ABSTRACT

Political Science is not an obviously joyful discipline, and wrestling with injustice in the classroom is not an intuitive way to open the door to joy. But when students and professor alike practice compassion for victims of injustices (such as sexual violence and white supremacy) and for each other, they sometimes find the kind of common ground that allows joy into the room. Treating one another as peers in a community aimed at seeking to understand what justice is and what it feels like, we experience justice as beautiful, shared work that we can practice at a small scale, setting the standard for how all our work should feel.