Episodes

  • Transforming Hispanic-Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice

    Transforming Hispanic-Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice
    May 30 2024
    What makes Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) uniquely Latinx? And how can university leaders, staff, and faculty transform these institutions into spaces that promote racial equity, social justice, and collective liberation? Today’s book is: Transforming Hispanic-Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), by Dr. Gina Ann Garcia. In it, Dr. Garcia argues that in order to serve Latinx students and other students of color, these institutions must acknowledge how whiteness operates across the organization, from the ways that it is governed and how decisions are made to how education and knowledge are delivered. Diversity alone is insufficient for achieving a dynamic learning environment within higher education institutions. Dr. Garcia's framework for transforming HSIs into truly Latinx institutions is grounded in critical theories, yet it advances new ways of thinking about how to organize colleges and universities that are actively serving students of color, low-income students, and students from other minoritized backgrounds. This framework connects multiple important dimensions, including mission, identity, strategic purpose, membership, curriculum, student services, physical infrastructure, governance, leadership, external partnerships, and external influences. Drawing on over 25 years of HSI research, Dr. Garcia offers unique solutions for colleges and universities that want to better serve their students. Our guest is: Dr. Gina Ann Garcia, who is a professor in the School of Education at UC Berkeley. Her research centers on issues of equity and justice in higher education with an emphasis on understanding how Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) embrace and enact an organizational identity for serving minoritized populations. She explores the experiences of administrators, faculty, and staff at HSIs and the outcomes of students attending these institutions. As an equity-minded scholar, she tends to the ways that race and racism have shaped institutions of higher education. She is the author of Becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Opportunities for Colleges & Universities, the editor of Hispanic-Serving Institutions in Practice: Defining “Servingness” at HSIs, and the author of Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice. She consults directly with HSIs to work towards organizational transformation; is a proud alumna of an HSI; and was a Title V Coordinator at Cal State University, Fullerton which drives and motivates her research and praxis. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. Listeners may also like: Presumed Incompetent Leading from the Margins Is Grad School for Me? Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. You can help support our show by sharing episodes of the Academic Life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Chris Haufe, "Do the Humanities Create Knowledge?" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

    Chris Haufe, "Do the Humanities Create Knowledge?" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
    May 28 2024
    There is in certain circles a widely held belief that the only proper kind of knowledge is scientific knowledge. This belief often runs parallel to the notion that legitimate knowledge is obtained when a scientist follows a rigorous investigative procedure called the 'scientific method'. In Do the Humanities Create Knowledge? (Cambridge UP, 2023), Chris Haufe challenges this idea. He shows that what we know about the so-called scientific method rests fundamentally on the use of finely tuned human judgments directed toward certain questions about the natural world. He suggests that this dependence on judgment in fact reveals deep affinities between scientific knowledge and another, equally important, sort of comprehension: that of humanistic creative endeavour. His wide-ranging and stimulating new book uncovers the unexpected unity underlying all our efforts – whether scientific or arts-based – to understand human experience. In so doing, it makes a vital contribution to broader conversation about the value of the humanities in an increasingly STEM-saturated educational culture. If it is agreed that the humanities are valuable and essential, are there better and worse ways in which to generate humanistic knowledge? This book offers compelling answers. Chris Haufe is the Elizabeth M. and William C. Treuhaft Professor of the Humanities and Chair of the Department of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of How Knowledge Grows (2022) and Fruitfulness (2024). Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Larry Roeder and Barry Harrelson, "Dirt Don't Burn: A Black Community's Struggle for Educational Equality Under Segregation" (Georgetown UP, 2023)

