A-message-for-faculty-from-the-present-day-movement-for-black-lives

This article presents a content analysis of the demands that pertain to faculty and faculty work Black students submitted to institutional leaders in the aftermath of Ferguson and the ca

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tqse20

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education

ISSN: 0951-8398 (Print) 1366-5898 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tqse20

A message for faculty from the present-day

movement for black lives

Chayla Haynes & Kevin J Bazner

To cite this article: Chayla Haynes & Kevin J Bazner (2019) A message for faculty from the present-day movement for black lives, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 32:9, 1146-1161, DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2019.1645909

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2019.1645909

Published online: 19 Sep 2019

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 178

View related articles

View Crossmark data

A message for faculty from the present-day movement for black lives

Chayla Haynes and Kevin J Bazner

Department of Educational Administration and Human Resource Development, Texas A&M University,

College Station, TX, USA

ABSTRACT

The present-day movement for Black lives calls attention to the

antiblackness that is supported and reinforced in White America

Antiblackness ostensibly contextualizes what it means to Learn While Black

at predominantly White institutions This article presents a content analysis

of the demands that pertain to faculty and faculty work Black students

submitted to institutional leaders in the aftermath of Ferguson and the

campus rebellion led by Concerned Student 1950 at the University of

Missouri Study findings point to the classroom as a pedagogical site of

Black Liberation; that is, interrogating Whiteness This article concludes with

recommendations to help faculty, especially White faculty, in interrogating

whiteness and advancing Black Liberation in higher education

ARTICLE HISTORY

Received 20 October 2018 Accepted 16 July 2019

KEYWORDS

Black lives matter; faculty; Whiteness; Black college students; student demands

Introduction

The present-day movement for Black lives (Black Lives Matter, 2018) calls attention to the antiblackness1 that is supported and reinforced in White America (Dancy, Edwards & Earl Davis,

2018) Antiblackness names the ways that Black people are systematically excluded from the humanness afforded to White people (Dumas, 2016) Antiblackness treats ordinary Black people, such as Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, and Mike Brown as trespassers in White-owned spaces, seemingly to justify that White people can act violently toward them Black college students encounter this antiblackness regularly at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) For example, Kevin Bruce, a junior at Kennesaw State University in May of 2015, posted a video on Twitter of the discriminatory treatment he had received by his academic advisor, Abby Dawson Bruce reportedly made several failed attempts to reach his academic advisor to obtain her advice on his class schedule, before deciding to go to her office in person Once he had arrived, Bruce was informed that he would not be able to see Dawson because he did not have an appointment Hoping that an opening would become available, Bruce decided to wait and took a seat in the office’s sitting area Sometime later that day, Dawson is seen on the video threatening to call the police and accusing Bruce, who remained seated, of harassing her for choosing to wait (Thomason,2015)

In October 2017, University of Hartford student, Chennel Rowe was moving out of her resi-dence hall when she was informed by a classmate about a troubling post that her former White roommate, Brianna Brochu made on Instagram Brochu used social media to report the following,

CONTACT Chayla Haynes chayla.haynes@tamu.edu

ß 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

2019, VOL 32, NO 9, 1146 –1161

https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2019.1645909

Finally, did it yo girl got rid of her roommate!! After 1 1 = 2 month of spitting in her coconut oil, putting moldy clam dip in her lotions … putting her toothbrush places where the sun doesn’t shine, and so much more I can finally say goodbye Jamaican Barbie (Berson, 2017 , n.p ).

