Abstract
In September 2024, the world feels on fire, scorching everyone living close enough to the flames. From state-sanctioned genocide of more than 41,000 Palestinian and 1,200 Israeli deaths to higher education administrators’ authoritarian and brutally repressive responses towards student and faculty protests in solidarity with Palestinians to profound backlash against any steps towards any potential justice-centered progress in 2020, the world feels wrenchingly painful; saturated with anti-humanity and human rights atrocities piling up on each other. For racialized groups and everyone who is aligned with social justice in academia (and outside of academia), we all exist in various states of unbelonging. This profound precarity is intertwined with structures and histories of colonialism and racism that continue to shape all institutions (ranging from the state, schools, and our justice system). The very structures upon which these institutions were created worked against the membership of Black and Brown bodies. For racialized scholars (and allies), many who use their/our bodies and psyches to extinguish institutional fires daily (from challenging racist institutional policies to scholarship highlighting issues of anti-Blackness/Brownness, to marching on the streets and other forms of organizing), we all exist in spaces where the trauma continues to haunt us but where we also continue to resist and heal…
Adult education has a critical role in this moment. We can look to our rich history grounded in social justice from Highlander Folk School in Tennessee to liberatory adult literacy campaigns in Cuba to the role of adult education in countless social movements worldwide to guide and support our actions. We can utilize our history to inform our actions forward. For many of us in the academy (and outside of higher education), the keyboard is one of our main tools to resist. This editorial is written with that intent, as a way to name what is happening and also an invitation for others to join in collectively calling out using keyboards as one of many ways to resist. James Baldwin reminds us that while not everything that is faced can be changed, nothing can be changed until it is faced.
This is not a safe time for anyone standing with and for justice and equity (though for some groups, it has never been safe). We have witnessed the resounding, national backlash against racial justice/equity initiatives since 2020. We have seen the dismantling of efforts implemented in 2020 to address systemic racism. This latest backlash/erasure has followed other historical anti-colonial/anti-racist efforts. We can see how any calling out of white supremacy in universities has been sidelined and those engaging in this work are being penalized or worse. We have witnessed how women of color have lost jobs (Claudine Gay, former President of Harvard University and a Black woman) and other non-racialized college Presidents over what many have called a witch hunt in the war between Israel and Palestine. We are witnessing how higher education has become a corporatized tool where dissent is silenced. Worse, people are losing their lives. Antoinette Bonnie Candida-Bailey, of Lincoln University, another Black woman, committed suicide last year. In this moment, where neoliberalism and authoritarianism in higher education have intersected, the landscape is fraught with political landmines and other lethal weapons. Any dissent is being silenced and people are being penalized. The documentation of the injustice alone cannot be the work, if injustices are left untouched. Sara Ahmed reminds us that equity is not a credential but a task. It is what we have to do because we are not there yet. Yet without documenting what is occurring, and the ways in which progress is being eroded, there will continue to be yet more erasure and added atrocities … so, as adult educators, we must do what we have always done and continue to document the injustices through writing. We must continue to struggle together as part of loving communities to work in solidarity with those who are oppressed here and everywhere and we must continue to work towards healing, humanity, and equity … as Grace Boggs said to work towards becoming more human human beings…