Fighting for Our Liberation and Getting a Degree: Navigating Tensions in Our Entanglement With Academia

• In Event: Beyond Coursework and Research Projects: Mentorship of and by QTBIPOC Scholars Toward Collective Transformation

Abstract

It is a warm day in May, as I sit outdoors welcoming hints of summer dancing through the skies, bringing life to budding hyacinths in our yard. In the distance, I hear echoes of chants floating across the city - appeals for justice, peace, defunding the police, for black lives to matter. Meanwhile in the land of my ancestors, a sudden country-wide shutdown has forced families of migrant workers to walk over 600 km to their hometowns, dying not because of a virus but because they are disposable. Instead of protesting or organizing against growing fascism in India, this afternoon I am at my laptop writing my dissertation while in self-isolation in Tkaronto due to COVID-19. Although I know my research is important, at this moment I struggle with negotiating how to be in relation with academia, as the practices valued there often work in opposition to our collective liberation. Drawing on Marin’s call to “dream of a future that is non-extractive and non-dominating” (53:32, Vakil et al., 2020) in this dialogue I invite an oldtimer in educational equity and social justice to collaboratively wonder:

a) What kinds of relations become possible when we deeply engage with ethical tensions in our entanglement with academia ?

b) How might we (in Learning Sciences) negotiate those tensions while we “take seriously, coming to know as the pursuit of whole-body intelligence practiced in the context of freedom” (Simpson, 2014, p. 7)

These questions are rooted in an understanding of North American institutions built through slavery on stolen land, while continuing to act as “an arm of the settler state” (Grande, 2018, p. 47). Mentorship practices by oldtimers often require that newcomers “embody their mentors’ conceptualizations of what it means to be a researcher”, so that newcomers “take on the identities that are valued by their mentors and/or institutions” (Hall & Burns, 2009, p. 50). For QTBIPOCs, this often involves resisting, then transforming valued practices and outcomes such that, as Takeuchi argued, the “inclusion of (our) historically oppressed voices and bodies goes beyond representational struggles (and instead) evoke(s) an epistemological shift toward societal changes” (Vakil et al., 2020). Currently, marginalized communities are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 on top of which Black and Indigenous people are enduring increased violence and surveillance. Universities on the other hand, are releasing statements of support while protecting their profits and practicing ‘austerity measures’, freezing new hires and increasing the labor expected from workers. QTBIPOC newcomers deeply engaged in Takeuchi’s call for an epistemological shift are expected to do so while negotiating the demands of academia that often work in opposition to our collective liberation.

In this dialogue I – a queer, trans|genderqueer settler of South Asian ancestry and newcomer in the Learning Sciences – will dialogue with an Asian-American oldtimer academic now engaged in fighting for anti-oppressive education independently. Following the format of the previously mentioned symposium at ICLS, each author will share a prepared piece followed by a conversation engaging in the questions emergent through our wonderings.

Authors

• Rishi Krishnamoorthy, University of Toronto - OISE

• Kevin Kumashiro, Kevin Kumashiro Consulting