by Cynthia Tobar
Overview of Topic
“[My] vision of activism was being out in the streets, and the picket signs, and taking over buildings, sit-ins, that kind of stuff. And it wasn’t until I started this where I was like, oh wait, activism is making sure people are informed…So you need to get in, infiltrate from the inside, and then outwardly express things… Like, not everyone is supposed to be on the front lines … so I identify with the background people…and showing people what it’s like on an academic level…But like being able to sit down and have a conversation and be like, this is why they’re doing this. Don’t you feel like this is wrong? Let me educate you on what happened in Mizzou. Let me educate you on this. Let me educate you on that. Let’s have a dialogue. Tell me why you feel this way. I feel like I’m on that side of activism…Yeah, I think that the dialogue part versus the protest part, both are necessary.” (Charlen McNeill, 2018)
In 2016 at Teachers College, Columbia University (TC), several students and faculty in the higher and postsecondary education program (HPSE) gathered to collectively create a year-long series of discussions and events centered on how the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement intersects with higher education. This soon morphed into a student-led group called Black Lives Matter in Higher Education (BLMHE). BLMHE co-founders Kat Stephens, Brian Allen and Charlen McNeil, were all graduate students in the HPSE program when they were invited to meet with HPSE professors Noah Drezner and Corbin Campbell. The faculty had initiated the gathering in response to the recent police killings of black youth, as well as the student protests at University of Missouri that targeted institutional racism that made national headlines that summer. Their hope was to help brainstorm how to provide a safe space for the students where they could voice their frustrations and concerns as they coped with the fallout of these tragedies of that year. This group has since come together to show solidarity and support for students of color at TC and their main mission has been to demonstrate their general commitment to social justice in the form of an educational seminar program.
It became apparent to the students that there was a need to create an organizing structure within BLMHE in order to provide a space for seminars to tackle issues of marginalization in higher education. The central role of higher education is to create knowledge. Culture is fundamental to knowledge. As such, knowledge that recognizes, reacts to, and advances cultural differences can be the starting ground towards offering equitable access to higher education to Black and Latinx groups. Culturally responsive pedagogy (Ladson Billings, 2009) has gained widespread traction for recognizing the importance of including students’ cultural references in all aspects of learning. But focusing on culturally responsive approaches to teaching is not enough if the structures of knowledge creation embraced by higher education research do not contain a sense of inclusivity for emerging scholars and students of color who do not see themselves adequately represented within the process of knowledge creation. The application of anti-oppressive knowledge creation could contribute to social justice and racial uplift in colleges and universities by increasing marginalized student representation in academia (Barnhardt, 2017). BLMHE effectively challenges the standardization of exclusion and the normalized mask of Whiteness in higher education (Rogers, 2012), particularly within knowledge production by acknowledging the power dynamics that influence knowledge creation and dissemination. They counter this with an egalitarian process which centers students and scholars of color who decide which topics get selected for their public seminars. This is in sharp contrast to the exclusive process that takes place in academic publishing, which is determined by which scholars and practitioners in our field are represented on peer review boards, which get to decide which articles get included. This indicates the extent to which such placements have on knowledge dissemination (Parsons and Ward, 2001). This is thus, an imperative aspect that needs to be acknowledged within the field, particularly since this influences research trends in higher education.
This exploratory oral history study will examine the formation and impact of the student-led movement of Black Lives Matter in Higher Education (BLMHE), how they analyze the effects of systemic societal forces on members of their community and their broader effects on higher education. For this study, I am interested in learning to what extent BLMHE plays a role in increasing equitable spaces for Black graduate students who identify as scholars on campus because I want to find out how this form of student activism empowers students as agents for change against systemic racism within higher education. This will permit me to understand how this form of student advocacy relates to other forms of advocacy that seeks to address such inequality in higher education.
Oral history will be utilized to capture and preserve the interview content from three BLMHE student cofounders while narrative research, interpretative theory, and constructivism will be utilized to further understand and interpret their oral history data generated from the interviews. This process includes exploring the oral history narratives transcribed from interviews, and then coded utilizing deductive coding to identify themes. My research centers on three themes: student advocacy within the realms of equitable epistemological spaces, how BLMHE is distinctive from the Black Studies and Black Lives Matter movements, and the role of Teachers College in supporting equitable epistemological spaces that can combat racism in higher education.
Problem Statement
“I was a student activist on campus and I envisioned that being protesting, demonstrations, creating demands list, reaching out to executive leadership. So that’s kind of the way that I viewed activism in terms of being very much in your face, calling out those types of things. I think throughout my graduate school experience and being a part of Black Lives Matter in higher education, that has changed. Or not necessarily has changed, but I’ve been introduced to more diverse ways of resisting and promoting justice and equity.” (Brian Allen, 2018)
Activism has emerged during these troubling times across college campuses in response to public avowals of exclusionary white nationalism in the United States My project will examine the formation and impact of the student-led movement of Black Lives Matter in Higher Education (BLMHE), how the student co-founders analyze the effects of systemic societal forces on members of their community and their broader effects on higher education. I am interested in learning to what extent BLMHE plays a role in increasing equitable spaces for Black graduate students who identify as scholars on campus because I want to find out how this form of student activism empowers students as agents for change against systemic racism within higher education. This will permit me to understand how this form of student advocacy compares to other forms of advocacy that seeks to address such inequality in higher education.
Black and Latinx students have historically faced systematic disenfranchisement through “racialized social systems” within higher education institutions (Bonilla-Silva, 1997, p.90). The inherently hierarchical nature of higher education makes it a prime setting for such a system, where college choice, admission, instruction, and policies are structured to reproduce White advantage (Bonilla-Silva, 1997; Acevedo-Gil, 2018). Wide gaps in academic preparation between Black/Latinx and White college applicants still persist. Issues pertaining to racial segregation within colleges, disparate access to resources, and a greater emphasis on testing remain unresolved. Marginalized student groups continue to face episodes of discrimination and microaggressions that can affect their success in college. As a result of this marginalization, students have typically sought to battle for institutional change through activism, with disenfranchised students often at the forefront of social movements that have challenged the status quo, such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Arab Spring (Kohstall, 2015; McAdam, 1986). The modes for such student participation has spanned the range from extra-parliamentary legal activism such as boycotts to illegal forms of activism exemplified by civil disobedience (Hope et al, 2016). That said, is there another alternative mode that exists outside of this bifurcation of activism (legal vs illegal), a mode born from marginalized Black and Latinx student involvement?
