Chelsea Gilbert:
We’ve got folks who work in community college administration who work in fraternity sorority life are leadership educators, because you’re right. If we truly want to enact this belief, as Lilla Watson says that our liberation is connected is bound up together. That means we have to see it as our responsibility, no matter what our job title is.

Keith Edwards:
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW. I’m your host, Keith Edwards. Today, we’re talking about the new book, Critical Praxis in Student Affairs. We’re joined by two editors and two of the contributing authors, the contributors to the book, explore how we can more fully realize our commitments to social justice by applying critical theory toward liberation, the authors don’t just argue for justice and liberation. They explore the brilliant, messy, courageous, and complicated and beautiful ways they have worked at. Critical self-reflection is the center here, but so is applying that self-reflection to create new systems, structures, and practices that can create more liberation for us all. I can’t wait to explore this more with all of you. Student Affairs NOW is a premier podcast and online learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays.

Keith Edwards:
Find details about this episode or browser archives at studentaffairsnow.com. This episode is brought to you by Stylus that also published this book, visit styluspub.com and use the promo code SANow for 30% off and free shipping on this book, which will come out in a couple of days. Today’s episode is also sponsored by EverFi, the trusted partner for 1,500 colleges and universities. EverFi is a standard of care for students, safety and wellbeing with the results to prove it. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns. Are he, him, his I’m a speaker consultant and coach. And you can find out more about me, keithedwards.com. I’m broadcasting from Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of the Dakota and the Ojibue peoples. Let’s get to the conversations. Let’s hear from each of you a little bit about yourself and about your contributions to the book. Susan, let’s start with you.

Susan B. Marine:
Sure. Thanks so much, Keith. Hi everyone. I’m Susan Marine. My pronouns are she and her and I am a professor of higher education and vice-provost of graduate education at Merrimack College, which is located on the ancestral homelands of the Pennycook and Abenaki people. I’m delighted to share co-editor ship of this wonderful collection with my colleague and friend Chelsea Gilbert, and Chelsea, I’m going to turn it over to you.

Chelsea Gilbert:
Thanks, Susan. Hi, y’all I’m Chelsea Gilbert. I use she her pronouns. I am currently a full-time doctoral student at the Ohio State University, which is located on the indigenous ancestral land of the Shawnee Miami nations. And at the time that Susan and I conceived of this project, I was when I affectionately call a student affairs pracademic scholar practitioner working full time, directing a campus LGBTQ plus center, while also engaging in various types of scholarships. So really happy to be here.

Sunny Nakae:
Hi everyone. I’m Sunny Nakae. I am the senior associate Dean for equity inclusion, diversity and partnership at the California University of science and medicine and Colton, California, which is located on the Coahuila Kish. And Tongo peoples indigenous lands. My pronouns are she her. I have been in medical education working in student affairs and admissions and now my current role in equity inclusion and diversity and partnership for more than 20 years and just love working with students and sharing their journeys. And my I sort of life’s purpose and overall goal is to increase access and equity in medical education, healthcare. So that’s what I, that’s what I do.

Keith Edwards:
Wonderful, glad to have you here.

Mari Knuth-Bouracee:
Good morning. Mari Knuth-Bouracee, I use the pronouns, she and her I’m currently the director of the path to care center, which is UC Berkeley’s campus based prevention and survivor support program. And I’m speaking to you from Berkeley, California, which sits on the territory and the ancestral and unseated land of the Aloni people. And Chelsea, I really enjoyed your introduction. I’m a third year doctoral student in social psychology. So I’m still doing that. Practitioner, scholar balanced a little tricky.

Keith Edwards:
Awesome. Well, I am so glad to have all of you here. I love getting a chance to read through the book. I love what was included and how it was written, and I’m so glad to have the editors and two of the contributing authors and Chelsea and Susan both also contributed quite a bit. Susan and Chelsea, let’s begin with you. How did you conceive of this project? How did you frame it? Maybe you could give us an overview and then I’d love to hear what you learned through this process. I think when you start a project like this, and then you read all, everything, people are adding, what did you learn through the process? Maybe Susan, you can kick us off.