At the time of arrest, Police reportedly perceived Brochu to be bragging in her Instagram post and requested that a charge of intimidation based on bigotry or bias be added to her crim-inal mischief case Brochu was expelled, but the Hartford State’s Attorney reportedly found there was no evidence to bring hate charges against Brochu (Bever,2017)

Yale University graduate student, Lolade Siyonbola used Facebook to live-stream what hap-pened when she was questioned by four police officers on campus These police officers were responding to a 911 call from a White woman and Yale student, who made the call after she found Siyonbola napping in the 12th-floor common room in the Hall of Graduate Studies Siyonbola, who had been working on a paper in the lounge before she fell asleep, was asked by the police officers to present identification and verify that she ‘belonged here,’ to which she replied, ‘I deserve to be here I pay tuition like everybody else.’ The Facebook video that Siyonbola posted went viral and caught the attention of the university administration In an email notification about the incident, Yale University Secretary and Vice President for Student Life, Kimberly Goff-Crews told students that Siyonbola has ‘every right to be present’ (Wootson,2018)

Paige Burgess was escorted out of her Anatomy and Physiology classroom by police at the University of Texas-San Antonio Her instructor, Anita Moss called 911 to report that Paige was being uncivilized and disrespectful A different student recorded the viral video posting on Twitter:‘This professor stopped class entirely and stepped out to call the police just because one student had her feet up on a seat in front of her Mind you she wasn’t talking or interrupting the lecture,‘ he added After two investigations UTSA found the teacher, liable only for classroom mismanagement and displaying‘poor judgment’ (Donecker,2018)

Finally, Shahem Mclaurin, a student at NYU’s Silver School of Social Work, shared his interac-tions with a classmate on Twitter Shahem would need to miss class because he would be travel-ing abroad Though, he received permission from his faculty member to participate via FaceTime Shahem emailed his classmates requesting assistance, hoping that someone would be willing to FaceTime him into class But, no one responded to Shahem’s email, so he was unable

to participate in class Shahem posted a screenshot of an email he later received from a White classmate, with the caption:‘I want to drop out.’ The White classmate wrote, ‘I found it easier to lead the discussion without a Black presence, in the room I feel somewhat uncomfortable with the perceived threat it poses.’ The administration released an open letter to the campus commu-nity explaining that the associate dean of academic affairs is working with the chair of practice and the instructor of the course to promote ‘productive and restorative dialogue’ between the students involved (Jaschik,2019)

Antiblackness appears to be thriving on campus at PWIs It apparently knows no institutional type, geographic region, or academic discipline Antiblackness ostensibly contextualizes what it means to Learn While Black at PWIs Black college students are demanding more from these insti-tutions We outlined just a few of the campus incidents documented by Black students in the aftermath of the Ferguson protests for Black Lives and the campus rebellions led by Concerned Student 1950 at the University of Missouri Concerned Student 1950 demanded their institution address the present-day implications of its racist past, beginning with the removal of system President Tim Wolfe Campus rebellions for Black Liberation soon erupted across the US and in Canada To date, Black student activists, and their allies, have submitted a total of 1106 individ-ual demands to institutional leaders at more than 80 PWIs This article presents findings from a content analysis on the 364 demands pertaining to faculty and faculty work Our analysis was guided by a single primary research question: How can faculty address, and otherwise undo, antiblackness in their work, so Black students might learn at the highest level? Study findings point to the classroom as a pedagogical site of Black Liberation; that is, interrogating whiteness

Our paper concludes with recommendations to help faculty, especially White faculty, in interrog-ating whiteness and advancing Black Liberation in higher education In the next section, we dis-cuss antiblackness in US higher education

Antiblackness and white supremacy: the making of American higher education

To contend with how antiblackness contributes adversely to the ability to Learn While Black at PWIs, requires institutional leaders understand the role of colonization and slavery in the creation