    Larry Roeder and Barry Harrelson, "Dirt Don't Burn: A Black Community's Struggle for Educational Equality Under Segregation" (Georgetown UP, 2023)
    May 27 2024
    The system of educational apartheid that existed in the United States until the Brown v. Board of Education decision and its aftermath has affected every aspect of life for Black Americans. Larry Roeder and Barry Harrelson's book Dirt Don't Burn: A Black Community's Struggle for Educational Equality Under Segregation (Georgetown UP, 2023) is the riveting narrative of an extraordinary community that overcame the cultural and legal hurdles of systematic racism. Dirt Don't Burn describes how Loudoun County, Virginia, which once denied educational opportunity to Black Americans, gradually increased the equality of education for all children in the area. The book includes powerful stories of the largely unknown individuals and organizations that brought change to enduring habits of exclusion and prejudice toward African Americans. Dirt Don't Burn sheds new light on the history of segregation and inequity in American history. It provides new historical details and insights into African American experiences based on original research through thousands of previously lost records, archival NAACP files, and records of educational philanthropies. This book will appeal to readers interested in American history, African American history, and regional history, as well as educational policy and social justice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education
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    55 mins
  • Bryan Hanson on Disrupting Academic Bullying

    Bryan Hanson on Disrupting Academic Bullying
    May 27 2024
    Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks with Bryan Hanson, ombudsperson for Virginia Tech's Graduate School, about a program he developed called Disrupting Academic Bullying, which seeks to encourage all members of academic communities to support and promote affirming environments for research and learning. Lee and Bryan talk about the reality of harassment and abuse in academic workplaces and what community members and departments can do when they experience or witness bullying. They also reflect on the limits of such programs and the use of formal bureaucratic responses to solve social and moral problems, while affirming that universities could, indeed, do a great deal more today to address such issues. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education
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    1 hr and 28 mins
  • Danielle R. Olden, "Racial Uncertainties: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation, and the Making of Race in Post–Civil Rights America" (U California Press, 2022)

    Danielle R. Olden, "Racial Uncertainties: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation, and the Making of Race in Post–Civil Rights America" (U California Press, 2022)
    May 22 2024
    Mexican Americans have often fit uncertainly into the white/non-white binary that has goverens much of American history. After Colorado, and much of the rest of the American West, became American claimed territory after the Mexican-Americna War in 1848, thousands of formerly Mexican citizens became American citizens. Flash foward a century to post-war Denver. In the spring of 1969, Mexican American students staged a walk out in protest of poor quality education, racist teachers, and school segregation - they were met by police in riot gear, to beat and arrested dozens of peaceful protestors. Denver thus became ground zero for debates over race in the American West, a city as important to conceptions of whiteness, "minority" status, and colorblindness as any place in the South. In the award winning book, Racial Uncertainties: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation, and the Making of Race in Post-Civil Rights America (U California Press, 2022), University of Utah historian Danielle Olden tracks the history of Chicano, Latinx, and Mexican American identities through Denver's history, focusing on the lead up to the 1973 Supreme Court case, Keyes v. Denver School District No. 1. Olden tracks the remarkable and complicated story of that city's Chicano, Black, and white communities through the halting process of school desegregation, and in doing so provides an explemary lesson in the social mutability of the concept of race. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education
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    1 hr and 22 mins
  • Jennifer Liu, "Indoctrinating the Youth: Secondary Education in Wartime China and Postwar Taiwan, 1937-1960" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

    Jennifer Liu, "Indoctrinating the Youth: Secondary Education in Wartime China and Postwar Taiwan, 1937-1960" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
    May 18 2024
    Indoctrinating the Youth: Secondary Education in Wartime China and Postwar Taiwan, 1937-1960 (U Hawaii Press, 2024) examines how the Guomindang (GMD or Nationalists) sought to maintain control of middle-school students and cultivate their political loyalty over the trajectory of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Civil War, and postwar Taiwan. During the Sino-Japanese War the Nationalists managed middle-school refugee students by merging schools, publishing and distributing updated textbooks, and assisting students as they migrated to the interior with their principals and teachers. In Taiwan, the China Youth Corps (CYC) became a symbol of the regime’s successful establishment. Tracing Nationalist efforts to indoctrinate ideology and martial spirit, Jennifer Liu investigates how GMD leaders Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo tried to build support among young people in their efforts to stabilize Taiwanese society under their rule. By comparing two key youth organizations—the Three People’s Principles Youth Corps in China, and the CYC on Taiwan—Liu uses education as a lens to analyze state-building in modern China. Liu’s careful analysis of the inner workings of GMD youth organizations also illuminates the day-to-day operations of military training in gender-segregated upper-middle schools—including how the government selected instructors and the skills taught to students. According to Liu, mandatory military training contributed to preventing major protest against the government but the policy was not without critics. Intellectuals, parents, and students voiced their dissent at what they perceived as excessive control by a repressive government and a waste of resources interfering with academics. The government-mandated civics curriculum, including government-approved textbooks and standards, reveals the characteristics and duties GMD officials believed modern citizens of the next generation should possess. Through provisions for refugee students, youth organizations, military training, and civics classes, GMD secondary education policy played a critical role in the process of state building in both modern China and Taiwan. Skillfully combining archival work in Nanjing and Taipei, along with oral interviews with former students and CYC administrators, instructors, and members, Liu offers a unique perspective toward a balanced assessment of Nationalist Party rule. Jennifer Liu is associate professor of East Asian history at Central Michigan University. She specializes in the political and social history of twentieth-century China, particularly education, youth culture, studen​t protest, and ethnic identity. Li-Ping Chen is a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education
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    1 hr and 10 mins
  • En Li, "Betting on the Civil Service Examinations: The Lottery in Late Qing China" (Harvard UP, 2023)