Susan B. Marine:
Sure happy to, oh my gosh, we learned so much. Well, first I want to talk a little bit about how this idea came to be or came into fruition. Over the course of many years I have observed, enjoyed and been inspired by watching my practitioner colleagues from all walks of higher education and student affairs life. Think about and incorporate critical praxis, critical theory into their work as practitioners. And I’ve observed this in a number of different settings, institutional settings positions in a number of kind of collaboratives that I’ve been part of over the years. And I’ve always been both interested in energized by the way that some, some practitioners that I’ve had the privilege to observe, have thought about transformational change, not just kind, going to work and doing their jobs every day, but doing them in a way that advances equity, access and inclusion in the institutions that we inhabit.

Susan B. Marine:
And so thinking about that over the years and watching Chelsea do that in her role as a practitioner, I used the word practitioner I kind of thought, oh gosh, you know, this could be a really cool project. What if we sat down and persuaded wonderful critical practitioners to put some of these ideas and thoughts down on paper and share with others, how they’re doing this work. I knew that this work was abundant everywhere cause I had seen it. I had seen Chelsea do it. I’d seen many other colleagues and people I admire do it. And I thought we really need to start documenting the way that we think about and incorporate critical theory into this work. And so I approached Chelsea and said, Hey, I, you know, I really admire what you do. I’d like to put together an edited volume where we talk about this and share this with the world.

Susan B. Marine:
I think there’s lots of people out there doing critical theory praxis. And what do you say about, you know, pitching this? And we did she thankfully agreed to work with me on this project. We put the proposal together stylists embraced it. And then we set about the adventure of identifying the amazing scholar, practitioners, academics, practitioners, whatever word you want to use. That wrote the chapters in our book along, you know, including Sunny and Mari and their colleagues. And we were fortunate that when we put out the call, we got a lot of response from really amazing people doing all kinds of work around the country. And even in other settings to sort of help us understand what is critical praxis, what does it look like? What does it sound like and how do we do it? Well Chelsea, what else were we thinking about as we built this from the ground up?

Chelsea Gilbert:
Yeah. That’s so well said. Thank you. I think over, it’s been almost 10 years that I’ve known you Susan over those 10 years. Yes. We’ve had lots of conversations about Praxis, but also about the need for more practice, focus, resources for practitioners. Right. I think that throughout the years we’ve noticed and others have noticed that those resources for how do we bring theories that for some people can feel really inaccessible or too down to the ground level and show, how did those things actually look in practice? And so that was a big goal of this project is to create a resource that’s rooted firmly in critical theory, but also elevates all the incredible practice that Susan you mentioned, we knew it was already happening throughout the field. And I know as a former practitioner academic myself, I experienced for sandbox art. It can be sometimes to publish about the work that we’re doing to get the work out there, kind of beyond just conferences. Sometimes there aren’t structure set in place that allow us to do that. Sometimes we’re not encouraged to do it as practitioners, our knowledge isn’t seen as valuable. And so we really made some intentional choices in this text to center practitioners. And to really let these examples serve not necessarily as exemplars, like everyone should recreate what the folks in this text have done, but as inspiration as a catalyst, right, to show that this work is possible, that we can create this kind of transformational change within our institution.

Keith Edwards:
Well, those are your intentions. I think you’ve done a wonderful job because what you, what I hear you wanted was what I took away. I think sometimes I hear so many faculty writing about using critical theory because they’re incentivized and that’s how they get rewarded and that’s part of the deal, right? And so often I agree, and then what they’re calling us practitioners to do just feels completely unrealistic and idealistic. It was great about, this was so many examples, but not, this is what you should do. Like this is the path, this is the process. This is how messy it was. This is how we navigated. And I did feel inspired sort of use the word catalyst to move forward. I mean, I think it was we’re using the term praxis, right? That calls to me theory, and you foreground for area a lot, but this is also framed a great deal in queerness and gender queerness. And I, I think that was intentional on your part. Do you, do you want to say a little bit more about that and maybe other things that maybe you want to add to what kind of frame this?

Chelsea Gilbert:
Yeah, I’ll just say really quick that Sarah Ahmed Barry can do more, the closer it gets to the skin. And that’s something that I think about a lot in my own work is how do we bring theory into our embodied lived experiences? And so that was something that we actually asked every single chapter author to do, including Sunny & Mari you all reflected on your own processes of conscientious action of coming to understand the ways that critical theory enacted itself upon your lives and the ways that you enacted yourselves on critical theory. And I think that that’s a really important piece of this text that’s woven throughout is how do we make theory really personal, but I’ll you continue to add

Keith Edwards:
Susan, did you want to add to that some of the framing or.

