I’ll admit it, my dog has a thing (let’s call it a “bias”) about cats. She never was clawed by one, never even came close, but still every time “Buttercup” – the neighbor’s cat — wanders (I really think deliberately)… Continue reading →

I like to think that most of us who are drawn to reading a post on diversity or, more specifically, on bias, are pretty good at seeing other people as individuals rather than merely as members of a group. Despite… Continue reading →

I have a confession. Some months ago, I attended a presentation on the topic of transgender and nonbinary identities. The presentation was excellent, the facilitator knowledgeable, the content fascinating (and, frankly, much of it new to me.). It’s that “new… Continue reading →

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in Notes from Underground, describes our penchant for self-deception like this: “Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone but only his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal… Continue reading →

Facilitating discussions on bias isn’t always smooth. Sometimes moments arise that test every skill I’ve developed—and those moments often become the most powerful teaching opportunities. One of those times involved a young woman named Rose. When I called on the… Continue reading →

Some years ago, I undertook a task that has taught me more about the humanity we share than any other experience of my life. I began raising puppies for an organization called Canine Companions. One of these dogs — a… Continue reading →

We often talk about the costs of bias and rightly so. Biases, those inflexible beliefs we hold about particular categories of people, interfere with our ability to see individuals clearly. That alone is damaging. But there’s another, less visible, cost… Continue reading →