Traditional forms of political participation and associated activities, such as contacting elected officials, have most commonly been associated with “increased levels of civic knowledge, political skills, as well as positive civic and political attitudes” among marginalized POC students (Hope et al., 2016, p. 203). Other nontraditional forms of political activism such as arts-based creative activities have received plenty of attention from scholars specializing in civic engagement amongst student-led social movements. Situationally, colleges and universities have been known for being spaces that foster political dissent and debate. Yet despite higher education’s values of academic freedom and free speech, these institutions have also been criticized for perpetuating patterns of inequality, not only within existing institutional frameworks of socioeconomic access, but within the frameworks of epistemology, curriculum, and pedagogy (Rhoads, 2009; Titus, 2006; Castillo-Montoya & Torres-Guzmán, 2012; Palmer, 2009). Past higher education research has focused on the role of advocacy within the classroom incorporating more inclusive forms of culturally relevant pedagogy (Cook-Sather, 2016). Some social science scholars have extensively documented student movements that have worked to challenge the status quo in universities through grassroots leadership (Rhoads, 2009; Hope et. al, 2016). Additionally, others have studied how such student participation, as a learning objective, aims to increase a student’s level of civic education and self-advocacy to the benefit of students and society at large (i.e., voting) (Pascarella, 1991). However, I am interested in exploring the effect that involvement in student-led groups such as BLMHE have on increasing equitable spaces for these students as critical scholars within higher education scholarship. Particularly on these students’ critical thinking, as well as the impact of this group on TC as an institution. They are challenging not just the inequities within institutional infrastructures of higher education but the thought processes behind what frames higher education scholarship itself, and spaces for this scholarship need to be created for people of color.
Rationale/Purpose of Study
“I know there have been moments where I felt like I’ve had to be more of a – it’s more of like a model minority in a way of, well, you have to represent yourself well. You have to represent women well. You have to represent black women well. You have to represent immigrant people well.” (Kat Stephens, 2018)
The purpose of this study is to conduct a thematic coding and data analysis of an exploratory oral history of BLMHE at TC, the site for this study. My data analysis will be informed by the following research questions:
- To what extent does BLMHE increase space for black graduate students involved in challenging institutional racism within higher education at a PWI like TC?
- In what way is BLMHE distinctive from other movements such as BLM and the Black Studies Movement?
- To what extent does TC nurture the creation of such spaces for these students?
The first question investigates what student-centered social justice relevant work BLMHE is able to accomplish without institutional support. This work consists of providing epistemological spaces for emerging scholars of color in the field of higher education, in the form of educational seminars, which consisted of topics that the students wanted to examine at depth, with speakers/lecturers that were also selected by the students. The second question will explore if BLMHE is distinctive to TC, which would permit me to identify the implications for this study and how/if they are relevant to other BLM movements. Specifically, I will be focusing on the role of the Black Studies movement from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, which was an important predecessor to the BLM as well as the subsequent BLMHE group. The third question examines TC’s role, if any, in supporting this student group’s aims towards challenging institutional racism within higher education. In addition to referring to secondary literature in higher education scholarship, I will be drawing from oral history narratives from three BLMHE student co-founders, as primary sources, to further understand and interpret BLMHE’s current history and impact. Additionally, I will create an oral history website to center the voices of students of color. Part of the impetus here is to think about the ways that Black Lives Matter in Higher Education can be seen as a campus movement to reconstruct academic institutions, not just as a protest movement on the streets – featuring Teachers College as a case study.
An increased sense of reflective awareness to knowledge creation requires coming to terms with how the existing structure of knowledge creation in academia holds sway over whose perspectives are held in high esteem, and whose perspectives are overlooked.Such awareness can help the field of higher education recalibrate itself by creating spaces that locate anti-oppressive research within critical and difference-centered perspectives. It can facilitate challenging and thoughtful discussions that include the critique of epistemological assumptions within dominant theories in knowledge creation. Acknowledging the validity of less conventional research methods—such as narrative-based qualitative studies that stem from Indigenous and people-of-color (POC)-centered perspectives and participatory action research —can engage researchers in the development of more inclusive, as well as trustworthy, approaches towards knowledge creation in the field.
There are vibrant examples of anti-oppression research already underway in the field, with the next generation of higher education practitioners and scholars blazing the trail in challenging dominant oppressive research practices. Milagros Montoya-Castillo and Mariá Torres-Guzmán (2012), for instance, consider theories and methods borne from marginalized perspectives and examine how space can be expanded to include these voices in higher education research.. In centering Latinx theories and methods, such as Chicana Epistemology Framework, testimonios and lucha, in narrative-based qualitative research Castillo-Montoya and Torres-Guzmán validate these alternative methods and theories as funds of knowledge, and in doing so provide them as a resource for scholars of color, actively encouraging them to thrive in the academy (555).
Beyond epistemologies, there is also a need to see scholarship that adds to the discourse regarding how marginalized students are truly experiencing academia using methods that call out researcher bias in higher education research. Denise Dortch and Chirag Patel (2017) fill this gap by using a critical phenomenological hermeneutic method to study the impact microaggressions have on black female graduate students’ sense of belonging in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs at predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Using this approach allowed Dortch and Patel to document microaggressions taking place, and analyze their subjects’ lived experience with these microaggressions . This decision in research design aligned with Dortch’s self-proclaimed identity as a critical phenomenological-hermeneutic-qualitative researcher who wishes to understand the day-to-day experience of these students. Dortch reports that many experience fear and acts of microaggression, isolation (self-imposed & structural isolation, particularly afterdoctoral candidacy and prior to completing their dissertation), and tokenism (Dortch, 2019). According to her observations, this is perpetuated in episodes such as faculty stealing student work or students developing health problems while in graduate school.This analysis indicates an increasing reflective awareness being applied in knowledge creation by the researcher while maintaining a vital connectivity to research participants. As a result, Dortch and Patel’s research design permitted her to illuminate her participant student voices to effectively highlight existing race and power dynamics in higher education. Similarly to Montoya-Castillo and Torres-Guzmán, Dortch and Patel also make space throughout their research for these students by helping them realize that they do have agency. These scholars demonstrate what can surface when there is a conscious application of critical frameworks that critique methodological privileging of objectivity in higher education research. In doing so, they provide us with alternatives for theoretical foundations, research design, innovative qualitative data collection and methodologies which are conducted alongside marginalized students.
