Elections and Activism

Adrianna Kezar, Pullias Center Director, shares her perspective on this pivotal election

It’s November and hopefully you voted on or before Election Day and encouraged others to do so.  The stakes for this current election could not have been higher, particularly as it relates to issues of racial justice and equity, but also xenophobia, global sustainability, health and safety of our populace to name a few critical items.  While the results are still contested by some, it appears Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. and Kamala Devi Harris will be heading to the White House in January with a strong mandate for change.  However, they will likely be greeted by a hostile Senate and the remnants of the previous administration committed to blocking progress in many important fronts.  This keeps the responsibility on us, the people across this country, and particularly scholars who are committed to equity, to be activists in the coming years.  

Over the past decade, I have been considering how important it is for academics and all of those who labor at colleges and universities to play a role in activism. In a recent book, I explored some of the many ways that faculty can engage in public scholarship.  This activity can range from an op-ed to organizing teach-ins to marching in the streets. And it is quite possible, we will be needing people to be doing all of these activities in the coming months.  And while the book was aimed at faculty, postdocs, and graduate students aspiring to be faculty members, the ideas and lessons are just as important to staff and students as they decide the best way they can support their values in the coming months. And over a decade ago, I talked about the ways staff and faculty can be tempered radicals advocating for socially just changes (see Enhancing campus capacity for leadership: Grassroots leadership in higher education).  

We, at the center, look forward to supporting the activism needed to move our country forward and to hopefully work towards addressing the racial inequities that have been so visible over the last year.  As all of us consider these issues, I wanted to highlight some resources about activism among academics, particularly those that point to the dynamics of being activists in these changing times globally.

Resources:  

• Activist Academics: What Future? 
• Combining Academia and Activism: common obstacles and useful tools
• On Intellectual Activism
• The Case for Academics as Public Intellectuals
• Viva the Scholar Activist!

Beyond the national landscape, our campuses also need activism to fight current neoliberal trends.  The Gig Academy which has resulted in the wholesale change in labor on campuses where all employees including staff, faculty, post docs, and graduate students are all contingent, deprofessionalized, and barely able to survive –many on public assistance–must be resisted.  The Gig system operates to fragment the campus community so collective action is extremely challenging and requires an awareness of our collective disenfranchisement.  And those few individuals left with power — such as tenure-track faculty members – need to play leadership roles and help dismantle the system.  This work is hard given we are in a global pandemic but we must engage in this activism – we are at a critical point in time with an opportunity to create real change. 

In solidarity, 

Adrianna