INCLUSIVITY AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE IN EDUCATION. By Colleen MaryHallon. Eerdmans, 2024. Pp. xi + 159. Paper, $19.99.

This work, aptly subtitled “a theologian's journey,” follows, in a partly biographical form, the personal “voyage” Mallon embarks upon as she moves from a college-level theological faculty to a role at a private Catholic girls’ high school. Within her remit as director of “adult formation,” the author unfolds how she gradually develops and progressively implements school-wide DEI strategies. The chapters, each titled in the present continuous—“beginning,” “grounding,” “amplifying,” “becoming,” and so on—narrate Mallon's front-line experience of being, as she depicts it, a ‘midwife’ to change within the persons and procedures of her institution. While “listening” is not a chapter title, the work returns repeatedly to the theme of how to listen, both as an institution and within the context of fruitful personal dialogue (Chapters Four and Seven). It is a school listening exercise, undertaken in the wake of the race-provoked murder of George Floyd, which shockingly discloses the organization's ongoing failures to fully live out its Catholic ethos of inclusivity. Mallon traces this not simply to failings in policy, but to hidden and unchecked prejudices embedded within the inner dispositions of staff, faculty, and students. Equipped as a theologian, Mallon's work grapples with the challenge of articulating, from within her own Catholic tradition, a DEI strategy that addresses past institutional failings while navigating the “in-between time” necessary to guide the school community into “right relationship within, among, and beyond.” The concept of “living in right relationship” is explored in Chapter Three, where the author offers a “map”—a form of examen—to facilitate discernment regarding how personal and communal actions align with inner values and core identity. This “map” and the discussion of its application constitute one of the most valuable contributions of the work. It is clearly transferable and capable of stimulating reflective change in CPD programs or retreat settings. In Chapter Five, Mallon's effort to “bring theology to bear” through the desire to dismantle racist systems leads her to consider other mechanisms of exclusion ordered around further biases and prejudices within her institution. Here, the focus is on LGBTQ+ inclusion, an area in which the author, with candid honesty and perspicacity, critiques her own historic complicity in what she describes as an “ecclesial system of bias and harm.” She comes to this realization through, once again, a school listening exercise, alongside engagement with the pastoral theologians James Martin and Francis DeBernardo. Mallon's theological response is grounded in Johannes Metz's “dangerous memory of Jesus,” understood here as the unsettling recall of Christ as victim, functioning as a prophetic call to address every institutional pattern of exclusion. For some readers, this approach may appear overly dependent on a Metzian “hoped-for future” that sits uneasily with the magisterial contours of Catholic teaching. An alternative theological response, and one more closely aligned with Catholic anthropology, might have been achieved through virtue ethics, drawing on Irenaeus' famous dictum that the glory of God is a human being fully alive. This leads to a broader critical consideration: the lack of engagement with the ever-expanding literature on “character curriculum.” Many educational institutions are now seeking to ground coherent DEI approaches by explicitly naming and teaching habits of virtue within an overarching commitment to deliberate character formation. Such approaches can also be readily integrated with a coherent theological expression, given their deep roots in Thomistic anthropology. The book is clearly written with educational leaders in mind. It not only offers a contextualized theology of DEI within Mallon's own institution but also provides numerous practical strategies for bringing this theology to bear, including organizational policies, retreat and CPD suggestions, surveys, social media use, and guidelines for effective communication with stakeholders. While offering a reasoned account of the solutions her context warranted, Mallon presents her approach less as a replicable to-do list and more as a stimulus for readers to become, like her, “frontline interpreters of the Gospel” in their own workplaces. While Mallon's theological framing may not satisfy readers from all ecclesial backgrounds or fit the culture of every educational institution, the book nonetheless excels as a handbook of best practice for achieving deeply embedded institutional change in the service of greater inclusivity.