My parents named me Mwangi after my grandfather, James Mwangi Wanjau. I grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, and Mwangi is a very common name within my tribe, the Kikuyu. In 2016, at age 19, I moved from Kenya to western Canada to study, graduating with a degree in mathematics. I felt like an outsider. My name stood out: I often had to repeat it, and people struggled to remember it.
On many college campuses, tensions are sharper than ever, and for some students and faculty, simply sharing an idea carries a deep sense of hesitation. My work over the past several decades has focused on teaching evidence-based thinking to navigate such charged environments. This approach becomes especially relevant when we consider the twin processes psychologists call assimilation and accommodation, which describe how we learn and adapt to new information.