Susan B. Marine:
The only thing I would add is that I think I’m just picking up on what Chelsea shared that I think that conscientisation piece was really different for every one of our chapter authors and, and we saw some really beautiful and lovely kind of common strands of people experiencing a clearer path to liberation for themselves by becoming familiar with critical theories. I think that transcended any one category of identity, so it’s not, it wasn’t just, or only about gender, sexuality, queerness. It was certainly also about people’s journeys with understanding themselves in terms of their race, their ethnicity, their ability level or abilities in the world, their knowledges they’re both, you know, sort of transmitted and shared knowledges with one another. So I think it was a really lovely way to understand, and I think in some ways broaden what we understand critical theories to be that it’s not just one set of ideas and it’s not just pertinent to one set of identity liberations, it’s really so much and so rich and, and I’m, I was so grateful with the depth and breadth with that our chapter authors shared with us around their own journeys that way, which was, it was just lovely that way.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. yeah. Lovely. Is a great word for it? Let’s hear about some of those. So one of the things I really appreciated was the authors moving beyond calling others to action, what others need to do, but really sharing their own journeys in openly and vulnerably and, and Susan used word viscerally. Right. I learned a lot from that and the examples were illustrative of critical practice, but also the messiness and humanity of the process. So honestly it really felt like it was offering me permission to not have it all figured out before I moved into this, but to move into it and be messy and do that. And also, yeah, a lot of the folks pointing to we were doing this for students or our supervisees or the people, what our job was and through the process, they got so much liberation from it as well. Sunny & Mari, could you share with us briefly some of the keys from the journeys that you shared in the chapter we’ll start with Sunny first.

Sunny Nakae:
Yeah, thanks. I was just reflecting on the writing of the chapter and some of the editing sessions that my three authors and I have had, and it really we were at the, our edges a lot of times and trying to figure it out and trying to explain what it is we do and why we do it and how we know that that’s the way forward. And so when I even sat down to write the book, but the chapter part, I said, I, there’s no way that I can even write this by myself because I’m speaking for a community that I’m not part of in the way that some of the students that I’ve shared their journeys are. And so that just was very real to me that there, there’s no way that I can write this because it would feel, it would feel colonial, like to write about their experience without including them.

Sunny Nakae:
And so, as we had our discussions and really tried to move that forward, a lot of the things around failures and a lot of the ambiguities you know, came up and, you know, it was, it was, it was awesome. And even after our conversations were like, wow, you know, and, and Dr. Rojas Marquez actually won a really great award, the vac gold humanism award for, you know, equity and healthcare and mentioned our book like on this, you know, big national broadcast. And it, our chapter really is a great, like I would love for everyone who wants to work with undocumented students in medical education to read our chapter and to read this book because it will increase like just that knowledge and awareness of how to go about this work. Like it’s not doing for, it’s doing with, and it’s not centering yourself. It’s really creating new space at the center, you know, for groups that have been historically excluded and minoritized

Keith Edwards:
Well, and I think that chapter is such a great example of not as medical education, but undocumented students and, and the way you thought through it, but it’s also broadly applicable to so many things as those themes that you just mentioned. Mari, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what, what you wrote about?

Mari Knuth-Bouracee:
So it’s I always enjoy hearing about the other authors process. My co-author, Kira Lee and I, one of the first things we did was sort of we’ve been working together for five years at that point. So we thought we knew each other pretty well, but we really took the time to like hear each other and learn from each other and talk with each other about what critical theory and critical practice meant to us, how we understood it, how we came into being practitioners that were grounded in those theories. And really the first thing that stood out to us as neither of us came to this work be academics. It was totally our community organizing. It was our for me as an undergrad, I was part of a women of color group. And we weren’t talking about the authors or necessarily at that point, but we were talking about way to be, we used to be with one another, what we wanted to see for the campus, what we wanted to be doing.

Mari Knuth-Bouracee:
And so Kira shared a very similar experience in terms of through mentorship, through a community organizing community engagement. That’s where they really came into fruition. And so, you know, we had a, quite a little bit of thinking of like, can we really write about this? And so it was really wonderful to have Susan and Chelsea’s support as well as a number of the other authors to really lift up the work that practitioners have been doing. So that’s a little bit about my, my journey and how I thought about this writing process.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. Thank you both for sharing all that.

