Anti-racist scholar-activism raises urgent questions about the role of contemporary universities and the academics who work within them. As profound socio-racial crises collide with mass anti-racist mobilisations, this book focuses on the praxes of academics working within, and against, their institutions in pursuit of anti-racist social justice.
Amidst a searing critique of the university’s neoliberal and imperial character, Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly situate the university as a contested space, full of contradictions and tensions.
Drawing upon original empirical data, the book considers how anti-racist scholar-activists navigate barriers and backlash in order to leverage the opportunities and resources of the university in service to communities of resistance.
Showing praxes of anti-racist scholar-activism to be complex, diverse, and multifaceted, and paying particular attention to how scholar-activists grapple with their own complicities in the harms perpetrated and perpetuated by higher education institutions, this book is a call to arms for academics who are, or would like to be, committed to social justice.
A manifesto for anti-racist scholar-activism Whilst this book has shown that there is no one way to engage in anti-racist scholar-activism, we have highlighted a number of themes that might be understood as broad, guiding principles. These ideas build on the tenets we set out in the Introduction as informing our vision of anti-racist scholar-activism, and they also inform our own praxes. More importantly, though, they are recurrent across the accounts of participants. In some ways, this chapter shares
This excerpt from James Baldwin: Living in Fire details a key juncture in Baldwin’s life, 1957–59, when he was transformed by a visit to the South to write about the civil rights movement while grappling with the meaning of the Algerian Revolution. The excerpt shows Baldwin understanding black and Arab liberation struggles as simultaneous and parallel moments in the rise of Third World, anti-colonial and anti-racist U.S. politics. It also shows Baldwin’s emotional and psychological vulnerability to repressive state violence experienced by black and Arab citizens in the U.S., France, and Algiers.
scholarly reflections on development communications ( Clost, 2014 ; SAIH, 2021 ), which she uses in the ‘training of volunteers away from perpetuating stereotypes about “white saviorism”’. At MCoS, Rhonda Rosenberg borrowed ideas of ‘media literacy’ elaborated by the Association for Media Literacy. She encountered their ‘key concepts’ when encouraging young people involved in MCoS anti-racist workshops to enter the annual video competition of the National Film Board of Canada ( National Film Board, 2009 : 21–2). The very work of ‘myth busting’ of humanitarian images, she
. A public backlash led by anti-racist activists pressured websites PayPal and Patreon into cutting off their fundraising, the Daily Mail recalled Hopkins, and a series of ports in Suez, Cyprus, Tunisia (where fishermen in Zarzis refused to allow the boat entry) and Malta held the boat in custody or banned it from docking altogether. In Famagusta, Cyprus, authorities found 20 Sri Lankan men on board, who had each paid $12,000 to be smuggled to
As we have shown in previous chapters, the values and orientations of those engaged in anti-racist scholar-activism are starkly different to – if not fundamentally oppositional to – those of the neoliberal-imperial-institutionally-racist university. After all, scholar-activism involves recognising that ‘what is best for your department is not necessarily best for humankind’. 1 The explicitly political, radical scholarship and praxes of anti-racist scholar-activism can situate us in mutually
is the perspectives and experiences of twenty-nine such people that we centre in this book; a book that delves into the complexities, complicities, challenges, and possibilities associated with anti-racist scholar-activism. The book reflects growing interest in scholar-activism in recent years, as seen in the upswell of blogs, events, and conferences on this topic. This is not to say that the practice of anti-racist scholar-activism is new. Far from it, it has a long and rich lineage. Yet, while there are many academics involved in anti-racist activism ‘on the
Through the concerns of participants, the previous chapter began to show that anti-racist scholar-activism describes a form of praxis that is characteristically distinct from traditional approaches to working in academia. Building on these foundations, this chapter looks more closely at what governs, and therefore distinguishes, anti-racist scholar-activism. By drawing upon Sivanandan's notion of working in service , 1 we show how the orientation of those engaged in anti-racist scholar
In the previous chapter, we considered how the neoliberal-imperial-institutionally-racist university constrains and lashes back against those engaged in anti-racist scholar-activism. Exploring how anti-racist scholar-activists find ways to survive and navigate the abrasive terrain of higher education (HE), we also insisted that the university is not a monolith but rather an assemblage of contradictory and competing forces which give rise to pockets of possibility that we might exploit. 1
Throughout this book, we have shown that the dominant logics of the neoliberal-imperial-institutionally-racist university are often antithetical to anti-racist scholar-activism – that is to say, higher education (HE) institutions are active reproducers of the very inequalities and injustices that scholar-activists seek to challenge. Despite our dissent both inside and outside of the university, our employment and participation within the academy means that we are implicated in those injustices: we are complicit. This may be an uncomfortable