As a society, we are at a critical inflection point marked by both promise and peril. The promise is visible in what OFAR has helped cultivate over the past six years. Evaluation data across our first four cohorts show meaningful classroom impact: increased student engagement1 and increased faculty confidence in antiracist pedagogy2. Participant feedback has also strengthened the program over time—especially through expanded peer collaboration, deeper focus on open pedagogy and antiracist practice, and differentiated training. This is particularly important for adjunct faculty, who teach two thirds of students in the country’s largest system of higher education.
And yet, these accomplishments exist within a broader national context where inequity remains entrenched. Even as OFAR has made gains in California, higher education disparities persist across the US. While access has diversified, attainment gaps remain substantial: overall bachelor’s attainment has increased, but large racial and ethnic disparities remain, and Black students continue to experience lower completion rates across institution types (ACE, Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education, 2024). Financing inequities also persist, with Black undergraduates borrowing at higher rates than peers in 2019–20, underscoring the need to pair curricular reform with affordability strategies such as OER adoption, emergency aid, and proactive advising. Equity work in education is no less urgent today than it was six years ago—or one hundred years ago. It is not simply a response to crisis; it is a framework for teaching and learning that improves success for all students, especially those historically marginalized.
So what does the future hold for OFAR? In Year 7, we look forward to continuing our core programming. We are also developing an open-access OFAR Toolkit with partners across the US who have adapted OFAR in their own regions and identified context-specific needs and barriers to equity. Planned for release in summer 2027, the Toolkit is designed to support implementation across diverse settings: K–12 schools, Tribal schools, colleges and universities (in the US and internationally), and administrative leadership teams seeking to embed OFAR’s evidence-based methods into institutional systems.
The stakes are too high for equity to remain aspirational. OFAR’s outcomes show what is possible when faculty are supported to redesign learning with students, not just for them. As we enter Year 7 and prepare the national toolkit, we invite you to partner with us in turning evidence into action.
To learn more about OFAR, visit our homepage, and click here to get on our Year 7 contact list.