of the United States Scholars have long argued that settler colonialism is credited with the establishment of capitalism, enslavement of African peoples, and the eradication of indigenous knowledges and populations in the United States, as well as in other parts of the world According to Dancy, Edwards, and Davis (2018), the settler colonial project describes the capitalis-tic organizing praccapitalis-tices of White European emigrants of stealing land, people and knowledge to create new wealth systems with the express purpose to establish White global domination The transatlantic slave trade brought Africans to the U.S colonies to be slave labor African slaves became the property of White settlers (Lopez,1997) It’s within this colonial ordering that Whiteness was constituted as, and remains associated with, humanness and Blackness was consti-tuted as, and remains associated, with non-humanness (Dancy et al.,2018; Dumas, 2016) White slave owners felt justified in treating African slaves inhumanely because Black humanity is an impossibility in the anti-Black imagination (Dumas, 2016) Forcing African people into a pre-sumed lifetime of slave labor essentially created the necessary conditions for white supremacy to reign in the United States In other words, antiblackness is the cognate to global white suprem-acy because‘without securing the former, the latter is not activated’ (Leonardo,2004p 148) Dumas (2016) argued that ‘antiblackness is the central concern and proposition within the intellectual project known as Afro-pessimism’ (p.13) Afro-pessimism stresses that Blackness was structurally conceived without any humanity Slavery continues to dictate how antiblackness is enacted upon not only by White, but also non-Black people, who are attempting to exert some control in a White power structure Dumas (2016) posits,

There is no clear historical moment in which there was a break between slavery and acknowledgement of Black citizenship and Human-ness; nor is there any indication of a clear disruption of the technologies of violence – that is, the institutional structures and social processes – that maintain Black subjugation (p 14)

This is to mean that the present-day Black2, just as the African slave, is something other than human (Dancy et al.,2018; Dumas,2016) Thus, antiblackness enables a critique of the Black con-dition in the United States; that is, the complete disdain for and comfort with violence upon Black bodies (emphasis added, Dumas,2016)

Plantation politics in higher education

The ‘formation of American higher education mimicked the formation of the United States’ (Patton, 2016, p 318) That is to say that predominantly White institutions were not designed with Black students in mind (Tuitt, Haynes, & Stewart, 2018) As such, higher education scholars are interested in the role of plantation politics in today’s colleges and universities For example, Wilder’s (2013) research on the history of Ivy League institutions revealed that the funding for these colonial colleges/universities was provided by White families whose wealth was derived from slave labor Likewise, Squire, Williams, and Tuitt (2018) drew connections between planta-tion politics and the distribuplanta-tion of labor among communities of Color to illustrate how neo-liberalism functions in higher education as the new slave code Patton (2016) utilized critical race theory to underscore how the academy engages racelessness to uphold white supremacy in postsecondary research, policy and curriculum Analogously, Tuitt et al (2018) use their scholar-ship on critical and inclusive pedagogies to address ‘the failure of most PWIs to create

educational opportunities both in and out of the classroom, where Black students can engage in learning that suggests their lives and their lived experiences really matter’ (n.p.) They argued teaching that makes Black Lives Matter involves emotional labor and a love for Black students Moreover, Tuitt et al (2018) assert Making Black Lives Matter in the classroom is about faculty creating classroom learning environments that support Black students in being the true geniuses that they are

Still, to fully grasp how antiblackness shapes the learning conditions for Black students at PWIs requires an evaluation of the ways‘nonhumanness is continually reinscribed to the Black’ (Dumas,2016, p 14), arguably through an interrogation of whiteness Colonial ordering is cred-ited with establishing whiteness (humanness) as normal to enact antiblackness (non-humanness) and maintain white supremacy Whiteness as normal describes the beliefs and self-reinforcing, institutionalized practices that privileges White ways of knowing, ensuring that White people maintain primary positioning in the racial hierarchy (Harris, 1993) Tuitt et al (2018) argued Making Black Lives Matter in the classroom requires faculty, White faculty most especially, under-stand how whiteness has shaped their lives and their teaching Without an interrogation of Whiteness, it might be difficult for faculty, and institutional leaders alike, to understand how antiblackness constitutes what it means to Learn While Black at PWIs

1 Antiblackness condones the surveilling of Black bodies, like Kevin Bruce, Lolade Siyonbola and Paige Burgess, who are treated as trespassers in white-owned spaces, such as the advis-ing center, the study lounge, and the STEM classroom