Sunny Nakae:
I just want to say one more thing. So I think what’s beautiful about it is, you know, I also wrote a book on pre-med preparation and really centered the stories of undocumented students. And first gen students, you know, I have a gen student myself and the way that I was describing it to the students is all of the things that are like, this is your book. Like literally all the things that I’ve learned in this book are from you. So I am giving your stories back to you, right? Like, and, and we talked about that as authors of all these things that we’ve learned from our students, like the power of story and just being in it and their willingness to be vulnerable. Like all of those things were just re-inscribing in the academy, those undercurrents that are there that really make the academy great.

Sunny Nakae:
And so it was, it was a huge challenge to try to put that into words. And we were, you know, having these great discussions Angela Chen and Yadi Ortiz who directed the pre-health dreamers and then Denise who founded it. So we have like the sequence of people who had led this amazing organization. And then I sort of have been orbiting the periphery, just stuck in medical education that whole time. And so just trying to put into words, like what, what is the thing that we do and how can we give it back, you know, to our communities so that it becomes part of like Chelsea was saying like part of the academy, right? Like we, we, in our courses, we, we, I didn’t see myself in my coursework, right. The student affairs books that we had to read on the evaluation or assessment. And there was like one chapter on like queerness right at the end. And it was like the last section of the course. And maybe you got to it and maybe you didn’t. And, and so the centering of this book, I think is also a really important recalibration for our profession.

Keith Edwards:
I guess the two takeaways from these examples that you’re sharing is how personal not just the writing of the chapters, but how personal this kind of praxis is. We’re talking about being on our edges, right. Where we’re uncomfortable, and maybe we might feel exposed for what we don’t know, or maybe exposed for the things we’ve been taught along the way that we want, which we didn’t know. The width is also so personal. It can’t be this separate it’s it’s with. And then Mari talking about the beam, right. Not just what we do, but our very nature of being and navigating all of that is so personal. And then the other thing that’s kind of coming through for me, and I’d love to hear from some of you about both of these is the personal, and then also the abundance right there, there are so many practitioners doing this.

Keith Edwards:
There are so many theories, there are so many issues. We did this thing with medical education and undocumented students, but the application is so broad. It can go to so many different places. And it was so rich in the conversations. Getting away from this social justice work is deficit work, but really the abundance deliberation, we need to have that anti-oppression analysis and understanding, but now, where do we go with that? What are you going to build? What are you create? I really get that there would any of you like to take any of that and add to it?

Mari Knuth-Bouracee:
I mean, Keith, I think for me, what you’re saying, sort of underpins a key part of our perspective around addressing sexual violence in relationship violence for Kira Lee and me, one of the main concerns we’ve had is, and this happens all across higher ed, right. But how siloed this work can be. And oftentimes the tension, the conflicts, the dynamics with other equity focus programs. And so for us, when we started talking about sexual and relationship violence, as a symptom of oppression, maybe one of the more agregious symptoms but that, you know, anything that we’re doing in the graduate division to address racism or power dynamics helps to promote antiviolence it really started to shift the perspective of what do collaborations look like what is sustained institutionalized efforts that are not just a one-off and, and hopefully it will keep driving us revisioning this work in a different, in a different light. So that is one part that was really important for us. And the other perspective around abundance is, you know, we talk a lot about collaboration in higher education and partnership, but to really think about the work that we do, that I like many of the authors I’m sure share this perspective that no one office can do it alone, right? So individual functional areas, maybe providing guidance, you know, bumpers on a lane or vision, but it’s really about the entire campus community shifting and transforming their sense of connections in addressing oppression, addressing anti-violence.

Chelsea Gilbert:
Yeah. What I hear you saying, Mari is sort of the abundance of opportunities that exist to do this work. We wanted to be really intentional as we chose chapters to not just choose they’re certainly represented, but to not just choose people whose titles say intentionally, that you’re responsible for diversity equity, inclusion or justice work, right? We’ve got folks who work in community college administration who work in fraternity sorority life are leadership educators, because you’re right. If we truly want to enact this belief, as Lilla Watson says that our liberation is connected is bound up together. That means we have to see it as our responsibility, no matter what our job title is. I love that. Thank you. All right.

