Rethinking the Aid Sector Graduate Pipeline in Comparative and International Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 3
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Equity, inclusion, diversity, and financial options in higher education

Proposal

This roundtable presents an opportunity to critically examine and discuss graduate programs in comparative and international education that prepare students to work in the aid sector. Specifically, participants will collaboratively explore how the “graduate pipeline” works to uphold or dismantle racism and coloniality in the sector. Bringing together faculty and students, the conversation seeks to elicit deeper thinking about teaching and learning in graduate education and how we might respond to ongoing critiques of international aid and renewed calls to decolonize our work within it.

There has been growing recognition of racism and coloniality in the aid sector in recent years. Internal audits in light of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement have acknowledged inequities long raised by postcolonial scholars, aid practitioners, and Southern scholars and activists raising questions regarding how graduate programs prepare and train students for work in this field. After the horrific murder of George Floyd in 2020, the #BlackLivesMatter movement was recorded as possibly the largest social movement in the history of the United States, spurring renewed dialogues in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism (DEIA) in the US and US-driven work in the world. At the same time, solidarity movements around the world reinvigorated attention to inequalities and minoritized communities in many countries, including countries in Europe and South and East Asia and the Middle East. For example, in India, the #DalitLivesMatter movement re-gained momentum (Ayyub, 2020). In the wake of these global movements we are forced to confront the reality that our work in the aid sector is steeped in structural racism and coloniality.

Critics argue that graduate programs replicate social inequities through their recruitment patterns, curricula, teaching, and research practices. Furthermore, they contend that graduate programs prepare aid sector professionals to replicate these social inequities and maintain the status quo through their work. Aid work emerged from colonial relations and perpetuates power imbalances formerly shown through colonial violence. In many ways, current practices in the aid sector stem from practices in graduate programs that form future practitioners in the field. The epistemic authority justified by Comparative and International Education (CIE) graduate programs further promotes an education pipeline that demands interrogation as to how programs might be complicit in reinscribing aid practices that perpetuate global inequities.

This roundtable discussion seeks to center conversations on comparative and international education programs as aid sector pipelines and how they might be complicit in advancing racism and coloniality. We ask: In what ways are we complicit in reinscribing racism and coloniality in the aid sector? How might we address practices in CIE graduate education that might serve to perpetuate racism and coloniality in the aid sector? How might we engage in ongoing interrogation of our practices within the academy and in our various entanglements in the aid sector? The panelists consist of graduate students, faculty, and aid practitioners who have worked, taught and researched in CIE in different world regions.

The Chair will introduce the roundtable and invite roundtable participants to introduce themselves. She will then invite each of the three discussion starters to introduce an aspect of graduate preparation, The Chair will then initiate discussion among roundtable participants. Several questions will be used to facilitate the discussion of the graduate school pipeline during this session. The questions are grouped into three related themes that are predominantly discussed in the literature, such as pathways into the field, knowledge hierarchies and how they impact research and implementation, and the role of positionality and power relationships.

This session will benefit graduate students, faculty, administrators, and the CIE community in general. At the conclusion of this session, participants will generate a list of issues, strategies, and techniques that will contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of racism and coloniality in the aid sector. It is expected that during this discussion, participants will reflect upon the presence or absence of similar efforts at their home institutions.

Authors

• Shytance Wren, University of Maryland, College Park

• Deepa Srikantaiah, USAID, Africa Bureau/SD

• Katya Murillo, University of Maryland College of Education

• Langan Courtney, University of Maryland College Park

• Zeena Zakharia, University of Maryland College Park