Resisting and Combating Racism Through Research Mobilization in Higher Education

• In Event: It's about damn time: Protesting racism in global higher education through teaching, research, and practice!

Proposal

The purpose of this presentation is to advance (1) the need to embed race and racism as topics in international HE research; and (2) how research can be mobilized to challenge and/or address systems of race, racism, and racialization in global higher education.

Race, racism, and racialization are often separated from international higher education research, yet racial dynamics span the globe in a “world racial system” (Winant, 2004, xvi). This was especially apparent in the past three years, as exemplified by the Black Lives Matter movement that spanned the globe after the murder of George Floyd. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic unveiled the continued perception of Chinese people as bearers of disease, or the “Yellow Peril,” as evidenced in discourse such as “kung-flu” and “China virus” (Yao & George Mwangi, 2022). Thus, despite previous assumptions of neutrality in international higher education, we advance the argument that concepts of race, racism, and racialization cannot be separated from international higher education research, purposes, and practices.

Western higher education has increasingly grappled with the pernicious and damaging crisis of racism that confers unearned privilege upon some while perpetuating marginalization for the Othered. Because of the colonial and racist systems upon which these educational systems were built and through which they largely operate, international education is not inoculated from the impact of systemic racism and colonialism which particularly disadvantage racialized people and those from the Global South. Theoretical and conceptual efforts to challenge the impacts of this “pandemic of racism” in internationalization and higher education (Suspitsyna, 2021) or to decolonize the systems it supports (Mignollo, 2011) are hardly new and almost ubiquitous. Despite this, there is insufficient focus on mobilizing research to practically combat and dismantle racism in specific post-secondary and community contexts. Popular conventional ways of using research hardly do enough to confront power, privilege and racial inequities that manifest through policies and institutional practices. Based on the premise that (international) higher education is also a site of racism that requires new ways of protest, we build on Collins (2013) concept of intellectual activism and truth telling (i.e. speaking multiple truths - truth to power and truth to the people - to challenge the status quo and facilitate equitable change for the marginalized). We highlight two examples of how higher education research can be mobilized through evidence-based, multiple truth telling to challenge racism and influence direct changes in policy and practice. Our first example describes how an evidence-based methodology was infused into a Reimagine Higher Education project to collect valuable data that is contributing to the institutionalization of anti-racist curriculum and pedagogy at a Canadian post-secondary institution (ongoing project in phase 2 at NorQuest College). Our second example describes a University-led participatory action research mental health project executed in partnership with Black youth in Alberta using a youth empowerment feminist theoretical frame. Crucial data generated through this project (Salami et al, 2020, 2021) was mobilized to influence the establishment of the first Black mental health clinic in Alberta, Canada (Huncar, 2023).

Authors

• Benjamin Denga, NorQuest College and University of Alberta

• Christina W Yao, University of South Carolina