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This chapter outlines the successful community engagement process used by the authors for the Kinship Online project in the context of Indigenous methodological, epistemological, and ethical considerations. It juxtaposes Indigenous and western ways of teaching and research, exploring in greater detail the differences between them. The following chapter builds on and extends Riley, Howard-Wagner, Mooney & Kutay (2013, in press) to delve deeply into the importance of embedding Aboriginal cultural knowledge in curriculum at the university level.

The chapter gives an account of an Office for Learning and Teaching (OLTC) grant to develop Indigenous Online Cultural Teaching and Sharing Resources (the Kinship Online Project). The project is built on an existing face-to-face interactive presentation based on Australian Aboriginal Kinship systems created by Lynette Riley, which is being re-developed as an online cultural education workshop.

A key consideration of the researchers has been Aboriginal community engagement in relation to the design and development of the project. The chapter delves deeply into the importance of embedding Aboriginal cultural knowledge into curriculum at the university level. In doing so, the chapter sets out an Aboriginal community engagement model compared with a western research model which the authors hope will be useful to other researchers who wish to engage in research with Aboriginal people and/or communities.

Despite the existence of a variety of approaches to the understanding of behavioral and managerial ethics in organizations and business relationships generally, knowledge of organizing systems for fidelity remains in its infancy. We use halakha, or Jewish law, as a model, together with the literature in sociology, economic anthropology, and economics on what it termed “middleman minorities,” and on what we have termed the Landa Problem, the problem of identifying a trustworthy economic exchange partner, to explore this issue.

The article contrasts the differing explanations for trustworthy behavior in these literatures, focusing on the widely referenced work of Avner Greif on the Jewish Maghribi merchants of the eleventh century. We challenge Greif’s argument that cheating among the Magribi was managed chiefly via a rational, self-interested reputational sanctioning system in the closed group of traders. Greif largely ignores a more compelling if potentially complementary argument, which we believe also finds support among the documentary evidence of the Cairo Geniza as reported by Goitein: that the behavior of the Maghribi reflected their deep beliefs and commitment to Jewish law, halakha.

Applying insights from this analysis, we present an explicit theory of heroic marginality, the production of extreme precautionary behaviors to ensure service to the principal.

Generalizing from the case of halakha, the article proposes the construct of a deep code, identifying five defining characteristics of such a code, and suggests that deep codes may act as facilitators of compliance. We also offer speculation on design features employing deep codes that may increase the likelihood of production of behaviors consistent with terminal values of the community.

More than 10 years after its founding, the STEM Women of Color Conclave® has emerged as the largest safe brave space in the United States for women faculty of color in the academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Originally intended to be a national assembly, the Conclave® has evolved into a safe brave space that serves as a refuge for STEM women faculty of color who are regularly taxed with the struggle of having to navigate the unwelcoming, and often hostile, environments of the ivory tower in very unique ways. This chapter narrates how the Conclave's founding members journeyed toward creating and sustaining this safe brave space. The reader is awakened to deeper awareness of and sensitivities for the ways in which safe brave spaces must address both the complexities related to struggle – and liberation from that struggle – for both occupiers and observers of safe brave spaces. However, just as the quantum observer can disturb the system just by observing it and, ultimately, change or even nullify the results, we recognize that merely observing the Conclave® would nullify its intended purpose and, in the end, render it unsafe. Therefore, the reader can anticipate an absence of direct observations, reports of outcomes, or specific accounts of progress related to the occupiers of our safe brave space. Rather, the chapter offers an invitation to the reader to explore the authors' lived experiences as occupiers who designed a safe brave space. We invite the reader, particularly those who are also observers of safe brave spaces, to join us in protecting these valuable spaces.