Teaching for freedom, caring for ourselves

ABSTRACT

Business scholars are choosing to teach in line with their integrity. Critical and creative pedagogies disrupt the hegemony of neoliberal capitalism and empower students to transform the oppressive systems that shape organisations and society. With growing racial, ethnic, religious, class, gender, sexual, neuro, and bodily diversity on campuses, justice-oriented teaching has the potential to co-create inclusive spaces where all students feel recognised. In this opinion piece, I reflect on why educating for freedom is increasingly necessary and why educators guided by critical and creative pedagogies need to take care of themselves.

KEYWORDS:

• Business schools
• decolonisation
• freedom
• diversity
• inclusion
• care

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. One case I sometimes share with my students is Pepsi’s 2017 advertisement featuring Kendall Jenner, which appeared to appropriate a scene from the Black Lives Matter protest in Baton Rouge where nurse and activist, Ieshia Evans, was arrested by police (Victor, 2017). Widely condemned as tone-deaf, the public backlash to the advertisement highlights the growing expectations from consumers and the public at large that businesses should engage thoughtfully and meaningfully in social justice issues.

2. Historical examples of Pears’ Soap advertisements are striking examples of how cleanliness came to be marketed alongside whiteness (see their campaigns ‘Washing the Blackamoor White’ and the ‘White Man’s Burden’).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Helena Liu

Helena Liu is an associate professor at Bond Business School on the Gold Coast in Australia. Her research critiques the way power sustains our enduring romance with leadership and imagines the possibilities for organising through solidarity, justice, and love. She serves as Associate Editor at Human Relations and Management Learning. In addition to those journals, her work has also appeared in Organization, Journal of Business Ethics, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Culture and Organization, and Leadership. Her first book, Redeeming Leadership: An Anti-Racist Feminist Intervention, was published with Bristol University Press in January 2020.