My research will expand the frame of student-led social movement scholarship to facilitate new connections in the humanities and related social sciences. My hope is that this research will shed light on the experiences of college students as they transition and adapt in their academic journeys, provide a platform for documenting these student activist narratives, and advance cultural as well as social scholarship in this area. William Bowen, Martin Kurzweil and Eugene Tobin (2005) maintain that higher education’s mission is to nurture the next generation’s pursuit of civic engagement for the advancement of democracy, the basis of serving the public good. But standing alongside this mission is the American ideal of providing an equal opportunity to higher education for all. Providing equal opportunities for everyone means providing an educational experience that represents a diversity of backgrounds and histories. Higher education institutions, however, must create spaces for the diversity of incoming students, particularly marginalized POC students who are at a higher risk of experiencing challenges that impact their acclimation and persistence in college. This will resonate with POC students who may aspire to pursue study at the doctoral level beyond four year degree programs outside of TC. The struggles TC Black graduate students are facing may echo their own struggles.
My main critique of higher education scholarship is that it has primarily focused on cultural capital and its role in the reproduction of class and race inequality, without centralizing or acknowledging the role that race plays in education or society itself (Ladson-Billings, 2009; Yosso & Solórzano, 2002). Counter-storytelling can reveal new knowledge sources and better inform the public about the personal experiences of marginalized students in college. Further, counter-storytelling can teach researchers that by “combining elements from both the story and the current reality, one can construct another world that is richer than either the story or the reality alone” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 36). Applying this subset of Critical Race Theory (CRT), an analytical framework that centralizes race in making sense of societal inequalities (Ladson-Billings, 2009), can be used as a strategy of empowerment to provide ways to center outsider knowledges, criticizing the assumption that students of color arrive at college with cultural deficiencies. Doing so amplifies the tenet of community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005), which is an effective way to rebuild knowledge that has previously been diminished of cultural worth in previous scholarship.
Oral history, as the methodology for this study, explores different ways of presenting history and challenges the authority of traditional written accounts, which have perpetuated race- and class-related power struggles. Oral history also closely aligns with counter-storytelling, as it amplifies and includes marginalized participants, making it a viable, inclusive qualitative approach for exploring the challenges low-income and working-class students from various backgrounds face. In this way, they become tools with which to challenge marginalization, using a social justice lens to more effectively examine issues of inequity within higher education.
BLMHE applies an alternative mode of viable activism beyond rallies and protests. Further, their work demonstrates the degree to which marginalized POC students are not content to sit on the sidelines. In order for higher education to better support these students, it is critical to center them in the process of knowledge creation via educational seminars; this, in turn, can inform change in scholarship. These inclusive epistemological spaces challenge dominant views of power in higher education (Parsons & Ward, 2001), validating POC-centered methods and theories while providing resources for scholars of color to thrive in the academy (Castillo-Montoya & Torres-Guzmán, 2012). Further, the documentation of BLMHE for this study validates these views, which permits students to speak for and represent themselves as they continue in their mission to strengthen student identity and belonging for communities of color within TC.
Definition of Terms:
“I know that I wanted to talk a lot about identity. I wanted to talk about the formation of ethnic identity among people that identify as black across the board and I wanted to talk about police brutality.” (Kat Stephens, 2018)
Epistemological spaces
Epistemological spaces are where knowledge is created. BLMHE ensures that these spaces address alternate modes of knowledge production that center POC perspectives on higher education scholarship. Is knowledge production in higher education a bastion of privilege? If so, how is the scholarship perpetuating inequity? There is a need for an increased consciousness in acknowledging power dynamics in research and knowledge creation approaches used in the field to counter what Nancy Acevedo-Gil (2018), a higher education scholar from California State University, has termed the “colonial relationships within the research process” (p. 2). This colonial mindset’s effect on knowledge creation is evident on whose perspectives within higher education scholarship are held in high esteem, and whose perspectives are overlooked.
Anti-oppressive knowledge creation
A more reflective awareness can help the field begin to recalibrate itself by creating spaces that locate anti-oppressive research within critical and difference-centered perspectives, and critique dominant theories in a challenging and thoughtful discussion of the ontological and epistemological assumptions of anti-oppressive theories. Applications of less conventional research methods—such as narrative-based qualitative studies that stem from Indiginous and POC-centered perspectives and participatory action research —can engage professionals in the field in the development of more inclusive, as well as trustworthy, methodologies of knowledge production and ethical research practice. This can enable the field to improve inclusion and diversity in knowledge creation. In essence, we need to decolonize and reimagine knowledge creation approaches that keep perpetuating inequity within the research process. This stems from the field’s perception of what a higher education researcher’s role is regarding research and knowledge production. What bias do we as professionals in the field possess? How can we balance a sense of self-awareness as researchers who acknowledge their positionality and the power inequalities that exist, while investigating inequity in higher education? How can we ensure that knowledge production in higher education can be an engine of opportunity for all?
Oral history
Oral history is defined as a methodology that involves the collecting, archiving and contextualization of lived experiences, memories and commentaries of people, communities, and participants of historical events (Ritchie, 2015). This method incorporates a more dynamic view of history making by opening a space that validates narratives from marginalized communities that typically have had little say on how they have been represented. Postmodernist oral historians view oral history as an inclusive exercise that not only documents an individual’s story but also examines social justice themes of institutional power structures and how it perpetuates inequality among communities along race and class lines (Janesick, 2007). For this reason, oral history is a captivating approach in analyzing as well as illuminating BLMHE’s impact.
Inclusive archiving and memory work
Culturally inclusive archival approaches center the stories and experiences of communities excluded and obscured in dominant narratives of the past. Practitioners of inclusive archiving and memory work strive to partner with communities as they document and organize records based on four main principles (Jimerson, 2009; Theimer 2012): 1. Reconsider the principle of provenance¹ in light of unequal power relationships; 2. Actively seek to preserve the records of overlooked communities; 3. Go beyond a purely custodial role to fill gaps in the documentary record; 4. Recognize the value of oral transmission and proactively create oral histories. This approach acknowledges the reality of the growing disparities in the historical record that exclude the histories and experiences of the everyday struggles of working class communities, immigrants, communities of color, and LGBTQ+ groups whose stories have too often been excluded from mainstream representations in American history and in traditional archival practice. My goal with the creation of this digital archival companion site is to address the principles listed above. We have an unprecedented need for these narratives to be widely available, to recognize the value of making space for excluded accounts of the past. In doing so, we provide a corrective action to do justice for the underrepresented and co-create with affected communities, ensuring that there is equal representation of the needs, interests, and perspectives of all.
