Taking on Privilege in Context: University-Based Anti-Cuts Organizing as a Critical Pedagogical Space

• In Event: Lessons Learned: Challenges, Constraints, and Signs of Hope in Local Public Education Contexts

Abstract

This paper locates critical pedagogy regarding power and privilege within spaces of organizing for social justice. In particular, I use the context of the anti-cuts and university democratization movement at University of California, Santa Cruz during the 2009-10 and 2010-11 academic years to reframe organizing spaces as critical pedagogical spaces, and to reframe learning and teaching as activities done among students in organizing spaces. By 2010-2011, the demand for ethnic studies and critical race studies emerged as the forefront of the organizing agenda, disrupting previous agendas and patterns of behavior. I argue that this shift facilitated teaching and learning about power and privilege based on race, gender, class and sexuality, primarily among students themselves, in most cases not from professor to student. This paper offers an analysis of the ways in which power dynamics are understood, reproduce themselves, and yet are challenged in settings outside of the classroom. The study uses a theoretical literature based approach complimented by an autoethnographic account of these spaces of learning. Implications for this research include a challenge to constructions of learning located within the walls of university classrooms, and instead argues that learning about power and privilege is located in action for social justice.

Author

• Erin Ellison, University of California - Santa Cruz