2 Antiblackness signals to colonial imaginations, like Brianna Brochu’s that Black people remain property and Black bodies, like Chennel Rowe’s, are opportunities for domination

3 Antiblackness contends that Black people intend to do harm; thus, explaining why Shahem Mclaurin’s White classmate felt more comfortable without his Black presence in the classroom

4 Antiblackness indulges in White mediocrity, fragility and antagonism, as represented in the racists behaviors of Anita Moss, along with the other unidentified White people in the cam-pus incidents presented

5 Antiblackness holds that Black people are not victims; thereby, creating a plausible explan-ation for why the Hartford State’s Attorney chose not to bring hate charges against Brianna Brochu Antiblackness rejects the existence of Black suffering and Black trauma

To that end, this qualitative study aims to unearth how faculty might address, and otherwise undo, antiblackness in their work, so Black students might learn at the highest levels In the next section of our paper, we detail the methodological approach to the study The method’s section

is followed by a discussion of the findings

Methods

This qualitative study uses an inductive content analysis (Elo & Kyng€as, 2008) to examine the demands pertaining to faculty and faculty work that were submitted to institutional leaders at PWIs by Black student activists, following the campus protest at Mizzou led by Concerned Student 1950 Researchers conduct a content analysis to make‘valid inferences from data to [a specific] context’ and discover new insights to guide future action (Elo & Kyng€as, 2008, p 109) Where the deductive approach is commonly used in studies designed to test theory, the induct-ive approach is recommended in studies where prior knowledge is fragmented or unknown Inductive content analysis has three phases: (1) preparation phase; (2) organizing phase; and (3) reporting phase (Elo & Kyng€as,2008) The preparation and organizing phases are discussed here The reporting phase is outlined in the findings section

Preparation phase

At the time of this study, the authors were able to locate relevant data fromwww.thedemands org3 andwww.blackliberationcollective.org4, two public domains that began cataloging student demands following the campus rebellions for Black lives at the University of Missouri and Yale University in 2015 We then downloaded the demand documents for the 91 institutions from the U.S and Canada represented across the two websites Web links to some institutions’ demands were broken, others, in actuality, did not contain demands at all The link for Howard University, for example, contained only a statement of solidarity with Concerned Student 1950 at the University of Missouri Thus, demand documents for 82 institutions were downloaded across the two websites: 79 U.S college and universities and three Canadian institutions Those downloaded were read in full before any coding began

While demand documents varied in overall length, breadth and formality, the majority appeared to be generated by self-organizing student protesters or student organizations In most cases, student activists presented their demands as bulleted lists Though, some prepared more formal letters addressed directly to institutional leaders (e.g ‘Dear President Shanley’, ‘To the UNC-Chapel Hill Administration, UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, UNC Board of Governors… ’) or as an open letter to the university community (e.g ‘To: The University

of Missouri’)

Organizing phase

We created a digital coding database and initiated an initial coding phase in order to isolate demands that pertained to faculty and/or faculty work We tallied a total of 1106 individual demands across eighty-two (82) PWIs from the U.S and Canada From that total, 364 demands were categorized as pertaining directly to faculty (e.g faculty hiring) and/or faculty work (i.e teaching, service, and research) We further detail our cycles of coding in the data ana-lysis section

Counting demands

We observed demands were frequently written with several stipulations, which we described as sub-demands In our coding, we chose to count those sub-demands separately For example, Black student activists from Missouri State University articulated,

1 We demand that by 1 December 2015 the university issue a public statement that includes the following:

a An acknowledgment of systemic racism in higher education,

b A commitment to differentiating‘hate speech’ from ‘freedom of speech,’

c Instituting a zero-tolerance policy for hate crimes, and

d An explanation for moving Multicultural Services from the Division for Diversity & Inclusion to the Division of Student Affairs (Missouri State University students,n.d.)

