In addition to setting clear expectations, GSIs can combat exclusion in their classrooms by sharing representations of marginalized scholars and communities.

Course syllabi convey messages about who belongs in the discipline through the identities of the scholars who are assigned and those who are omitted. While GSIs do not usually select course readings, they can incorporate scholars from underrepresented backgrounds into their lesson plans. For example, Lorenzo Washington, an alumnus of the Berkeley Ph.D. program in Plant and Microbial Biology, taught about Rosalind Franklin in his discussion sections on DNA. Franklin was a woman chemist whose work in x-ray crystallography played a major role in identifying the double helix structure of DNA. She was not duly credited for her work during her lifetime, despite two men, James Watson and Francis Crick, using her findings to advance this famous discovery. 

GSIs can also empower students to critically assess popular representations of course content. Adam Jadhav, who finished his Ph.D. in Geography in August 2024, did this in his course on California by sharing a curated list of films that attempt to convey “who, what, when, where, and why is California?” Jadhav explained, “we must also ask what is missing. What people, places, and histories of California aren’t told by the films here? For a start, the Indigenous peoples on whose land we now live are all but absent from California’s filmography. Similarly, the history and still extant legacy of slavery in America is often left out of the story of California…” Jadhav cautioned that, “these films must be interrogated and watched critically, even if we also enjoy them…no film is innocent.” This kind of framing invites students to actively identify and critique harmful erasures rather than taking them for granted.