Limitations of study
“I have friends that are in different psych programs and their professors don’t talk about mass shootings happening on campuses unless it was done by somebody of color. Or talking about police brutality and when – not Trayvon, you can pick any one of the last police brutality murders that’s happening. That their class didn’t talk about it. Their professors didn’t care if their students of color were okay because a lot of us were not okay.” (Charlen McNeil, 2018)
This project will consist of open-ended oral history interviews of current and former student members of BLMHE to document their experiences, articulate matters of power, gender, race, class and ethnicity, draw conclusions about their experiences and to generalize findings. Key terms for this study include 1) institutional racism, which entails the extent to which organizational structures and processes perpetuate racial inequity amongst groups; and 2) social justice relevant work, which consists of targeted efforts to identify and critique mechanisms of oppression, as well as the development of theoretical and practical tools necessary to enact social change. The ensuing data analysis is designed to contribute to generalizable knowledge about BLMHE. The goal is not empirical, rather it is to provide a contextual analysis to trace the psychological and sociopolitical limitations faced by this group. I hope to yield substantial data that offers an in-depth description of how these black graduate students experienced their involvement in BLMHE. Since this is intended as an exploratory study, a limitation I anticipate is there may be a need to interview additional participants as the study further develops, such as other institutional actors including upper-level administrators and additional students. In choosing the oral history method, my intention is to not overlook the detailed nuances of my participants’ lived experiences and behavior that can be missed by large-scale surveys. I will circumnavigate this pitfall by giving careful consideration during my research design phase and tailoring my methods to be a better fit for what I may be interested in uncovering in my data collection.
Research Implications
I will conclude by addressing research implications for higher education scholars, and suggest how oral history as a methodological approach aligns with the strategies and tactics BLMHE employs to increase epistemological spaces for black graduate students involved in challenging institutional racism within higher education. Given the consideration of how the social construction of race manifests in everyday life for People of Color, BLMHE’s mission is to increase spaces for black graduate students involved in challenging institutional racism within higher education at a PWI like TC. While I am interested in investigating what student-centered social justice relevant work BLMHE is able to accomplish without institutional support, in this article I wish to examine TC’s institutional role, if any, in challenging structural racism within higher education. A survey of archives and manuscript repositories was conducted in an attempt to document the extent of TC’s institutional efforts. I will provide a historical context of TC’s previous attempts within its administration and curriculum programming and how this history of TC’s attempts at addressing students’ experiences and efforts with racism as well as to respect institutional commitments to advance equity and inclusion.
On December 4, 2015, undergraduate students of color staged a “die-in” protest at the Tree Lighting Ceremony on College Walk on Columbia’s campus, a day after a grand jury in Staten Island declined to indict Daniel Pantaleo, the NYC police officer who suffocated Eric Garner to death with a chokehold (Sedran, 2014). The protest was co-led by the Black Students Organization, a student group concerned with the recognition and understanding of the needs of the Black community at Columbia, and Students Against Black Incarceration, a Black radical student organization committed to awareness and activism around mass incarceration. Taking their cue from the Civil Rights Era and subsequent Black Power movement, students of color at Columbia have been an essential voice since the onset of the Black Lives Matter Movement, demanding increased representation concerning on campus matters such as pedagogy and curriculum as well as in their calls for justice for the institution’s impact on social change off campus in the neighboring Morningside and Harlem community. The following year, across the street from Columbia on December 14, 2016, TC faculty staged a similar die-in at the annual Holiday Party, where President Furhman, alongside other TC faculty, administrators and students, participated in response to episodes of police brutality and show solidarity with POC students (N. D. Drezner, personal communication, March 20, 2023).
Below I will provide historical context that captures what student efforts for racial equity as well as institutional initiatives were like at TC before the formation of Black Lives Matter in Higher Education and their student group educational seminars. I will also depict anti-racism efforts undertaken by the TC administration to counteract lack of diversity, non-inclusive curriculum, and an oppressive racial climate.
TC Black Student Advocacy Initiatives Before BLMHE
Following activist activity across the street, TC students have worked tirelessly on diversity and anti-discrimination matters directly affecting POC students before BLMHE’s formation, mainly through activities initiated by the Black Student Network. The Black Student Network (BSN) is made up primarily by graduate students of African Descent and allies who empower students to become active participants in their education at TC. In addition to being a space that gives academic and moral support for Blacks in higher education, BSN has centered its programming initiatives to themes that promote unity and support pride in cultural traditions among Black graduate students as well as networking opportunities to enhance the professional development of Blacks, celebrates traditions and practices of peoples of African descent within TC, mainly via social mixers. BSN also focuses on issues of recruitment, retention, and development of Black professionals at TC through panels, and maintains community engagement through volunteer activities with neighboring communities surrounding the campus. Additionally, BSN has organized and hosted the Annual Diversity in Research and Practice Conference (DiRP) for the past decade at TC which has focused on the ways in which students and faculty at TC think about issues that affect marginalized communities that have been misrepresented in education research and scholarship.
In 2018, a memo specifically seeking to address decoloniality processes at TC was developed by members of the Decolonization Study Group and TC First Gen Student Association at the invitation of then Provost Thomas James. It proposed decolonial practices that aim to identify and disrupt the ways in which ways of knowing and behaving perpetuate inequalities and stigmas originating during colonial periods of history, negating or making invisible members of the community who suffer as a result of these legacies. This memo, which predated the President’s Commission on the History of Race and Racism at Columbia University in 2022, was concerned with what was missing from TC’s diversity framework during the mid aughts. Primarily, this memo wished to move beyond “invoking diversity language” as a response to marginalized student concerns and called for the creation of “a discursive context wherein action to address diversity concerns is stifled.” (Decolonization Study Group, 2020)
According to the memo, “Decoloniality is a perspective and praxis, a “process, practice and project of sowing seeds…There are no ready-made formulas for how to decolonize university campuses, but there are insights and experiences that can inform this iterative process.” (Decolonization Study Group, 2020) This memo was developed to begin to inform faculty, students and staff about the meaning and potential avenues for decoloniality at TC, particularly as an elite Ivy League institution. The intention was to have a decolonial practice evolve across various levels: classroom pedagogy, curriculum, research and writing, and university-wide policies. The memo recommended the following activities to ensure decolonization across TC, including “strengthening of existing efforts and infrastructures at TC to promote diversity and inclusion, and to combat discrimination and racism; creation of opportunities for students of diverse backgrounds to dialogue with each other and with faculty around decolonization at TC…; the cultivation of an inclusive TC committee on de-colonization to help steward and support the processes of decoloniality;” as well as “providing funding and scholarship opportunities for decolonial research and practices, and for historically minoritized and underrepresented communities of scholars and students in higher education.” (Decolonization Study Group, 2020)
It is important to note the ways in which membership in student organizations such as BSN provided space for Black identity expression and development before BLMHE. However, while BSN served as a platform for racial uplift and the advocacy of racial/ethnic minority student interests at TC, BLMHE has served to extend BSN’s activity with centering POC scholarship beyond annual conferences to a year-long seminar series that connected POC student epistemological concerns at predominantly White universities, thereby providing an alternative form of social justice leadership opportunity for students. In this sense, BLMHE acted as a bridge between the platform provided by BSN and the calls for decolonial practices at TC from the Decolonization memo prepared by the Decolonization Study Group and TC First Gen Student Association.
