Black Liberation in Higher Education Considerations for Research and Practice

In this book on higher education the contributors make The Black Lives Matter (#BLM) their focus and engage in contemporary theorizing around the issues central to the Movement: Black Deprivation, Black Resistance, and Black Liberation.

The #BLM movement has brought national attention to the deadly oppression shaping the everyday lives of Black people. With the recent murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd from state-sanctioned violence by police, the public outrage and racial unrest catapulted #BLM further into the mainstream. Institutional leaders (e.g., provosts, department heads, faculty, campus administrators), particularly among white people, soon began realizing that anti-Blackness could no longer be ignored, making #BLM the most significant social movement of our time.

The chapters included in this volume cover topics such as white institutional space and the experiences of Black administrators; a Black transnational ethic of Black Lives Matter; depictions of #BLM in the media; racially liberatory pedagogy; campus rebellions and classrooms as sites for Black liberation; Black women?s labor and intersectional interventions; and Black liberation research. The considerations for research and practice presented are intended to assist institutional leaders, policy-makers, transdisciplinary researchers, and others outside higher education, to dismantle anti-Blackness and create supportive mechanisms that benefit Black people, especially those working, learning and serving in higher education.

The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.

Introduction - Black Deprivation, Black Resistance, and Black Liberation: the influence of #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) on higher education

Chayla Haynes, Milagros Castillo-Montoya, Meseret F. Hailu and Saran Stewart

1. When the levees break: the cost of vicarious trauma, microaggressions and emotional labor for Black administrators and faculty engaging in race work at traditionally White institutions

Myntha Anthym and Franklin Tuitt

2. Teaching a transnational ethic of Black Lives Matter: an AfroCubana Americana’s theory of Calle

Amalia Dache

3. Student resistance movements in higher education: an analysis of the depiction of Black Lives Matter student protests in news media

Meseret F. Hailu and Molly Sarubbi

4. Racially liberatory pedagogy: a Black Lives Matter approach to education

Milagros Castillo-Montoya, Joshua Abreu and Abdul Abad

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

Chayla Haynes and Kevin J. Bazner

6. Theorizing Black women’s experiences with institutionsanctioned violence: a #BlackLivesMatter imperative toward Black liberation on campus

Lori D. Patton and Nadrea R. Njoku

7. Black Liberation research: qualitative methodological considerations

Saran Stewart and Chayla Haynes

Drs. Haynes, Castillo-Montoya, Hailu and Stewart are higher education scholars whose research examines how whiteness and anti-Blackness shapes the experiences of racially minoritized students and faculty and the role of faculty in creating more identity-affirming and racially-just campus learning environments.