Rethinking Graduate Education: Preparing Graduate Students for Considering Race and Racism in Global Contexts

• In Event: Addressing race & racism in global higher education through research, teaching, and praxis

Proposal

PRESENTER 3 will discuss the imperative to better prepare and train graduate students to ethically engage in researching and teaching about race and racism in global contexts. Graduate education is often lauded as sites for academic socialization into the research, teaching, and practice norms and expectations. Yet socialization is seldom problematized as reifying normative practices that continue to perpetuate academic inequities and contribute to methodological nationalism (Chernilo, 2006; Shahjahan & Kezar, 2013). As stated by Mignolo (2017), the perpetuation of methodological nationalism brings up “the question of racism and epistemology” (p. 1), which is embedded in structures of power and geopolitics. Graduate students are future faculty, administrators, and policy makers, yet few academic programs adequately prepare students on how to critically approach race and racism through their research, teaching, and practice (Yao & Vital, 2016). Ultimately, academic administrators and faculty are complicit in advancing intellectual imperialism and methodological nationalism through their mentoring of nascent graduate students (Vital & Yao, 2021).

In this session, this presenter will present the challenges and opportunities for training graduate students to approach race and racism in global contexts from an equity-focused perspective.

Author

• Christina W Yao, University of South Carolina