Teaching Ferguson: Can #BlackLivesMatter in the Neoliberal University?

Abstract

In the wake of protests following the nonindictments of police for the killing of unarmed African Americans in Ferguson and elsewhere, schools across North America created courses discussing historical and contemporary events leading up to these deaths and the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The authors created and taught such a course during the winter of 2015; this article reflects on our experience and places it within the context of neoliberal higher education in the United States to further examine the opportunities presented and the obstacles encountered for thinking through questions of race, class, and inequality in these timely—some might say reactionary—course offerings. Neither panacea nor abject failure, we understand these courses as embedded in ongoing struggles taking place within the university, just one of the many institutions in which antiracism efforts are continually occurring—with varying degrees of success.

Key Words:

• #BlackLivesMatter
• Ferguson
• Higher Education
• Radical Pedagogy
• Student Activism

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank our colleagues in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences for working to support the class this article discusses. We also wish to thank the students who were enrolled in the class: we appreciate your leadership on campus and we admire the sensitivity and dedication with which you approached our discussions, as well as your own activist projects. We would also like to thank our colleagues who participated in creating the content for this course: Dan Berger, Scott Kurashige, Camille Walsh, Trevor Griffey, David Giles, Christian Anderson, and Janelle Silva.

Notes

1 As the attack in Charleston and even more recent incidents sadly confirm, there is never a shortage of current events to address.

2 See “Preparing to Teach ‘The New Jim Crow,’” Teaching Tolerance: A Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed 22 July 2014, http://www.tolerance.org/supplement/preparing-teach-new-jim-crow.