Keith Edwards:
I was struck by two major themes across multiple chapters. The first theme was this moving beyond binary thinking, and there was a lot of, we need to get past privileged or oppressed, but think about the I think Kyle Ashley and Ariel Ashley talking about the two sides of that coin, right? That the both end of that, the good breaking free from good and bad binaries. And then also this notion of compassion and trust as key tools for social justice work. There were so many examples of that in the partnerships with the students, some of the width that we’ve talked about. And I just love reading that. And I think, you know, my, my own self-reflection is maybe I’m yearning for that because I see so little of that in the world around me, through social media, these outrage, field conversations, campus cultures, and society at large, it just seems like there’s so much either or binary and sort of lack of that caring and compassion and trust is tools. I just love to hear what you all connected with. Maybe there are other themes that you saw emerging. Chelsea, let’s start with you.

Chelsea Gilbert:
Yeah. I mean, Keith, earlier you brought up Freri and how we’ve really foregrounded Freri and this text specifically his concept of conscientious nation and some things that come from Freri, that I wanted to highlight related to those themes include his quote. The education is an act of love and that’s an act of courage. And I think that this is a truth that’s really woven throughout the stories of our chapter authors, this kind of oncologic, courageous love, whether it’s for students, for communities, even for ourselves. And I think that this connects to the concept that you mentioned of moving past binary thinking as well. Like if we really love justice and want to enact that love, we also have to acknowledge our own complicity and oppression. And our duty for transformation. We can’t just see ourselves as we’re the good advocates seeing and working against the people who are standing in the way who are barriers.

Chelsea Gilbert:
I do want to elevate Freri’s words though, that he wrote a little bit later in his career where he says the educator has the duty of not being neutral. I think that’s really crucial too, because I think some of the conversation that happens in the field around moving past binaries converge on being a little bit relativistic for me, at least. And I don’t it make it kind of seem like, oh, it doesn’t matter what we do because there’s no fine areas. And I don’t think that’s what Freri’s saying. And that’s not what our chapter authors are saying either. They’re really offering this kind of bold call to go beyond neutrality and to really leverage their positions with practitioners, to advance justice for minoritized groups. And that’s courageous work, it’s messy work, it’s human work. And I think it connects to both of those themes that you pointed out. So thank you.

Keith Edwards:
Thank you for that. I love you troubling that notion. So appreciate that, Mari, what are you connecting with here?

Mari Knuth-Bouracee:
Yeah, well, I think in, in the piece that stands out to me most around disrupting the binaries, at least in relationship and sexual violence, there’s survivors and then perpetrators. And we think that those are oftentimes focus. Those are very distinct groups and, you know, I’ve been really fortunate in my anti-violence work being raised by intersectional feminist and radical feminist pillar who have for a long time been talking about transformative justice and restorative justice. And I think those forms of organizing have really helped us complicate that, you know, survivors have also caused harm before people who’ve caused harm have may also be survivors. And so that’s something that we think a lot about and in transformative justice, that part of our, our hope if more organizations, more institutions really adopt some of those models of community accountability is that we’re not just looking at the individuals that might’ve been involved or the people who might’ve caused harm, but what was the environment that allowed that harm to flourish that, that permitted that harm to occur and how do we transform the community that was around those folks and the environment so that we can really change for the future.

Mari Knuth-Bouracee:
And so those are two of the concepts that stood out to me the most.

Keith Edwards:
How do we do the healing and repair, not just at the individual level, but at the community level, as well as sort of a mirror in that Sunny, what are you connecting with here?

Sunny Nakae:
I think in our chapter, we grappled a lot with ways that we participate in the system, right? And that, that tension between changing the spaces by being in it, but also not being above the influence of that space, right? This very patriarchal white supremacist, higher ed space that is really challenging sometimes to navigate. And we often focus so much on the outcomes, right? And on being right, that we forget about the process and doing right by our students and our partners also means that we’ve engaged in a process that does require us to be vulnerable and transparent about what we can and can’t do. Right. And that feels gross when you’re like a fix it person and you really want to be in there and be an advocate. Acknowledging those limitations is so important for that trust and that sacred space.

