Handbook of Race and Refusal in Higher Education: Like a Path in Tall Grasses

This cutting-edge Handbook goes beyond discourses of equity, inclusion, and diversity, carving a space for critical discussions about the relationships between Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and the university. In doing so, it forges new paths and alternative conceptual starting points to consider in making a commitment to social justice in higher education.

Kenjus T. Watson, Nora Cisneros, Lindsay Pérez Huber and Verónica Vélez bring together a dynamic collective of scholars, educators, students, community members, and activists to ask the critical question: how do we work towards justice through a lens of refusal in higher education (HE)? The Handbook presents both traditional and non-traditional scholarship, including creative and artistic work, to explore the distinctive ways white supremacy, settler colonialism, and antiblackness impact students, faculty, and communities within HE, with chapters providing insight into everyday strategies of refusal, radical imaginaries of abolitions and futurities, and projects of decolonization. Taking stock of the tensions and contradictions in ‘undoing’ the university while occupying positions within it, the Handbook concludes that the study of education cannot be divorced from the sociohistorical, political, and economic architectures that have shaped it.

This path-breaking Handbook will be a crucial resource for BIPOC students, scholars and faculty within HE institutions, as well as students of the sociology of education, the sociology of discrimination, education policy, and race, ethnicity, and colonial studies.

Edited by Kenjus T. Watson, School of Education, American University, Washington D.C., Nora Cisneros, Department of Ethnic Studies, California State University, Bakersfield, Lindsay Pérez Huber, College of Education, California State University, Long Beach, and Verónica Vélez, Woodring Collective of Education, Western Washington University, US