Examining Inequality in the Academy

Session Submission Type: Invited Session (90 minute)

Description

In the United States and around the world, we are witnessing (live-streamed, in many cases) increasing fascism, ongoing genocides, famines, and violences large and small. What is the role of academics, the academy, and the profession more generally, for confronting such a world? For confronting how these same processes shape and are shaped by the Ivy Tower? In this thematic session, we look to both theories and scholars from the global south (used here as both a geopolitical entity and as a signifier of those colonized/marginalized within imperial states) to understand: the current moment in a broader historical and socio-political context; strategies to disrupt the status quo; and the harms we, in the global north/core of empire, enact on those outside of Western academy, and how to begin to redress such harms. That is, the session is designed to listen, learn, and follow the lead of those most marginalized within our academic communities. Speakers will discuss such urgent issues of inequities in the academy, including: scholasticide, disability, transphobia, teaching and learning under authoritarian regimes, issues of English as the almost exclusive language read, written, and used in the profession and ASA, and the relationship among the carceral state, academy, and prison education.

Sub Unit

• Thematic Session

Panelists

• Anaheed Al-Hardan, Howard University

• Blu Buchanan, University of North Carolina-Asheville

• Ghassan Moussawi, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

• Beatriz Padilla, University of South Florida

• Calvin John Smiley, CUNY-Hunter College

Session Organizer

• Victoria Reyes, University of California-Riverside