What Does it Mean to Defund the Police

Below is the final in a series of essays for the Pittsburgh’s School of Education while I have served as Associate Dean for Equity and Justice. Intentionally NOT diversity and inclusion. This a form of public pedagogy. Read, write, reflect, talk, take action. Not in that order necessarily. There are myriad ways to do the…

Letting Go of Returning Back to ‘Normal’

As is necessary these days and a reminder of how should all slow down to truly listen to the answers from the question, “How are you?” How we are with each other is one consistency amidst so much destabilization. The fact that we all interconnected is undeniable. This past month, and much longer for many,…

Community

Community like to hear about it, talk about it? Here it go (En Vogue)   Although not an even split, I devote my awake working hours to two very different kinds of institutions: the academy and a grassroots education for liberation organization. Higher education is a hierarchical institution, in which people, schools, and programs are…

On the shattering of human dignity

I provided some answers to questions from Teachers College Press, along with Karen Gross, about the logic and consequences of separating migrant children from their families, and more fundamentally, the what happens to human dignity when incarceration is a political tool. Read the full Q&A here. Many thanks to @TCPress

Returning the public to the commons

   We went to the public hospital but it was private, but we went through the marked ‘private’ to the nurses’ coffee room, and it was public. We went to the public university but it was private, but we went to the barber shop on campus and it was public. We went into the hospital,…

Rejecting a politics of inclusion

  “If they come for you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.” James Baldwin to Angela Y. Davis   The shock and awe presidency of Donald Trump carries on. With its/his daily eruptions of formal and informal initiatives, the two consistent themes are destabilization of societal institutions and increased vulnerability…

How whiteness appears in media representations of campus protests

  Narratives have material impact. They shape what is possible, and even who is possible. Not completely, never permanently, but undeniably.   A June 4 op-ed published by the New York Times started with the header, “campus inquisitions must stop.” An inquisition is an investigation that holds no regard for individual, or purportedly, collective rights.…

On being disciplinarily disobedient

I am fortunate to be a mentor to several amazing, vibrant scholars. I tell them that I am not always sure that I’m good for their careers, but I’m positive I’m good for their hearts. This may sound like a demurring humility or perhaps the emotional (uncompensated) labor that a woman is expected to provide, but it…