TC Faculty Responses
It is important to highlight the several research and curriculum development initiative that TC faculty were spearheading to help inform institutional change as nationwide incidents of racism and police brutality were taking place in 2016. They include: the Racial Literacy Project, founded in 2016 and led by Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Associate Professor of English Education at Teachers College which emphasizes racial literacy development when educating POC students; the Reimagining Education Summer Institute, founded in 2016 as an interdisciplinary, research-based professional development series that enables educators to become more culturally relevant in their practice and enhance educational benefits to racially and ethnically diverse student populations (Teachers College, 2020); the Race, Ethnicity and Inter-Cultural Understanding Curriculum Map, an diversity mapping project where Professor of Sociology and Education Amy Stuart Wells led a team of TC students in the creation of a resource on coursework offered at TC that center on themes of race, ethnicity and inter-cultural understanding (Teachers College, 2020); the Black Education Research Collective, founded in August of 2017, BERC is a collective of scholars focused on education research at the intersections of Black history, culture, politics, and leadership; and finally, there was also a faculty research project funded by a TC Provost Innovation Fund in 2016 made up of TC faculty Noah Drezner, Felicia Moore Mensah, and Michelle Knight-Manuel that examined racial battle fatigue among faculty and sought ways to better engage students on topics of race in the classroom. While these initiatives were focused more on faculty-driven conversation on critical issues related to race and education, these faculty-created spaces were also instances where faculty attempted to provide spaces for POC student participation along with other members of the TC community, particularly in terms of affecting areas of research, scholarship and classroom experiences. However, they were not student-centered or student-led, which is what sets BLMHE apart from these earlier attempts by TC faculty research interests focus on the teaching and learning experiences of POC students within the realms of curriculum and pedagogy in higher education.
Columbia’s Institutional Responses
In 2014, Columbia’s History department formed the Columbia Slavery Project, a research initiative which set out to examine Columbia’s history and legacies of enslavement (Columbia University & Slavery, 2022). The impact of this research initiative cannot be overstated. The Columbia Slavery Project singularly set out to create an inclusive academic space for teaching and learning about the University’s history as it finds ways to reckon with the lasting legacy of its role in perpetuating oppression of enslaved marginalized people in the US. Participating students have worked alongside faculty to develop historical materials that document past race-related incidents on campus, such as a cross burning that took place at Furnald Hall in 1924 that white students set ablaze to protest a Black student residing in the dormitory (Barroso, 2022).
Six years later, after having established Juneteenth as a campus-wide holiday, President Lee Bollinger, during his Juneteenth Briefing on June 19th, 2020, declared: “Columbia University is not innocent of the structures of racism that have afflicted America. Yet we also have a history of confronting invidious discrimination and anti-Black racism. There is still much more to do.” (Bollinger, 2020) In reckoning with Columbia’s role of slavery, on December 1, 2022, Bollinger announced the formation of the President’s Commission on the History of Race and Racism at Columbia University. This faculty-led commission, consisting of Columbia trustees, students and faculty, intends to “assess current symbols and representations at Columbia and establish guidelines for future ones, guided by a commitment both to historical accuracy and to an inclusive campus environment.” (Office of the Provost, Columbia University, 2022). Subsequently, the commission’s first priority will be to further develop the reach of Columbia’s Slavery project, where they will provide added support to students as they continue to produce historical teaching materials on past race-related incidents on campus.
While the President’s Commission and Slavery Project carried significant weight on the overall climate for students of color at Columbia’s affiliated institutions, I was interested in similar institutional actions that where occurring at TC during this time. While institutional archival materials covering this activity at TC were limited, I was able to locate two critical reports: The first was a task force report from 2010 entitled “Race, Culture and Diversity: An Action Plan for Teachers College,” which outlined some actions that came out of that group composed of faculty and senior administrators. One of those actions was to create the “Experiencing Diversity Project” led by two faculty members and staffed by doctoral students. Another was to begin setting diversity goals in the academic departments and deliberating on whether progress was being made. The second report that was located were findings from the “Experiencing Diversity Project” in 2012 which examined the institutional climate for diversity at TC. Below I will present a brief history of diversity initiatives at TC, go into detail the messages that came out during President Susan Fuhrman’s tenure at TC regarding anti-racism, and describe how these institutional initiatives fared during the mid aughts.
TC’s Institutional Responses
The reasoning behind the site selection of TC for this study, other than this institution is where BLMHE began, is that TC is also an emblematic case study of diversity and inclusion efforts in higher education. My understanding of equity and inclusion in educational settings is that its aim is to provide students with opportunities to discuss politically-charged issues related to marginalized identities in safe spaces. In this process, we aim to develop teaching strategies that give students spaces to address difficult issues that matter to them in order to facilitate their path to success. Despite the increased diversity in student demographics, PWIs in the U.S. continue to center their institutional priorities to the benefit of the affluent, and overwhelmingly white, student population at the detriment of everyone else (Armstrong & Hamilton, 2015). As such, TC is facing many issues in meeting its goal of creating a welcoming environment. In order to examine the challenges facing TC, I will provide a brief historical account of TC’s institutional responses at addressing these challenges in its creation of the Office for Diversity and Community Affairs, the President’s Committee for Community & Diversity, and the subsequent faculty-led Experiencing Diversity Project.
The Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Community Affairs (2001)
The Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Community Affairs was created in January 2001, in response to recommendations of the President’s 1999 Taskforce Report (Teachers College, 2005). The Office for Diversity and Community Affairs leads the President’s and College’s initiatives concerning community, diversity, civility, equity, and anti-discrimination. The Office is composed of the Vice President, the Director and the Executive Administrative Associate, plus two or three Graduate Interns for Programming. The Office, working with others in the College, addresses issues from faculty, staff, students, and alumni. These concerns may overlap with equity, anti-discrimination, retaliation and due process concerns, sexual assault and other gender-based misconduct concerns. The Office has worked on these ongoing diversity issues through original and collaborative programming, workshops and sponsoring student research grants. The Office’s philosophy is to encourage the College community to listen, learn, educate, and work together in positive ways. At the same time, the Office focuses on systemic issues by addressing policy and procedural concerns.
