In addition to chronic structural inequalities that impact students’ lives, including disparities in family wealth and academic preparation for college, crises that erupt unpredictably, such as international armed conflicts and racialized violence in the U.S., all impact students’ capacity to engage in learning.

GSIs usually have more direct influence over exclusionary dynamics in their classrooms than they do over broader social crises or norms and policies at the university level. Nevertheless, many GSIs choose to devote personal time to resisting injustice through activism, and there are a number of concrete ways that GSIs can address pervasive social inequality in the classroom.