Intersectionality has been the banner under which demands of inclusion have been made but this term can do no more than those who use it have the power to demand. (“Why Intersectionality Can’t Wait,” 2015) The intersectional university, which our ARTivism panelists today spoke of, takes social, historical and political processes into consideration in order to best understand how to support the wide range of experiences of diverse students. Each of our panelists challenged power relations in education, some through media activism and alternative media power while others took to the streets to fight job insecurity and academic freedom.
Our first panelist, Audrey Hudson, spoke about how Hip-Hop can and should be used as a tool to begin decolonizing education by bringing black and indigenous voices into pedagogical spaces to help discuss the history of colonization, race, and their cultures representation and impact on society. This will help bring attention to the voices of marginalized minorities while recognizing the cross-cultural exchange that has taken root and influenced everything from fashion, graphic design, art history, social media, and illustration.
Chair of OPSEU college faculty division and professor at Centennial College for Humanities and Social Sciences, RM Kennedy, spoke about the price of dreaming in a profession where job security isn’t the norm. She has and still is continuing to challenge the increasingly assembly-line-like type of education we live through today while promoting academic freedom. She was on the front lines of the most recent college strike that affected countless members of both faculty and students. She firmly believes that this freedom is the resistance needed to stop education from becoming a commodity and to take back education from the current deadening academic control.
Susanne Nyaga, student union president here at Ryerson, spoke about media activism in general and, more importantly, how and what it looks like here on campus. The two main types she spoke of were politically motivated hacking (the creation and spreading of confidential information) and social media activism. (how the rise of social media brought about new platforms to speak about social injustices and change on) Nyaga is the first black women to hold Ryerson’s highest student office and was the backing behind our student unions choice to not celebrate Canada’s 150, or Colonialism 150, citing historical wrongdoings against Indigenous peoples as its obvious reasons for the protest. Most importantly she spoke about how it seems that, despite being the ones most affected by this exclusion and prejudice, marginalized groups are the ones putting out the most emotional labor educating others. Care is about solidarity and not letting them the ones most impacted be stuck working the hardest at the frontlines. Allies should and need to step up to help educate and protect marginalized people/groups.
Resistance is always a work in progress. (Danowitz & Tuitt, 2011) As academic freedom is lost under the hierarchical imposition of new managerial university bureaucracy, where one can’t teach, speak, read, or even dream without their approval and students are simply funding units, teachers and activists alike must find opportunities to resist and more importantly reclaim their classrooms and their education. This resistance can be found through harnessing and educating ourselves on things such as alternative media power that introduces intersectional critiques based on gender, race, sexuality, indigenous and black perspectives which helps to broaden the possibility for change across multiple social movements which will in turn help us accomplish profound social change and implement equity within creative work, education, activism and much more.
work cited:
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Why Intersectionality Can’t Wait.” The Washington Post, 24 Sept. 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/24/why-intersectionality-cant-wait/?utm_term.
Danowitz, M. A., & Tuitt, F. (2011). Enacting inclusivity through engaged pedagogy: A higher education perspective. Equity & Excellence in Education, 44, 40–56.