The goal of the Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Community Affairs is to provide support for TC’s Diversity Mission, where it “actively attracts, supports and retains diverse students, faculty and staff at all levels, demonstrated through its commitment to social justice, its respectful and vibrant community and its encouragement and support of each individual in the achievement of their full potential.” (Teachers College, Columbia University). The Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Community Affairs is concerned with empowering everyone to gain the skills needed to realize that ensuring diversity is everyone’s work; that everyone is responsible and needs to be proactive about diversity. In addition, the Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Community Affairs wants to address the skills needed to manage the different dynamics amongst students, faculty, administration, and staff on its campus. By doing so, its aim was to create a welcoming environment on campus, one where all students can thrive and succeed, where staff can be encouraged to seek professional development, and where faculty can acquire skills to adopt inclusive pedagogy to reach all students.
The extent of the Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Community Affairs’ impact is determined by its ability to manage the different dynamics amongst students, faculty, administration and staff on the campus. The job is immense–to tackle changing the larger culture that is reflecting the ideological tensions and shifts taking place across the country. The Office is currently staffed with three full-time administrators: Vice President Janice S. Robinson, Director Juan Carlos Reyes, and Program Manager Janelle Torres. The Office works with the college to create a broad sense of diversity, primarily around culture, academics and anti-discrimination work that consists of supporting numerous programs, receptions and events.
The sociopolitical environment that saw Trump’s election and Black Lives Matter protests in 2016, in tandem with tense climate across the campus, drove the Office into further action. Since 2014, in addition to overseeing Title IX compliance, the Office has worked on programs that work against sexual violence and support the recruitment of Black and Latino Males in Doctoral Education. The Office continues to explore ways to organize and facilitate diversity initiatives by and for students and faculty at TC, as it works to provide spaces for students to speak up regarding ways those initiatives can be improved and to work with TC to embrace more diverse applicants in its graduate student admissions and retention.
President’s Committee for Community & Diversity (CCD) (2001)
The President’s Committee for Community & Diversity (CCD) was formed in 2001 directly as a result of the President’s 1999 Diversity Task Force Report. CCD is a college-wide cross constituency committee that includes four faculty, five student senators, three professional staff, three union members, representatives from the Office of Student Activities and Programs, Office of Access and Services for Individuals with Disabilities, and International Services along with the Provost, and the President (Teachers College, n.d.). According to previous descriptions on TC’s website, the “CCD’s purpose through the years has been and remains to advise the President, and to engage with TC’s college-wide diversity and community building and civility projects.” (Teachers College, n.d.) The CCD has worked on communication of institutional climate issues through its development of programming, activities tailored for students and faculty, and actions (Teachers College, n.d.). Additionally, the CCD has provided grants for student research in diversity and to encourage the creation of activities to educate and create community opportunities involving race, gender, class, disabilities, homophobia, religion and intellectual concerns.
On October 26, 2007, the CCD presented an Initial Recommendations Report to President Fuhrman. The primary impetus for the creation of the this report may have emerged as a response to the racist incidents earlier that October, when a noose was found hanging on the doorknob of a black professor’s office, an incident that was soon followed by the discovery of anti-Semetic graffiti on campus (Applebome, 2007; Teachers College, 2007). The report made the following recommendations: 1. To hire and retain more faculty of color; 2. To continue difficult dialogues on the TC climate involving academics, employment and TC culture, particularly by hosting and supporting others who will provide these opportunities to break bread together and safely listen, learn and identify hurts and problems; 3. To support the work of faculty and staff to improve the TC climate in the classroom and in the workplace, which includes increasing and retaining students of color, and reviewing our curriculum to ensure that students in all programs are regularly exposed to multicultural courses; 4. To research and provide data to support the long continuous work involving TC’s climate; 5. To examine the components and do what it takes to make communications regular, timely and inclusive. 6. To build connections and support concerning Columbia-wide climate issues. The report, which was composed of faculty and senior administrators, stressed that one of the challenges that anti-racism initiatives faced was the lack of knowledge regarding the current institutional climate and whether it was effectively promoting diversity and equity on TC’s campus.
Shortly after this report, the “Experiencing Diversity Project” was formed and led by two faculty members and staffed by doctoral students. The purpose was to assess the current institutional climate using focus group study to offer multiple channels for participants to engage in discussion, learning, and collaborative work to help dismantle structural racism at TC.
“Experiencing Diversity Project,” 2007-2010
During the early to mid-aughts, Teachers College mounted several institutional efforts to improve its climate for diversity with the creation of the Office of Diversity and Community Affairs, the establishment of the Vice President’s position to lead that office as well as sponsoring training sessions on microaggressions and harassment. However, two key elements were missing. First, these efforts did fully sound out the community itself, tending to involve representatives of different constituencies but not always capturing a range of voices from within each of those groups. Second, they have not tapped the abundant research capabilities at the institution, research that can elevate the conversation beyond perception and into the realm of objective fact.
With those concerns in mind, from 2007-2010, Robert T. Carter, Professor of Psychology and Education, and Celia Oyler, Associate Professor of Education, conducted a three-year, mixed methods study of TC’s diversity climate entitled the Experiencing Diversity Project. They interviewed more than 200 TC community members, including trustees, senior staff, professional and union staff, faculty (including adjuncts, instructors and lecturers) and students. Simultaneously, they mapped out the demographics of each of these groups, quantifying the numbers and percentages of whites, African Americans, Latino/as, males, females and others within each of those categories. They also conducted reviews both of past reports and other documents about diversity at TC, and of the visual “iconography” on campus: signs, posters, statues and other imagery that convey non-verbal or encoded messages related to diversity.
During 2010, Carter and Oyler presented their findings on an ongoing basis to faculty (including adjuncts and instructors), professional and union staff, students and trustees, and receiving extensive feedback. “The theoretical and conceptual approach we’re taking is unique in several ways,” says Carter (Teachers College, 2010). Their transparent approach involved them sharing what they are learning as they go along and using both the information and the feedback they receive to inform other phases of the project. Additionally, research on diversity climate is typically done more narrowly, in terms of the diversity of the faculty or the student body. Carter and Oyler take the position that diversity issues for the faculty and students are not the same, nor are they the same as those for people in other areas: it’s one thing to deal in perceptions–to say, we think we know what the climate looks like–and another to truly map out that climate with graphs and charts. Because when you do that mapping, and you share it around, then everyone is operating from the same base of information (Teachers College, 2010). The goal was not to compare TC to other institutions, but instead to focus on the institution itself and a more widely shared, positive experience around diversity for people at TC.
