Social Justice at GHD

The Student Assistant for Social Justice (SJA) position was founded in 2020, and, since then, GHD has employed 2-3 current students each year to help us think through how we can create a more inclusive climate and set of course content in the program. 

The SJAs for the 2025-2026 academic year are:

Chantal Braunwalder: cpb84@georgetown.edu

Aaliyah Ibrahim: aoi7@georgetown.edu

Natasha Todi: nt624@georgetown.edu

Past contributions of our SJAs have included:

• Improving diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in our admissions process

• Increasing incorporation of social justice themes into our curriculum and co-curricular activities

• Developing our foundational GHD Values Statement and our Standards for Community Discussion

• Assisting with the planning and facilitation of our yearly series of retreats

• Providing brave and safe spaces for open and honest discussions as a community

• Meeting with the GHD team weekly to serve as liaisons between program staff and the GHD student body

We invite you to reach out to them if you have any questions or feedback that you would like to share with our team!

Terminology:

During our Ethics Retreat, we had a session on social identities and the identity wheel. You can find the presentation, which includes definitions and examples of important terms, here. You can also learn more about the identity wheel exercise here. Note that this particular identity wheel model does not encompass all possible social identities and is very US-centric, so it's important to consider identities that you hold that may not be included.

You can also refer to this guide to inclusive language that encompasses a wide variety of social identities.

GHD students compiled examples of the various types of microaggressions here. There is important documentation on the tenets of white supremacy culture here and here.

SJA Corner:

You can find a collection of social justice resources shared in the weekly GHD newsletter here.