We continue to solicit #BLM Guest Posts. We pay $150 for accepted posts. Pls get in touch with Karen at gettenure@gmail.com with an idea, pitch, or draft.
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Léa Nsouli, Ateeqa Arain, Steph Pflugfelder and Angela Liu are graduate students in the Leadership, Higher and Adult Education department at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. They are passionate educators who strive to create inclusive, diverse and anti-racist spaces both inside and outside the classroom.
The murder of George Floyd and countless other Black individuals in the United States and Canada has devastated all of us. We have witnessed a historic surge of protests taking place across all fifty states in the US, here in Canada and in multiple other countries around the globe. We are now in a position to do more with our pain and anger. As graduate students at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), we want to speak out about the deafening silence emanating from one of the most prestigious educational institutions in North America.
The present movement centres around a key theme: education. The protests, marches, social media blitzes and resource distribution aim to raise awareness of the realities that Black people face every single day. For decades knowledge of these realities has been ignored and suppressed by more dominant and privileged voices in our society. This movement is to educate us, and as a result seek justice in an unjust world. To quote revolutionary civil rights leader Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the word.”
With that in mind, let us see what one of the world’s leading educational institutions is doing during these revolutionary and inspiring times.
Not nearly enough.
Following the unrest and growing protests around the world, OISE took a week to send out a recycled statement to say that anti-Black racism has no place at our school. A considerate gesture, but with no clear indication of how OISE, as a unified community, can be proactive on the matter. Such a delayed response suggests that the institution has not emphasized anti-Black racism in any meaningful way to go beyond platitudes and towards direct and immediate action.
Amongst the four departments at OISE, two sent out statements more than a week later, while others have remained silent. During this critical moment, these departments that are preparing future leaders in the fields of education and mental health must do better. A movement like this that is met with solidarity and action from the educational community can maintain momentum and we must take advantage of our uniquely privileged position to foster real change. Our professors focus their energy on funding and scholarships to support their research, and they know exactly what needs to be done after having studied injustices for years. OISE must apply their research, be proactive, and begin to take transformative action.
Our intention is not to undermine the work that is currently being done by different departments at OISE, but rather to urge the institution to leverage the academic community at its disposal. To create a united community that would join in on the activism, given that they have all the tools and resources at their fingertips. Most importantly, we would like for OISE as an institute to challenge its own systemic racism, speak openly about it, and be transparent and vocal about the actions being taken to combat it. We no longer have time for empty promises in place of action, and we demand the OISE leadership take bold action, starting now.
Moving forward, OISE should:
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Hello,
As a recent graduate of OISE I do not think that people should look to it, or any similar institution, should be a leader on these issues.
Colleges and universities are a business. The faculty make small fortunes. There are community groups and not-for-profits that are much better at education and anti-racist work than OISE will ever be, and they do it humbly with far less money. Funds should be taken away from OISE and given to these groups.
The faculty at OISE and at U of T in general are out of touch with the real world. While I was there the ideas they proposed to tackle racism were for the most part insensitive and ridiculous. I would never trust them to address BLM, indigenous issues, etc.
The reason OISE does not make their stance against Anti-Black racism clear is because they too participate in such acts. The Departments are part of the growing ‘performative allyship’ whereby Black students (few and far in between) are accepted into programs and then put in positions of settler colonial displacement in 21st century education models. This becomes hypocritical to OISE’s claim that their work is for the advancement of ALL where ‘Equity and Inclusion’ are at the “forefront”. When we look at the Black focused courses themselves, the attendees are mostly non-Black who offer racist ideas with racist resolutions. The effects of which are catastrophic as these courses should be a place for Black voices to have a ‘place’ in a safe ‘space’ for healing and reclamation. Other courses at OISE are conducted by white professors who are recreating settler colonialism in the 21st century as they frequent Black nations (e.g., Jamaica) and produce articles speaking on behalf of Black voices in these countries as part of their “scholarship”. Then there are instructors who are in Departments that are supposed to be focused on ‘social justice’, who make claims in their “research” that white people are a minority on Indigenous lands. In these courses, white instructors use divide-and-rule tactics on the few Black student attendees. When these forms of research and instructional and assessment practices are accepted as part of OISE’s academia and thus vision, the bias of this institution is made clear. There are many cases currently before the Dean in which Black students are under duress and suffering at the colonial thumb of faculty. Why is there such a long line of Black bodies? Why hasn’t OISE ever had a Black Dean?