A preliminary draft of the study, which included demographic mapping, was completed in 2010. Within TC’s institutional context, a troubling trend was made apparent. “Overall, the majority of executive staff members and tenured faculty are white, though there are larger numbers of minorities at the assistant professor level, and overall the majority of union staff members are black and Hispanic” (Teachers College, 2010). This finding was disconcerting when taking into consideration both the hiring pool of qualified minority doctorates available, and compared to the strides that have been made regarding gender parity in the academic job market, particularly in higher education leadership (Dumas-Hines, F. A., et. al, 2001; Smith, D. G. et al, 2004; Segovia-Pérez, et al, 2019).
At the time, Carter was optimistic about the prospects for change, given the commitment that the College made to support the project and other current initiatives described previously with the implementation of the Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Community Affairs and President’s Committee for Community & Diversity (Teachers College, 2010). The Carter/Oyler study was part of a broader diversity effort that involved a task force comprising faculty and senior administrators. While discussions around inequity in higher education are surfacing with more frequency, conversations about race remain difficult to navigate in higher education institutions (Teachers College, 2010). Especially when considering non-inclusive curriculum and an oppressive racial climate, while it is beneficial for POC scholars and/or professionals to be included in the conversation, it is also imperative for POC students to realize that someone like them can also be included. Topics on minority issues do not necessarily guarantee an inclusion of minority professionals. Rather than only thinking about inclusive pedagogy that emphasize students’ understanding and engagement with normative academic standards and practices, what sets BLMHE apart from these previous institutional efforts is that it provides a platform for marginalized perspectives and approaches in knowledge creation and its subsequent scholarship, by and for POC students, that expand ideas within the higher education field.
Critique of TC’s Actions
What is left out of the TC diversity administrative models cited above is that they did not go far enough in fostering spaces of equitable knowledge creation that centered POC students. This omission is a form of colonialism within higher education that perpetuates systemic inequity. While both TC and students have expressed the desire to address diversity and inclusion issues in a manner that promotes a more welcoming environment, these discussions have omitted the challenges that continue to pervade the campus. Students continue to question why faculty on campus do not reflect the diversity TC claims to champion, and despite previous efforts, marginalized identities are still not successfully integrated into TC’s culture writ large.
In 2020, Christopher Emdin, an Associate Professor of Science Education at TC, spoke of the importance for faculty to have the self awareness of their part in perpetuating mechanisms of systemic racism in higher education. Emdin stated:
“…[we need to] critically look at the ways that we are a part of a machine that ensures that black bodies are being discriminated against or violence is being impacting on them…I’m not just talking about physical violence I’m not just talking about murder… but I’m talking about emotional violence spiritual violence, the loss of a platform the loss of voice, the feeling as though your label goes unfocused upon this feeling of unrequited love that is the experience of black students and black stars in academia where we give so much to institutions, we show up…and wanting to get something back and never get a full recognition or never get a full on awareness of the complexities of our experiences, this metaphorical need consistently being placed on our necks.” (Emdin, 2020)
If these systemic inequities are not addressed, adminstrative responses will always be limited and historical amnesia will prevail. BLMHE addresses this gap by reclaiming the narrative on Blackness via epistemological platforms where students can not only voice their concerns, but to shape the academic discourse by increasing equitable spaces for Black graduate student-led student advocacy within the realms of equitable epistemological spaces in higher education.
Most critically, the current curriculum at TC continues to exclude the lived experiences of minorities and marginalized identities. While TC continues to rely on committees, reports and other written plans, it is subsequently perpetuating institutional power dynamics that demand that students engage with administration on TC’s terms to affect social change on campus (Rhoads, 1998). This prevents students from tapping into their full potential to activate social change at the institutional level. The time has come to move beyond virtue signaling and for TC to make space for students to blaze de-institutionalized pathways towards social change. BLMHE demonstrates ways where students feel empowered to respond to the way we think about anti-racism as an academic community, which can go further to inform social change efforts on campus.
What TC has not managed to accomplish can be addressed by applying recommended strategies by BLMHE. It is through these student activist’s counter-narratives that we are able to see how they perceive institutional diversity work, examine how it reinforces racist configurations of power and exclusion in higher education and we can begin to surface tensions between empowerment and mediation in such work. As a form of counter-narrative, this research draws attention to the discrepancy between institutional conceptions of inclusion evidenced in diversity policies and practices, and analyzes how these students have found ways to resist persistent exclusion at PWIs by creating their own spaces of epistemological knowledge creation.
Implications for Higher Education Institutions and Research
This study centered the narratives of Black student scholars at TC, who gathered to collectively create a year-long series of discussions and events centered on how the Black Lives Matter movement intersects with higher education. The implication is that the experiences of BLMHE students hold rich possibilities for TC and other higher education institutions to apply their strategies to address antiracism that can create institutional change while making the work of these activist-scholars more sustainable. It is critical for higher education scholars and practioners to seek out the histories of POC students who are challenging modes of knowledge creation and putting forth new models of shared knowledge, and to promote their stories as authentic and necessary as we move forward in anti racism efforts within the academy. In this way, BLMHE plays a central role in knowledge activism that centers student voices that should be prominent within higher education scholarship.
This framework also aligns with forms of decolonizing storytelling that respect documented communities, a practice that reflects indigenous traditions and teaching. These acts of resistance methodology can also be acts of teaching, as conveyed beautifully by Qwul’sih’yah’maht Robina Anne Thomas (2005), an Associate Professor of Social Work from the University of Victoria of Laiaxan First Nation descent who works with indigenous child welfare and indigenous women in leadership. Here she shares how she embraced storytelling via oral history as her methodology for her own thesis:
“The message I received from the Creator and my Ancestors was that I was not to use words that justified an academic process of meeting my thesis requirements, but to believe in and use the integrity of a storytelling approach throughout the thesis. As such, my final thesis was many interconnected stories—no beginning and no end, but rich with teachings and gifts. Storytelling traditionally was and still is a teaching tool. As such, the stories that are told in research too will be teaching tools. Sharing stories validates the various experiences of the storytellers, but also has the ability to give others with similar stories the strength, encouragement, and support they need to tell their stories…As such, storytelling is also a tool of resistance.” (Thomas, 2005, p. 252)
The following themes represent several concepts of CRT. The concept of curriculum as a form of property can explain how higher education creates racially hostile experiences and spaces for BIPOC students. Other CRT concepts of community cultural wealth and centering outsider knowledge meanwhile can help surface the ways that marginalized students in BLMHE resist white privilege as they create more inclusive spaces for knowledge creation.
