Locating Resistance in the Classroom: A Response to Anti-CRT Legislative Attacks Across the United States

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 10:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Race and Racism in Higher Education (Table 12)

Abstract

Across the country there have been 807 anti-Critical Race Theory legislative measures introduced attempting to curtail student learning about race and racism in the United States (CRT Forward, 2023). Some of these bills target higher education classroom teaching, bringing up the question, what can professors do as pedagogical acts of resistance in the classroom, attempting to maintain bell hooks’ ideal of “education as a practice of freedom?” The purpose of this paper is to offer a Critical Policy Discourse Analysis (CPDA) of legislation that targets higher education teaching utilizing the framework of plantation pedagogy to identify how the legislative attacks dehumanize racially minoritized students, and offer a subsequent framework for instructors to utilize to counter these legislative attacks.

Authors

• Saran Stewart, University of Connecticut

• Franklin A. Tuitt, University of Connecticut

• Kelly Schlabach, University of Connecticut