In the case of MSU, similar to others instances, we counted two separate demands: (1) issue a public statement and (2) institute zero tolerance policy Also, demands that named students in relation to faculty were counted as one demand and categorized as faculty work For example, the demand from Black student activists at Grinnell College was coded for facultyhiring/retention because it called for‘increase retention efforts for students, staff, and Faculty of Color, including exit interviews for underrepresented staff, faculty, and students who leave’ (Grinnell College,2015)

Data analysis

We were able to isolate and categorize a total of 364 demands as pertaining to faculty (e.g fac-ulty hiring/retention) and/or facfac-ulty work (e.g research, teaching and service) Consistent with inductive content analysis, we engaged in open coding of the 364 demands categorized as per-taining to faculty and faculty work Fifteen subcategories (first cycle codes) emerged (e.g train-ing, mentortrain-ing, curriculum, committee work) Further abstraction, or focused codtrain-ing, led to those first cycle codes to be collapsed into seven generic (second cycle) code categories, then four main (conceptual code) categories (seeFigure 1) Finally, we paid special attention to coding consistency between research team members through peer-debriefing in our establishment of code categories and trustworthiness of our findings (Elo & Kyng€as,2008; Lincoln & Guba,1985)

Limitations

While our findings make a substantive contribution to the literature, the study does have its limi-tations The data analyzed for this study was obtained by way of secondary access and from two public web domains In this regard, portions of the data set were incomplete and, in some cases, inaccessible Consequently, our interpretations of the data could not be validated using member checking, frequently relied upon approach to establishing trustworthiness of our findings (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) Our analysis is comprehensive, but not exhaustive Surely, additional demands of this nature exist that either have yet been published by TheDemands.org or the Black Liberation Collective and/or was published, after we completed our analysis Lastly, our analysis of these demands is not the first because of their accessibility to the general public Though, our analysis makes a more meaningful contribution to the literature, as earlier analysis

of the student demands mostly offer categorical highlights of campus racial climate concerns described therein (see Libresco,2015; Ndemanu,2017; Roh,2016)

Positionality

Throughout the research process, we reflected on our positionalities and how our identity sta-tuses informed our process of data collection and analysis The first author is a Black woman and critical qualitative researcher Her scholarship broadly centers on critical and inclusive pedago-gies, critical race theory/intersectionality scholarship and Black women in higher education She

is also someone who obtained her graduate and undergraduate education at predominantly White institutions in the US And, as such, she describes the majority of her formal learning expe-riences in the college/university classroom as racialized (see Haynes, Stewart, & Allen,2016) The second author is a Ph.D candidate who identifies as a White gay man His interests in racially just student affairs practice is inspired by prior experiences as a college administrator working

Figure 1 Haynes and Bazner Learning While Black.

with and supporting Students of Color As authors, we are arguably situated from diametrically opposed social locations, with regard to race, gender, and sexuality Yet, as higher education scholars, we are engaged in this research to help predominantly White institutions contend with the present-day implications of their racist pasts What follows is a presentation of the findings

Findings

Our qualitative study aims to understand how faculty might address, and otherwise undo, antiblackness in their work, so Black students might learn at the highest levels As such, a content analysis was conducted on the demands that pertain to faculty and faculty work that Black students submitted to institutional leaders in the aftermath of Ferguson and the campus rebellion led by Concerned Student 1950 at the University of Missouri Study findings point to the classroom as a pedagogical site of Black Liberation; that is, interrogating Whiteness We present the findings in four broad categories: curriculum, research, teaching, and faculty hiring, retention and training

Curriculum

Student demands in this category (43% of the data) press faculty to prompt interrogations of whiteness by bringing issues of race, racism and intersectionality more fully into curriculum To that end, student demands about curriculum connected the institutions’ diversity goals to the outcomes of undergraduate and graduate education Black student activist from New York University explained saying,‘diversity and inclusion remains inextricably connected’ to the global academic marketplace, so its faculty should‘wholly commit themselves to its proper and effect-ive execution’ (Black & Brown Coalition, n.d.) Black student activists, such as those from Iowa State University echoed the sentiment, college graduates should be‘literate’ people who under-stand the legacy of white supremacy in the U.S and its relationship to the‘histories of racism, sexism and homophobia’ throughout the world Student demands regarding curriculum also seem inspired by a perception among Black student activists at Kennesaw State that institutional investment in Black studies/education is‘dwindling.’

Black student activists at New York University condemned their faculty for sidelining Black and Indigenous knowledge to barren, academic wastelands, where resources and funding is sparse and demanded comprehensive curriculum reform to redress the‘systematic exclusion and dehumanizing treatment of People of Color and MOGAI people’ in and outside of the academy For Black students at Babson College curriculum reform would include an audit of undergraduate and graduate curricula and faculty teaching, with the express intent to: (a) catalogue existing cases of diversity content (e.g narratives covered in video and assigned reading) and (b) review faculty’s teaching and lecture notes to evaluate how issues of domestic diversity, inclusion, and racism are incorporated in their instruction and course design (Babson College Demands,n.d.)

On the whole, student demands, such as those submitted by Black student activists from Brown, Dartmouth, Eastern Michigan, Emory, Colgate and Grinnell universities– to name a few – called for their institutions to do away with the colonizing and‘anti-Black’ pedagogies that hold the core curricula (i.e required and Gen Ed courses) together Student demands offered faculty and institutional leaders recommendations for an ‘interdisciplinary approach’ decentering of whiteness through curriculum reform

Curriculum vetting/race conscious STEM curriculum

Black student activists, such as those from the University of Missouri, Brandeis University, and Bard College went as far as to demand that the curriculum be‘vetted, maintained, and overseen

by a board comprised of students, staff, and faculty of color’ (Concerned Student 1950, 2015) These student demands tasked faculty in every discipline, program and department with the responsibility to design multidimensional curriculum that encouraged students to consider how whiteness has shaped their lives For example, Black student activists at Bard College framed the purpose of undergraduate/graduate education this way,

We recognize that part of the job of any university is to prepare students for life beyond the university As such, it is an act of deliberate negligence that there is no explicit [graduation] requirement to learn about any form of social justice or anti-racism at this college Whether this takes the form of academic requirement (such as a class) or an [co-] curricular requirement (such as training each semester), we demand that Bard College come together to ensure that faculty, staff, and students at all levels are able to engage with social justice and anti-racism productively without putting anyone in unsafe or compromising positions (Bard College Students of Color Demands 2015, 2016 )

Black student activists from Colgate University also stressed the need to studying how‘racism’ and other systems of power shape students’ personal understanding and their ‘relationships with others’, while curriculum was interpreted by Black students at Babson as so important that they insisted‘teaching tools be leveraged across campus and made available to staff and administra-tors’ (Babson College Demands,n.d.)

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education was a central point of contention for Black student activists Black student activists at New York University felt ahistori-cism or curriculum white-washing could be redressed by introducing a mandatory history and ethics courses in the natural and hard sciences curriculum that grappled with how advancing STEM contributes to the disenfranchisement of racially minoritized populations globally Black student activists from Cal Poly argued in their demands that ahistoricism could be dealt with by introducing feminist and anti-racist perspectives of STEM curriculum content Our analysis overall revealed that Black student activists believe hiring more Faculty of Color is also a viable solution

in helping to address white-washing and race-neutrality in STEM content, but also in non-STEM disciplines