For this research, I collected these students’ thoughts on racism’s centrality in higher education while also addressing other forms of oppression suffered by gender, sexuality and class. BLMHE critique capital-deficit trends in social science research that diminish and racialize values and assets of communities of color. These stories can demonstrate that higher education research can also be grounded in the experiences and knowledge from POC communities. This can in turn be used as theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical tools to challenge marginalization and promote social justice within higher education. The creation and use of equitable spaces of knowledge creation by and for Black graduate students has implications for higher education professionals, faculty and students alike. One possible implication is this could lead to a shift towards a model where POC students are the key mediators that can intervene and promote equity within higher education institutions. More scholarly research needs to be conducted on different aspects of student-led interventions at the institutional level. In particular, more empirical studies are needed that measure the potential impact emerging student scholars can have as change agents who understand the importance of speaking out within surrounding communities to address systemic inequity. Conducting research on such aspects can help to increase their validity and bring the creation of equitable epistemological spaces to the forefront of the scholarly debate around social justice advocacy. Specifically, research needs to be done to undertake surveys and studies that focus on the structures in place within higher education institutions. These institutions can provide spaces for student advocates and activists to challenge dominant views of societal power in order to ensure that POC graduate students thrive in higher education. This would result in changes in theory and practice in higher education, where students can apply their emerging scholarship outside of classrooms and intervene at various other levels. This would reframe priorities for higher education institutions to begin valuing the work stemming from POC student engagement as equal partners and stakeholders, reinforcing the message that higher education can work collaboratively to combat oppressive systems within higher education.
Conclusions
In addition to the creation of these spaces, several conclusions surfaced from the interviews with BLMHE’s co-founders that can further inform TC’s institutional anti-racist initiatives moving forward. First, students need to be engaged alongside faculty and administration at TC. As Brian stated in his 2018 interview, institutional efforts need to “be more intentional in involving either those who have that identity that [they’re] looking to celebrate into the conversation around… I think these are the conversations that Black Lives Matter in Higher Ed seeks to highlight, is what are instances in which certain individuals feel excluded or silenced or directly discriminated against and what kind of directions can we take in order to better support those students and their experiences?” This needs to include allyship that supports but is not beholden to TC. By remaining independent from TC, it can maintain its intentionality as a critical space for POC students.
Second, there is tremendous potential for involving students in policy development initiatives through a student-led working group. According to Charlen in her followup interview: “If your institution doesn’t outwardly like support or help folks of color like what policies would need to happen, what kind of things would need like that it can hopefully become the space where we have folks represented.” TC can accomplish this if it addresses organizational inequity in the welfare system and higher education. The ways in which higher education institutions interpret DEI policy and procedures needs to be examined further in order to understand how policymakers fall short in addressing the needs of marginalized student populations. This student working group model can link scholarship directly to policy initiatives and help administration/policy makers develop a more nuanced policy that provides a more complex understanding of the issues that marginalized students currently face in higher education. Specifically, this form of collaborative policy analysis could shed new light on how current policies reflect structures of systemic inequality.
A third conclusion is that student knowledge activists in BLMHE promote activism via dialogue and advocacy to sustain their movement work. As Charlen describes in her followup interview, “if you’re going to be a person that creates spaces for hard dialogue. You have to be ready for the hard dialogue and help folks navigate through the process of understanding.” Particularly for POC students being confronted by racism, being able to create inter-racial spaces to hold white allies accountable can allow for the development of critical perspectives are essential to promote solidarity in movement building. Given contentious debates that can arise in these areas of higher education scholarship, it can be difficult to develop opportunities that promote open dialogue among students, particularly within PWI spaces. However, these contentious spaces can also be sites of engagement and learning, which also demonstrates how BLMHE’s mission to engage in dialogue and scholarship that can help inform the development of welcoming spaces at TC.
The fourth conclusion that surfaced is the important role an inclusive archives approach plays when applied alongside social justice research and how these archives contribute to the ongoing work and struggle of student movements such as BLMHE. A critical reframing of this history can impact how we go about implementing more culturally responsive forms of commemoration that centers student voices. The solution lies in creating an inclusive archiving framework that actively engages with POC students at TC so that they also can have a say in how their story is told. Particularly, POC graduate students that make up BLMHE can be in charge of making their own archives and discovering the meanings of their own contributions to TC’s institutional history. There is also great potential for archivists who work in higher education institutions to have an allyship role to play alongside community-based archiving in supporting initiatives toward change and liberation.
A final conclusion that emerges from this study is the significance of intersectional identity in BLMHE. Gendered racism that Black and Brown women experience as well as the experiences of Black LGBTQ students have often been overshadowed by antiracism work, both in higher education as well as in movement work. In discussing intersectionality, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (2017) has emphasized how this term manifests “as the idea that multiple oppressions reinforce each other to create new categories of suffering” (p. 4). BLMHE students illustrate how by concurrently embracing multiple perspectives to resist oppression, navigate changing contexts, and build a scholarly community, suggesting implications for higher education can take students’ intersectional identities more into account in their institutional efforts (Jivraj, 2020). The continuation of oppressive systems targeting and threatening the lives of Black people remains problematic. Now more than ever, social movements such as BLMHE that emphasize intersectionality, including LGBTQ and gender rights, can uphold calls for educational equity in higher education.
BLMHE applies an alternative mode of viable activism beyond rallies and protests, demonstrating instances where marginalized POC students in higher education are not content to sit on the sidelines. In order for higher education to better support these students, centering students in the process of knowledge creation via educational seminars is critical toward informing change in higher education scholarship. Most critically, inclusive epistemological spaces validate POC-centered knowledge for scholars of color as they continue in their mission to challenge dominant views of power in higher education, strengthen student identity and sense of belonging for communities of color within TC.
Notes
1. Provenance refers to traditional archival practice where the origin or provenance of records must be assigned to a single creator rather than in the complex processes and multiple forms of creation.
Notes on Contributor
Cynthia Tobar is an artist, activist-scholar, filmmaker and oral historian passionate about creating participatory stories documenting social change. A first-generation Ecuadorian American born and raised in NYC, she strives to blend rigorous research with diverse artistic mediums to shed light on marginalized narratives and forgotten histories. She is the founder of Cities for People, Not for Profit, an oral history project documenting gentrification and displacement in Bushwick. Cynthia is Associate Professor/Head Librarian at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies and Adjunct Associate Professor at Queens College where she teaches oral history and archival research courses.
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