    En Li, "Betting on the Civil Service Examinations: The Lottery in Late Qing China" (Harvard UP, 2023)
    May 17 2024
    During the Qing dynasty in China, a wide variety of people participated in a lottery game named weixing (“surname guessing”), which had participants placing bets on the surnames of civil service examination candidates. A fiercely competitive process, those who passed the various levels of the civil service and military examinations could climb the social ladder and obtain status in their communities and be considered for important positions in the government and military. The results of these examinations were not only highly anticipated by the exam takers themselves but also–with the introduction of weixing–by an enthusiastic community of players who bet on the success of candidates with less common surnames. In this episode, En Li, assistant professor of modern East Asian history at the University of Texas at Dallas and author of Betting on the Civil Service Exmaninations: The Lottery in Late Qing China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2023), explores the fascinating history of this lottery game–from the longer history of games and betting in China and the origin of weixing to its regulation by the government to raise revenue and the spread of the game beyond China’s borders through Chinese diasporic communities to Southeast Asia and North America. The book considers the game from multiple perspectives–government officials, players, and lottery game runners. En Li thoughtfully reflects on the book and the process of producing it and points to the larger significance of both weixing and the civil service examinations in Chinese society and life and the risk, reward, and loss involved. Laurie Dickmeyer is an Assistant Professor of History at Angelo State University, where she teaches courses in Asian and US history. Her research concerns nineteenth century US-China relations. She can be reached at laurie.dickmeyer@angelo.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education
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    39 mins
  • Matthew Berland and Antero Garcia, "The Left Hand of Data: Designing Education Data for Justice" (MIT Press, 2024)

    Matthew Berland and Antero Garcia, "The Left Hand of Data: Designing Education Data for Justice" (MIT Press, 2024)
    May 15 2024
    Educational analytics tend toward aggregation, asking what a “normative” learner does. In The Left Hand of Data: Designing Education Data for Justice (MIT Press, 2024, open access at this link), educational researchers Matthew Berland and Antero Garcia start from a different assumption—that outliers are, and must be treated as, valued individuals. Berland and Garcia argue that the aim of analytics should not be about enforcing and entrenching norms but about using data science to break new ground and enable play and creativity. From this speculative vantage point, they ask how we can go about living alongside data in a better way, in a more just way, while also building on the existing technologies and our knowledge of the present. The Left Hand of Data explores the many ways in which we use data to shape the possible futures of young people—in schools, in informal learning environments, in colleges, in libraries, and with educational games. It considers the processes by which students are sorted, labeled, categorized, and intervened upon using the bevy of data extracted and collected from individuals and groups, anonymously or identifiably. When, how, and with what biases are these data collected and utilized? What decisions must educational researchers make around data in an era of high-stakes assessment, surveillance, and rising inequities tied to race, class, gender, and other intersectional factors? How are these complex considerations around data changing in the rapidly evolving world of machine learning, AI, and emerging fields of educational data science? The surprising answers the authors discover in their research make clear that we do not need to wait for a hazy tomorrow to do better today. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education
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    53 mins