I write this essay on the cusp of several holiday traditions. As always, the holiday season can be incredibly painful for many. Loss of loved ones, memories of painful past holidays, undealt with grief, and the yearning for comfort are palpable every holiday season. This year, the added confusion of record-breaking shopping while a genocide…
Mainstream media’s coverage of the campus-based student protests and encampments across the globe primarily addresses the ‘need’ to use law enforcement, including university police and politicians’ calls for National Guard. Armed with riot gear which does not include mace, batons, firearms, or metal or rubber tie handcuffs, this armament has been firmly in place long before this…
As child in elementary school, I distinctly remember being excited every time my teacher passed around the Scholastic Magazine. The paper of the magazine was thin, like newsprint. I’d fold the corners of the pages that had books I was interested in. Many times, I didn’t see anything and folded zero corners of the pages. It…
What I learned then that is still true: Binaries kill nuance. Research is never neutral. Everything is political and cultural. No singular reading approach will save us from racial capitalism let alone help us build freedom. These principles are fairly obvious to anyone who has a grasp of the political economy of education in a…
The paradox of education is precisely this — that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. —James Baldwin As the academic school year begins, and the COVID pandemic continues with new variants, there is much discussion about “learning loss,” typically referencing school-based achievement. Who is catching…
On January 24, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases that have upheld the use of affirmative action in college admissions. The cases, one filed against Harvard University and one against the University of North Carolina (UNC), have been organized financially and in media by Edward Blum, a legal strategist who has worked for years…
With deep inspiration from Sara Ahmed’s profound words that a book can be a thank you note, I share below the love and gratitude letter I wrote and shared as part of the Leading with Justice series. The session was organized around my recent book from Beacon Press, No Study Without Struggle: Confronting Settler Colonialism…
On Friday, June 4, the remains of two Black girls, Delisha and Katricia “Tree” Africa, were to be collected from the home of physical anthropologist Alan Mann, an emeritus professor associated with both the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University. Delisha and Tree were members of the Black liberation community in Philadelphia known as the…
Jim Clyburn, Congressional representative from South Carolina and the majority whip, has an office in the Congressional Chambers with his name title displayed clearly. However, Clyburn does not work out of that office, instead working from an unmarked one with this staff. On January 6, the day of the storming of the Capitol building, some…
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…
Leigh Patel 
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