Sunny Nakae:
And so part of the conscientious position of the journey in higher ed is like, this is kind of a mess, right? Like, do I want to be in this house and create change from inside this house? Or do I want to burn it all down? And I’m still not sure, honestly, some days I’m like let’s burn it all down, but as I was struggling to write, I have a little story of vignette in my book about disability and a student who engaged as a pre-med student in a, in a runner’s club for blind runners. And then all of a sudden, as I was doing my edits, I thought, am I using the most disrespectful language? Like, am I using disrespectful language here? Like how does this community refer to themselves? And so I called a close colleague who works at the manages the disabilities that University of Michigan, and we had this discussion and he was like, you know, your, your wanting to be, there’s no way to be right about this. There’s only a way to do right about this. And so if ever you’re in a discussion about your book and someone brings this up and they challenge your language, you now can come to the table openly and say, I struggled with this. Let me be honest. I had some conversations with friends. I did research. Here’s why I chose the language I did, but it might be wrong. And I have to be okay with that as a way of honoring those communities. And my proximity to those communities was obviously in a place that that’s demonstrated in my writing. And I can’t fake that. Right. Like that authenticity just has to come through. And I said, I can live with that. I can live with the process part, being what I lean on and continue to lean on if I’m challenged in that way. Right. But sometimes we’re so focused because the academy teaches us the cannon. And so it’s written and it shall be done. And so we there’s way too much focus on being right. Rather than the process and sort of doing right by the folks that we’re trying to represent or speak to.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. I think it was really important. And I think the higher ed does fetishize knowing an expert and having all the answers. Right. And you’re pointing to how, what an obstacle that is, and Brene Brown would talk about the difference between being right and getting it right. How do we put a focus on getting it right? And Tim Oakland would talk about perfectionism as a key part of white supremacist culture. And how do we unlearn that? And it’s your example is such a beautiful example about being willing to let go of that perfectionism. And there takes a lot of self-work. I would assume to get to a place where you can be up in front of a room and present about this and know it might not be landing well, and there might be pushback. And, and to be okay with that, right. There’s some other things going on there that helps us be in that place.

Sunny Nakae:
Yeah. And our choices include this group and maybe get it wrong because this is new space. These are historically excluded in minorities and marginalized groups, or do what the academy has always done, which is don’t include them because we can’t control that language control that terminology. And that’s, we’re not centered in that story. Right. So expanding those edges of stories that were not centered in can be really uncomfortable. And I think, you know, Dr. Chen talks about it in her section participating in a system that she knows is directly oppressing people in her family, right? Like that tension is, is hard, but we’ve run up against that so much. And even what we’re asked to teach in our coursework in higher ed, how we’re asked to approach it, even our disciplinary systems in, in higher education feel a lot like, you know, punitive systems that are really disenfranchising and exclusionary in society.

Keith Edwards:
So there’s that I want to get you in here, go ahead Mari real quick. And then we’ll get Susan in here to kind of clean all of this up and offer some brilliance and insights. So no pressure, go ahead, Mari, what were you going to add?

Mari Knuth-Bouracee:
Sunny what you’re sharing really resonates with me. And in fact, one of the there’s two, two things that jumped out to me. One is we talk a little bit about reflexive and collective action. And in our process of authorizing this chapter, part of what we called the readers to do is help us figure out what we got wrong. We hope that our analysis is incomplete and that people will keep iterating and evolving. And so I just, I really love the way that you introduced that. And also the discomfort of that which Keith, I think it relates to the messy process that you were referencing.

Keith Edwards:
We’re really centering messiness. And then what did I just ask Susan? I had just asked Susan to clean it up, so see how ingrained the stuff I want it all cleaned up. So don’t clean it up, make it mess here, Susan, take this where you want to go.

Susan B. Marine:
Well, I, you know, and I think, you know, it’s human nature, I think in some ways to want hooks and things to kind of center our work around. But I think the beauty that, you know, both Sunny and Mari spoke to in their chapters is this real kind of learners positionality, this, this kind of openness iterativeness thing, humble to the process and being willing to be continually learning and growing. I think every chapter in our book shows the coauthors or authors, depending on the chapter show, how they remain open and flexible and reflexive. And honestly, you know, I, there’s not too many things that I think we would say, you know, we’re kind of putting our stake on this thing, but I think maybe one thing we’d all agree on is that reflection and reflexivity is critical is absolutely essential to the kind of work that this book talks about.

