* Past Event *
“Higher Education Must Step Up, as Must Academics” Webinar
(17 June 2020)
* Scroll down to access the framing questions and the audio recording. *
FRAMING QUESTIONS: This webinar explores where colleges and universities are going wrong, particularly in the midst of several national and global crises; how such counterproductive actions reveal more fundamental and enduring problems; and what it means for academics to rise up in order to reframe and orient more decisively toward justice. To do so, award-winning author and former education dean Kevin Kumashiro dives into ten questions, and urges us all to engage our institutions and collectives in these questions:
Corporate, appointed board structures are problematic, but so are elected board structures—why, and what are more just alternatives that we should be demanding?
Campus leaders are often skillful at issuing bold statements in the midst of crises, like about anti-Black racism—in what ways are these responses problematic and emblematic? Relatedly, calls to defund or to end school contracts with police can be counterproductive if not part of larger system reform—why, and what would that entail?
The highest paid campus leaders commonly make ten or twenty (or more) times as much as the lowest paid employees in the same institution, and this can actually widen in a time of crisis—why do we accept that, and what is a more just compensation structure?
When faced with a budget crisis, why do universities tend to cut first what lies at the heart of their purported mission?
When needing to cut, what framework will allow for a progressive impact, rather than a regressive one?
In a time of crisis, how and why do colleges respond by amplifying some of the worst aspects of curriculum and instruction?
Relatedly, how does the current overreliance on and misuse of technology exacerbate inequities, and what are alternatives?
Higher education is already criticized for being elitist, disconnected, and irrelevant, and the tendency to cut and shrink in the face of crisis only reinforces such criticisms—what does it mean instead to expand and step up regarding homelessness, hunger, unemployment, suffering, and strife?
How might serving and working in solidarity with our communities in such ways force us to rethink the type of students that we wish to admit, teach, and graduate, and in doing so, to broaden how we think about affirmative action?
Academics are often renown for their scholarship on social justice, but surprisingly complicit with their institutions, as when failing to organize or advance radical alternatives in times of crisis—what would it mean to rise up in this moment?
AUDIO RECORDING: You can hear the audio recording of this webinar here: