Fish out of water: A lot on our plates

Fish out of water, making our way back in! Let us learn how to swim! Navigating in the new terrain of education. To avoid sinking within many unfamiliar waves. And to set boundaries in our day to day lives. All the ideas seem like a far outstretched perception to keep our heads barely above water. But not for Fish. Fish argues that academicizing refers to "detaching concept from context & real-world urgency. (Pg. 27)" In acts to separate the discipline from the human. The question then, we must ask: How do we separate our lives from school and work within our education? To look at our roles and only contribute to the context. To accept and encounter only what is being asked and avoid putting a lot on our plates. We don't. Yet Fish suggests that we have to try.

Fish out of water. Entering grad school and learning how to set boundaries developed many challenges. Delegating time for work, school, and life felt so beyond me. As a task-oriented person, I always felt guilty for making time for myself and not completing tasks to my personal scheduled deadlines. The endless loop of doing school work, doing TA work, and doing life all blended in a pattern:

Feelings = Sad → Break (Self-care) = Guilt → School work = I'm trying. Repeat. 

One realization in grad school: Getting the rhythm of school and work-life balance can create challenges when there is a lot on our plates.

A lot on our plates. Many of my students in 2140 reached out to me with concerns over a position speech assignment. The speech entails refuting how an editorial board made its argument. One student commented, "I agree with the main claim supporting the 19th amendment. How can I do the speech without disagreeing and going against my beliefs?" As I explained the assignment and the rubric to my student, I realized their misunderstanding of the speech aligned with Fish's argument. On learning how to separate your ideas from your work. To separate what is on your plate, and to only finish the material presented in front of you. That was all you needed to do. To say yes to tasks within our roles, and nothing beyond so.

With balancing all my acts within a school, work, and life, I realized I struggled with saying no. I enjoyed helping others and never really questioned the toll matters took on me until I remained within the pattern of helping everyone, even within hesitancies. I needed to learn how to take care of myself and set boundaries. What a concept.

I had to reconceptualize my priorities and take in every bit of my life to avoid sinking with all the challenges. To continue to navigate my way through the #journeyofuncertainty, without drowning in unrequired tasks I previously always took on.

One way to remain afloat: Do not say yes, when you mean no.

Baby steps to go against the hard waves. Gaining confidence in the unfamiliar terrain. Like a fish out of the water, with a lot on our plates. How are you floating by, my friends? #journeyofuncertainty

Misgendering is Not Okay!

     A classroom is a place for creativity and the formation of new ideas. Many professors have created a new "normal" of disclosing pronouns on the first day of class. Disclosing pronouns helps to fight for individuals who are transgender and gender non-conforming. The increased visibility of pronoun disclosure has been attempting to queer the "normal" to create a new normal. In many ways pronoun disclosure helps to educate and provide a safe space for people who do not identify as cisgender. Engaging in discussions about pronoun usage can foster new understanding and acceptance, because the current societal "normal" of assuming gender is repulsive. #FuckTheNorm

    The purpose of this blog post is to highlight where we can grow as individuals personally and as individuals who are apart of the academy. For those of you who have the ability and access to this blog, note that first, we have come so far as a society and a community in the way of acceptance and understanding. Being diverse is somewhat appreciated and encouraged, however sometimes in the classroom, being "different": or doing things in a different way can feel completely isolating.

    Inside of the classroom, as new instructors, we want to facilitate discussion that has a purpose, fosters new understanding and ideas, and we don't want to fail. Being apart of a department such as the Communication Studies department at the University of North Texas means that there is many students that have set precedence for the standard of work and academic performance. While each individual is different, treating someone with respect should not vary person to person. Every being deserves respect and attempt of understanding.

    Overall the Department of Communication Studies is accepting and inclusive, but this does not mean that our work as scholars and critical professionals is over. What happens when a student or person is misgendered inside of class? Over my first eight weeks of my first semester as a graduate student and a teaching assistant, I have realized that our department is not perfect and in certain parts, still buys into the old norms that keep our society in a comfortable place for oppression. Because gender has always been taught on a binary line, for many older professionals it is hard to change the active response of assuming gender identity, BUT this is absolutely not an acceptable excuse for why misgendering is okay. 

    Let me start off by saying that if you did not read the title of this entry, misgendering is not okay! When someone is misgendered in class, someone should say something to whoever was doing the misgendering. Correction is apart of growth and correction is not only the responsibility of the person being misgendered. When someone is misgendered by the professor of the course it becomes increasingly more difficult to stand up or unmute your mic in the middle of class due to the power dynamic that is in place. Ultimately and unfortunately, the aforementioned situation of a professor continuing to misgender students has continually happened this semester. The socially constructed norm of listening to the teacher teach and waiting as the student to be called upon creates an erasing of bodies inside of the classroom that can lead to isolation and "zombie" minded students Palmer (1998) talks about. Students that are directly involved and indirectly involve check out and do not learn or retain the material being taught because of the disruption in respect of identity. 

    Having everyone put their pronouns at the end of their Zoom name or disclose them in class is not enough to end oppression and misgendering. Grace about new things and concepts is important, but gaining the courage to stand up against the teacher/student power dynamic and going against the norm to address important issues of disrespect and discard can create a more cohesive learning community that values truth and creating an accepting reality! #FuckTheNorm

#TeachingWhileNeurodivergent: When You Fail To Connect

 From the first Monday of the semester when I met with my students I was disturbed about their silence and their lack of engagement. But, I thought it was me, maybe I was just too nervous or too intense (normal states of being for me, of course, but my off-putting self was new to them). 

So, I got another classroom when the room I was in only had 13 desks when I had 15 students, and I tried to figure out ways to engage them. I started adding communication and grammar jokes and memes to my slide shows to start with an icebreaker, and an inspirational quote at the end of the slides. I've delivered with enthusiasm and tried to draw them out.

Now, when I had the conversation of "please just at least give me a nod or a shake of the head" after the fourth or fifth week, they began actually using those nonverbal cues. But getting a verbal cue out of them has been like leading my horses to water and trying to make the drink. Which, if you listen to the idiom, they won't drink, and I know this.

But it is hard to stay enthused about teaching, and it is hard to justify putting my heart into a lesson I know my students won't appreciate, or finding the documents for an activity I know they'll do the bare minimum of participating in, if they participate at all. I know that communication scholarship is, at this point, probably a special subject for me, and my interest and excitement for it is not normal or neurotypical. Even if my students were Communication Studies majors, which most of them aren't, I know I'm still probably abnormal. But I also know my neurotypical colleagues would also expect communication out of students in a communication class. And I am very tired of having to buoy myself with the thought, "At least my Wednesday students will hopefully appreciate this". 

I set aside a large amount of time to do the COVID-safe version of the Crossing The Line Activity, maybe more than I needed. I did the Privilege Walk twice in undergrad and the experience was moving both times, so I was eager and excited. But by the end of the class, all the wind was taken out of my sails. They complied with the activity, but all but outright refused to engage in a discussion, even after I gave them 5 minutes for a minute paper to gather their thoughts.

Frustrated, I started loading names into a spinner to randomly pick people, after I warned them that I would have to start cold-calling after sitting in silence and reframing questions, didn't work. But before I clicked the button to spin, it struck me: I was about to do one of the things I hate as a student: punishing the whole class regardless of the fact that some hadn't disobeyed. Indeed, I'd had two or three students actually make small contributions. This wasn't a pedagogical choice I wanted to make. As a neurodivergent person, I know there are many reasons why people choose not to speak, and furthermore, I understand how painful humiliation and embarrassment could be. How could I put that pain on my students? 

I couldn't do it.

So I stopped, explained to my students that there was an expectation that they participate in the class, that it was in the syllabus and furthermore this is a communication class, so to do the act of communication in class was important, and that when we communicate and discuss it enhances their learning and understanding. I told them I understood there was a myriad of reasons that I listed that might be their justification for not talking, but their participation grades were still suffering. And then I dismissed them, because I couldn't stand to look at them anymore. I wasn't even angry through all of this. I was just tired and discouraged.

I'm still discouraged, because I know I'm not a good enough teacher to fix the situation. They will continue coming into class and not caring to participate, and I will keep asking questions to the air, and sometimes answering my own question as if I'm Dora or something. I know I didn't get through to them, in any way, shape, or form. Maybe a neurotypical person or a better teacher would be able to connect, but I'm not either of those things, and it's draining to pretend that I am. 

I don't have anything hopeful to end this with. I'm just sad. And tired.

I'd Love to Help

 This semester (and forevermore), I want to spend some time thinking about status in the classroom. Both 'status' and 'classroom' are flexible terms in my consideration, and it's likely that the way that these terms are interpreted will vary from week to week, but the core of what I'm considering will stay the same. How do we interpret hierarchies in our environment, and how does that relate to our capacity to teach and learn effectively?

This week, I'd like to consider training within the corporate environment. As a part-time-trainer (part-time-administrator, part-time help desk gal, etc. etc.), I have direct exposure to folks across the company. In general, I try to take a status-neutral approach to assisting people. In training, I work to speak clearly, leave space for questions, and err on the side of providing excess access to resources. In administration, I work to act diplomatically, increase accessibility, and err on the side of providing excess access to resources. In ticketing, I work to be courteous and prompt, and to err on the side of providing excess access to resources. Do you sense a theme?

Status in the corporate world is a question of how you appear, who you know, and the previous exposure that an individual has had to your department. This is similar to the classroom environment in many ways, but it differs in a key way: your teachers are not always going to be of a "higher" status than you, at least not in terms of pay or organizational hierarchy. However, a degree of "high" status can be achieved in a variety of ways. For example, if you are a SME (Subject Matter Expert) in a topic, then you are given more cultural capital, at least in that arena. Because specialties are both defined and expected, this type of fluidity in status arrangements happens all the time. However, there is a degree of status or respect that is often assigned via age, race, gender, and degree of exposure. Do you know someone? Do you know who they work for? Do you like that department? Do you think that they should have control over the work that you do? All of these conversations go into the instant mental calculation of how we suss up one another. Further, it's how I, as an "Analyst IV," a 23-year-old woman, who has been stopped multiple times in the bathroom by other women who incredulously inform me that "you look like you're 14," am one of the primary administrators and trainers for our company's core set of collaboration tools. Would you like to learn how to use Zoom? I'd love to help.

I think a lot about how to minimize the intentional status differences in traditional classrooms, but being faced with the array and flexibility of status in the corporate environment has gotten me thinking in a different way. How status is articulated is not only a feature of the hierarchies we know and love (hate? feel meh about?), but also something that is constantly evolving, and is based on many aspects of our cultural capital. As much as there is dysfunction and uncertainty in my non-academic teaching environment, there is a certain degree of ease that I have knowing that this marker of status is up for debate. I know that this ease comes in part because I am (relatively) comfortable in my environment, and that is a privilege that is informed by other privileges like my whiteness and my degree of social comfortability, and that I try not to take that for granted.

In all: I can certainly I can muck it up with a group of trainees, but I also have the opportunity to redevelop a relationship with workers at a site 2,000 miles away who have felt alienated by the department in the past, and I get to do that while actively playing with my role. Instead of posturing myself as the leader, even in a teaching space, I try to represent myself as a capable individual, but one who is actively deferential and engaged with the specific needs of the group that I'm working with. I also try to show lightness and humor and vulnerability. Vulnerability is particularly accessible in the era of COVID, but that's a double edged sword. Will someone be charmed by your apologetic warning that you may hear a dog barking? Or will they be frustrated that I am granted the opportunity to work from home, while they are not? It's a gamble, and not one that always works out in my favor. Knowing that, I know my crutch is there if I need it: "can I show you where to find some of our additional resources?"

The Process Continues

 

The Process Continues: My Journey in #TrustingTheProcess

 

              Week 9?  I cannot believe we are already at Week 9 of Week 15. Halfway through my first semester of graduate school and teaching. After my last blog post, I took some time to reflect on what I learned about #TrustingTheProcess and how to continue to trust the process, even when it is difficult to do so.

 

              While I cannot insert an image here like my incredible colleagues, I have decided to use my creativity in a different way by posting a song about trusting myself and never giving up and relating it back to the readings for Pedagogy and Communication. I love music and wanted to incorporate my love of it and writing into my blog. While the songs I pick do not always talk about trust, they are inspirational in their own right. I hope to give you insight by relating them back to the readings and how I #TrustTheProcess.

 

On her 2015 anthem “Fight Song,” Rachel Platten sings about the ways in which her spirit was not broken and the courage to keep going, even when circumstances could have easily prevented her from finishing out her endeavor. In the chorus, Platten sings, “This is my fight song, take back my life song, prove I’m allright song, my power’s turned on, starting right now I’ll be strong, I’ll play my fight song, and I don’t really care if no one else believes, ‘cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me” (Platten, 2015, Chorus 2, Lyrics.com). I find this song very relatable to #TrustingTheProcess in the aspect that like Rachel Platten, I sometimes lose faith in my ability to be a graduate student and TA, but I always find my way. For example, when Platten sings about how she has a lot of fight left in her (Platten, 2015), I also feel that I have to just keep #TrustingTheProcess, no matter how difficult it can get.

 

I struggled to write my Feminist Criticism proposal because as you all already know, my abilities to make rhetorical arguments are not as strong as they could be. However, I had a great conversation with my faculty mentor that immediately put #TrustingTheProcess into perspective for me. I was so worried about the ultimate evaluation and grade I would receive for Feminist Criticism that I think I forgot that the learning is the most important thing in the process. Of course, I want to do well, and I am striving to make a good grade in all of my graduate courses, but #TrustingTheProcess of learning is the most important component to learning. My mentor told me to put the grade aside and that as long as I learn something important to take with me into the future, everything else, including the grade I receive in Feminist Criticism, will work itself out. Even if I learn how to be a critical scholar and trust myself through the process and even if I never look at feminist theory again after this, as long as I learned something valuable out of my experience, that is what matters most. My faculty mentor reminded me to trust myself through that conversation, and I am so thankful. So, while #TrustingTheProcess as a graduate student, especially in Feminist Criticism, has been challenging, it is also a work in progress, something that I continue to work on every day. In the end, I know I will do well in the course because I care. Sometimes I ask myself if participating and caring is enough, but then I remember that I am trying my best. I need to trust myself and give myself a bit more compassion as I try to learn. Over the last two weeks, I have become a bit better at #TrustingTheProcess, although sometimes it still continues to trip me up. Like Platten sings though, I will continue to fight through the bouts of doubt I feel to obtain my master’s degree and also to continue to be the most effective TA for my wonderful students, who give me hope for the next generation.

 

              In his book “The Courage to Teach,” Parker Palmer (1998/2007) states, Integrity requires that I discern what is integral to my selfhood, what fits and what does not—and that I choose life-giving ways of relating to the forces that converge within me: Do I welcome them or fear them, embrace them or reject them, move with them or against them? By choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am.” (Palmer, 1998/2007, p. 14). I relate to this quote for a number of reasons. First, in order to become a holistic learner, I believe one must be honest with him, herself, or themselves. Palmer states that one does not need to strive for perfection to become a holistic learner and that being a holistic learner often means figuring out how to accept yourself as you are in the context of teaching and learning. For me, a brand-new TA in graduate school, I will make mistakes. But my integrity can never be unmatched, as Palmer would argue. Therefore, when I mess up as a TA, which has not really happened yet, I will find a way to bring my entire being into the situation to make it right again. Honestly, I would consider myself a holistic learner. I learn best when professors take my triumphs, mind, body, and soul into effect. Palmer discusses holistic learning in the aspect that if his heart is not in teaching, then good teaching simply cannot occur. Good teaching requires heart and identity. Therefore, I always bring my heart and identity into my teaching. I believe my students can tell a difference because I have received emails thanking me for the support I offer students. My pedagogy involves holistic learning and also room for trial and error.

 

              As a Teaching Assistant, I attempt to bring my entire heart into teaching my students in COMM 1010. In a virtual environment, it is difficult to bring my whole heart into teaching because I do not get to interact with my students and know them as I would if I was teaching in person. However, I do the best I can, and again, it’s just about me #TrustingTheProcess. If I stop now, nothing new will be accomplished. Finally, I am slowly learning that it is okay to have days where teaching and learning are tough. I’ve learned that not every day will be an easy teaching or learning day, but if we all continue to #TrustTheProcess and have faith that everything will work out, whether it is in classes that are challenging us, holistic learning, bringing your identity into the classroom, or teaching, we are all going to get through this sometimes bumpy but otherwise fabulous semester together!

Here’s to continuing in #TrustingTheProcess, never giving up, and continuing to learn.

Best,

Kendal

 

References

 

Bassett, D., & Platten, R. A. (2015). Fight song. On Wildfire, New York, Columbia, February 15, 2015.

Link to Lyrics.com Rachel Platten Song: https://www.lyrics.com/track/31853065/Rachel+Platten/Fight+Song

Palmer, P. J. (1998/2007). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. San Francisco: Wiley & Sons

#ImaginationWork: Engaging “What If?” as a World-Making Practice in the Online Classroom

As the last months of 2019 slipped into the dawn of 2020, the novel coronavirus radically remade human relations across the globe, from our homes to institutions of higher education. TAs and tenured faculty alike were forced to pivot under direction to transfer courses, teaching, and learning online almost overnight – or, at UNT, over an extended spring “break” – operating with the assumption that the pandemic would pass by summer allowing us to share physical spaces of learning together by the fall.

Yet, here we are, the last months of 2020 slipping into the dawn of 2021. Many of our classrooms are on still Zoom, our staff meetings are on Microsoft Teams, and we socialize via FaceTime, Instagram, and other digitally mediated platforms of communication. Effectively, our homes have become spaces of higher education. It feels impossible to imagine what the future might hold for academia at large, no less our positions within it as leaders and learners. How are we to proceed?

From my standpoint as TA and a graduate student engaged in a semester of 100% online teaching and learning, that is a difficult question to even begin to address. With little certainty to frame the future, there is much left to the imagination right now – a messy myriad of what ifs. 

What if mass-produced virtual learning environments are the future of higher education? What if our students do not have access to stable internet connections or necessary technological equipment to succeed? What if I cannot successfully adapt/adopt a pedagogical practice that upholds my commitments to what Paulo Freire (2000) terms “co-intentional education” (p. 69) between students and teachers...online? What if my favorite parts of teaching and learning – the cultivation of visceral knowledge via shared time and space, the relationships fostered in physical classrooms and hallways, the smell of dusty textbooks and crisp papers, the sound of loafers clicking down halls and the feel of bustling bodies blocking campus sidewalks – are facets of the past? What if, what if, what if...?

#ImaginationWork

SpongeBob SquarePants creates a rainbow over his head
and the word "imagination" hovers above it

I contend that we must embrace what Deanna Dannels (2015) terms “imagination work” (p. 217) to traverse the virtual Rubicon of online education. Imagination work is a world-making practice driven by “imagining new possibilities and narratives” (Dannels, 2015, p. 217) in service of creating better ways of being in a world that is ever-changing. It is our imperative, as critically-engaged students, instructors, and citizens to engage imagination work as an intervention to transform the educational challenges provoked by the pandemic into opportunities to co-construct new narratives of virtual teaching/learning.

“[Imagination is] an embodied intellectual faculty that, with careful attention and specific strategies, can effect personal and social transformation.” - Gloria Anzaldúa

Foregrounding imagination as a world-making practice is not new to the context of the classroom. Chicana feminist and scholar Gloria Anzaldúa (2015), for example, theorizes imagination as “an embodied intellectual faculty that, with careful attention and specific strategies, can effect personal and social transformation” (p. x). Freire (2000), too, advocates for a co-intentional educational practice whereby “teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge” (p. 69). As these scholars suggest, imagination is not only useful, but crucial, to achieve social and educational transformation. And, amid the novel challenges of teaching/learning online, it is increasingly more critical.

Perhaps the first step to engaging imagination is to define it. I appreciate the citation Dannels (2015) provides, quoting Eric Liu and Scott Noppe-Brandon’s definition of imagination as “the capacity to conceive of what is not” (p. 217). Further, according to the scholars, the very two words that all too often tickle my unease are the two words necessary to unlock imaginative ways of interpreting and navigating the unknown...what if.

Welcoming the “What Ifs”

According to Dannels (2015), living out the words what if “involves practicing imagination actively [and] finding ways of being in the world inspiring imagination” (p. 217). With this is mind, what if, instead of dwelling on the anxiety of the uncertain future or nostalgia for the past, we practiced embracing the messy present without trying to untangle the what ifs, but rather, befriending them?

What if we actively and radically (re)imagined our online classrooms as co-creational spaces, rich with potential, rather less-than-ideal locations of educational interaction? What if we engaged pedagogical practices that inspired imagination in our online classrooms and beyond? What if we reflected on what we have learned so far and created new narratives with “careful attention and specific strategies” (Anzaldúa, 2015, x) to improve education beyond the pandemic? What if, by engaging with our students through collective imagination, we began to forge new and better ways of being in the world?

  

I do not have the answers today (and most likely will not by blog post five) but have posed a few questions (thanks, Freire) that I plan to reflect on throughout the semester. Actively re-imagining the coronavirus classroom online requires we think toward the future while taking concrete steps to create it today. #ImaginationWork will involve practice, certainly. What if, however, actively practicing imagination is the portal to radically connecting, leading, learning, and world-making together to create a better future?

References:

Anzaldúa, G. (2015). Light in the dark/luz en lo oscuro: Rewriting identity, spirituality, reality. Cambridge University Press.
Dannels, D. P. (2015). 8 essential questions teachers ask: A guidebook for communicating with students. New York: Oxford
    University Press.
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: Continuum.

 

Academicize for Whom?

    Fish calls upon teachers to do their job which is limited to introducing their students to a new literature base and to develop the skills that are related to their discipline--nothing more, nothing less. Teachers should only conduct class in pursuit of (what Fish believes to be) the only virtue within the academy: the pursuit of Truth. In pursuit of Truth, professors can entertain any subject as long as it is academic in nature. "To academicize a topic is to detach it from the context of its real world urgency, where there is a vote to be taken or an agenda to be embraced, and insert it into a context of academic urgency, where there is an account to be offered or an analysis to be performed" (p. 27). This pedagogy begins from the perspective that the academy should be a neutral space from partisanship and that academics should save the world on their time but only within the bounds of their external qualifications.

    The purpose of this blog post is to refute Fish's pedagogy and to identify its philosophy as a technology of Settler Colonialism. I attempt this through an analysis of my own experience navigating the academy as a student and teacher to showcase how it is not a neutral site. The insular tendencies and the calling for the apoliticization of the academy therefore function as modes of colonial knowledge production. 

    To begin, I think that the creation of a class and the maintenance of the academy is political and its denial perpetuates settler colonialism. For instance, we've learned about the process of creating a class from Civikly and the ways that the teacher curates and plans for the instruction of their curriculum. The process of diving into the literature, selecting what histories are worth being told and analyzed, and the method of instruction, are all political acts. The denial of these actions as political is steeped in privilege and enables the erasure of indigenous knowledge that is often deemed irrational by Western epistemologies. I can't really explain how powerful it was for me to read decolonial literature from Chamoru scholars because it was the first time that I felt like I was represented in the academy. Fish explains in the introduction that he doesn't think that students are fit to judge the quality of the curriculum or lesson due to their inexperience and lack of expertise, but I argue that this is colonial because indigenous peoples are often excluded from the academy and structurally told that their knowledge is not legitimate. Fish, on page 168, explains that the duties of teaching extend outside of the classroom into areas like office hours but office hours tend to be one of the best sites for students to gain mentors and allies. The idea that office hours should only be used for intellectual pursuits while prohibiting the student to be a person as well as a scholar would lead to the academy only being accessible to those that are the most privileged.  Fish assumes that students and people in general can check their identity at the door which is akin to the way that racial minorities are told to leave their race at the door in order to assimilate into the professionalism of whiteness. 

    Beyond the denial of teaching as a political act, Fish perpetuates settler colonialism by calling for administrators and the university to remain neutral regardless of the political battles that take place within society. Fish applauds universities, such as the University of Wyoming, when, in response to calls by their students to condemn the Iraq war, the university released a statement saying that it does not have a foreign policy. I don't think we can understate the power that, for better or worse, the university has to transform society. Agents of the state are recruited from the academy to conduct foreign and domestic policy, graduates assimilate into capitalism by innovating technology for the the US and its military, and the vast majority of people, in one way or another, structurally benefit from structural oppression. The denial of the political potency of the university given these observations, in addition to the university's location on stolen land, mean that the university is part and parcel to settler colonialism. Moreover, I argue that the mobility and social prominence in American society is predicated off of mass exploitation and settler colonialism. That being stated, the university can be a site of liberation. One of the most common examples of the university influencing politics would be the student protests against the Vietnam War. But that's not as important as this central tenant: silence in the face of adversity is morally abhorrent when one has the ability to speak out. Universities, like privileged individuals, benefit from structures of oppression and have the ability to speak out against injustice. The rejection of this reality and the university's obligations, is complicit in and condones oppression. 

    If the academy hopes to be a site of liberation we must reject this pedagogy. To those who would rush to Fish's defense and espouse the value of academicizing, I would ask one question: academicize for whom? #DecolonizeEducation