Cutting Out Your Tongue: Scholars Under Fire in the Age of Neoliberal Education and White Nationalism

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium will explore what it means to be a scholar in the age of public attacks. Though not new, the increasing speed of social media has resulted in these attacks growing along with a rise of anti-intellectualism. We locate these assaults, “onto a spectrum of racialized violence against academics” (Grundy, 2017, p. 1865). The increasing frequency in this is new model of attack is evidenced in the increasing coverage of higher education reporting and academic papers. Yet academic institutions have remained largely silent on this issue, even when in support of the individual scholar. Each member of this symposium has been targeted publicly for reasons from courses they teach to articles they have written to their social media presence.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 4: Social Contexts of Educational Policy and Politics

Chair

• Valerie Kinloch, University of Pittsburgh

Papers

• The Playbook: Manufacturing Right-Wing Outrage Against Critical Academics - Nolan L. Cabrera, The University of Arizona

• So What's It Really Like? A Critical Race Motherscholar of Color's Confessions of Combating Whiteness in Teacher Education - Cheryl E. Matias, University of Colorado - Denver

• Klannish Reform: The Paradoxical Restoration of White Nationalism on U.S. College Campuses in an Era of Color-Blindness - Ricky Lee Allen, University of New Mexico

• "You Must Be Retarded" or "Deported": How to Harass a Scholar of Color Out of Safety - Subini Ancy Annamma, The University of Kansas

Discussant

• David Gillborn, The University of Birmingham