Mandatory graduation requirements

Some of the most specificity in demands about curriculum stressed the need for more required courses that engage purposefully in a critique of whiteness: ethnic and race studies courses For example, Black student activists from California State-Los Angeles, Cal Poly, and Lawrence univer-sities made demands that would make the completion of at least two ethnic studies or Pan-African studies courses a graduation requirement for all students Further, Black student activists

at Cal Poly made specific demands of engineering faculty, insisting that students enrolled in that program should no longer be exempt from having to complete the upper-division general edu-cation course requirements in Technology and Society and the Individual, rather they should be instructed to complete courses pertaining to feminism and/or anti-racism to meet said require-ments Black student activists also appeared to investigate whether altering degree requirements was a possibility at their institutions For instance, Black student activists from Babson college demanded that ‘milestone course requirement’ be instated and modeled after a similar course found at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan The course at the University Michigan appears to be designed to teach students‘to think and work cross-culturally, living and promoting diversity and inclusion’ (Babson College Demands, n.d.) Similarly, Black student acti-vists from Claremont McKenna College pushed for general education course requirement(s) that are‘similar to Scripps College,’ which emphasizes an exploration of ‘ethnic, racial, and sexuality theory.’ Still, Black student activists, such as those from Iowa State University warned that ‘catch-all’ diversity courses often fail to cover intersectionality and are rarely ‘uniformly assessed’ for how they help students, particularly White students to interrogate whiteness

Graduate/professional education

Student demands also express concern for graduate and professional education, exposing a con-nection between curriculum, teaching, and Black Liberation Consider the following example Black student activists from Harvard University contend that the Law School needs to‘establish a critical race program with meaningful student input and transparency’ (Harvard University Demands,n.d.) from students, who undoubtedly find it absurd that one does not exist already The origins of critical race theory are found within critical legal studies (Ladson-Billings & Tate,

1995) Critical race scholars use critical race theory to explicate white supremacy and racism’s role in education, the legal system and everyday life in the United States (Delgado & Stefancic,

2017) These Black student activists also insists that at least one tenured faculty member with expertise in critical race theory be hired by the Law School to mentor law students with interest

in ‘challenging elite institutions’ and White-owned spaces, such Harvard Black student activists from Eastern Michigan, Missouri State, and California State Los Angeles universities expand on PWI’s progressive investment (Lipsitz, 2006) in whiteness by highlighting that academic disci-plines that advance a Black Liberation research agenda tend to be grossly underfunded For instance, student demands rally support for increase funding for Ethnic, Race, and Gender studies

at almost all of the institutions within the data set Eastern Michigan University students’ demands call for the installation of a‘Doctora[l] and Master’s Program for Africology and African American Studies with adequate funding and no less than 3 full-time graduate assistantships’ (The Black Student 10-Point Plan,n.d.)

Research

Student demands in this category (2% of the data) discuss the importance of decentering white-ness through nurturing Black scholars and the production of Black/African knowledges and schol-arship For example, Black students from the University of Southern California demanded that an endowment be established in the amount of $100 million for scholarships, fellowships, formal-ized mentorships for graduate and undergraduate students, as well as hiring tenured and tenure track faculty positions for people of Black and African heritage Demands of Black student acti-vists from Johns Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts and Sciences include the hiring of fac-ulty concerned with the history, culture, and political position of people of African descent and faculty whose work indelibly creates a scholarly community for students of Black and African descent Black student activists from Washington University in St Louis and Purdue University were among several in this category to demand that institutions incentivize faculty research in the hiring of Black tenure-track faculty, seeming to suggest that a Black Liberation agenda is dif-ficult for Black faculty to pursue on campus without the protection of tenure

Teaching

Student demands in this category (12% of the data) placed an emphasis on how whiteness is upheld in course design and instruction Black student activists at Bard College presented their institution’s ‘Rethinking Difference’ course as a relevant exemplar In their demand documents, these students contend that the ‘Rethinking Difference’ course requirement needs to be

‘rethought’ and outline a misalignment between course’s learning outcomes, teaching activities and teaching assessments Specifically, they make reference to the pedagogical decisions of fac-ulty that reinforce antiblackness, including but not limited to: ‘introducing Black authors only in the context of slavery’ or requiring readings on Olaudah Equiano5 representing the‘only voice of Color’ in the curriculum With their demands, Black students from Bard College also detail the new mediating and ultimate learning outcomes for the Rethinking Difference course Mediating learning outcomes describe developmental skills students should learn by the completion of a