Police-Free Schools: Education Research and Antiracist Movements

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

This session examines the dynamic intersection of research and action in the movement for police-free schools. It brings scholars and community organizers together to compare insights from education research and from antiracist movements. The session will consider the following questions: what kinds of research is needed to help build the capacity of antiracist movements for police-free schools and expand their abolitionist vision and program for alternatives? What insights come from grassroots efforts to remove police from schools and transform school climates that can inform understanding of the nexus between education and criminalization and white supremacist systems more broadly? What are future directions to connect scholarship and organizing and reimagine safe, humane and liberatory education beyond systems of discipline, punishment and criminalization?

Sub Unit

• AERA Presidential Session

Chair

• Mark R. Warren, University of Massachusetts - Boston

Discussant

• David O. Stovall, University of Illinois at Chicago

Panelists

• Denisha Coco Blossom, University of California - Davis

• Patrice M. Hill, University of California - Davis

• Decoteau J. Irby, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Kesha S. Moore, Thurgood Marshall Institute, NAACP Legal Defense Fund

• Russell J. Skiba, Indiana University

• Jonathan Stith, Alliance for Educational Justice