Susan B. Marine:
That it’s more than just doing the work and then moving on with satisfaction. It’s really taking the time to, to think about it, to ponder it, to engage with others about the impact of it to continually make modification where things could be better, could be more effective. And just being constantly willing to do that. It’s sort of resisting what I would call a best practice narrative in favor of kind of Xenith Palazzo, and Rachel Wagner have written about intentional practice, right? Really thinking hard, not just about what we’re doing and what it’s going to lead to, but why we’re doing it and believing that as we continue to practice critically, the, the needs of our communities will reveal themselves if we stay open and up to them. If we decide that we have the answer and we have the best practice answer to something, the chances that that revelation is going to continually happen, I think is slim to none. But if we continue to stay open and receptive and absorbing new information all the time we can continue to do our work better and more transformatively. And that’s really what it all comes back to, I think, at the end

Keith Edwards:
Well, and this is a great reminder that that praxis, this reflection and practice is not a two-step process. It’s an ongoing cycle. Think about it, do it, then think about what you just did and how did you do it and then do it again. And I think sometimes we get caught in, I did it and I thought about it. I’m good. That’s stressful enough, but how are you going to go back and try again to get it better? And then keep thinking, and this cyclical process

Chelsea Gilbert:
Just briefly, that’s the kind of scholarship we hope to see, right? We get these internalized messages and the academy that you have to have it all figured out. If you’re going to write something up and I say scholarship broadly, right? Peer reviewed journals, book chapters, but also blogs and public forms of scholarship. And that’s what we hope to see. So for folks who are listening or watching, we hope that you’ll find the inspiration and the courage to write up about that initiative that you’re implementing. That’s still in practice, that you still have some questions about that. You’re not sure if it’s exactly where you want it to be. This is the way we think that we’re going to learn and pursue justice as a field. If we can be in these messy conversations together

Keith Edwards:
Well, and not just higher ed, I’ll just add, it’s not just higher ed. That’s how white supremacy culture teaches us. That’s where patriarchal teaches. I’m certainly have gotten a lot of those messages as a man. We just had a conversation about design thinking. And one of the things they were really pushing toward is this learning mindset and being open to that and breaking through from that, go ahead.

Sunny Nakae:
I was going to say that discomfort that you’re talking about Chelsea is so critical and we are taught and programmed to run away from it. Right? And so I had some really difficult professional experiences over the last couple of years and had a, sort of a reflection going and decided, you know, I’m going to publish this reflection because it makes me really uncomfortable and it’s going to make other people uncomfortable. And it’s called Dear Black Woman Boss. And it’s my confrontation of my own racism in coming to a new level of consciousness of understanding how I have participated in perpetuated racism in a working relationship, by not understanding the identity intersections or not understanding maybe what was on her plate. And in publishing it, I realized, okay, I could completely incriminate myself, but I’m also giving people spaces to say, yes, racism is a system that we all participate in and rooting this out of myself.

Sunny Nakae:
I’m giving everyone permission to do the same. And I was not prepared for the voicemails I got from my black women colleagues with them in tears saying, thank you for publishing this and for saying this. And for recognizing that none of us can publish things like this and say things like this, because people just don’t believe us. And then it was a whole other level of, but that, that continuous practice of, you know, where we’re uncomfortable is, is sacred space, right? And we often are taught runaway from that, because again, the academy is about knowing, right? It’s not about being, and it’s not about discovering those edges.

Keith Edwards:
Thank you. Well this has been amazing and as always we’re running out of time so we want to get a couple of final thoughts from each of you. This podcast is called Student Affairs NOW, and we want to conclude with asking, what are you thinking troubling or pondering? Now it might be something you’re thinking about just broadly now, or it might be something as a result of this conversation. Now I’m really here. And if any of you want to share where folks who want to connect with you, whether that’s Twitter or email or LinkedIn, if you want to share any of that Susan, let’s start with you. What are you troubling now?

Susan B. Marine:
Sure. Thanks, Keith. So I’m in the middle of building a course in January with a colleague of mine from Harvard, we’re going to be teaching a two week, January term course on transformational leadership in higher education. And as we’ve been building the course, it’s brought me back to the themes of this book in a slightly different way. And that is to say, I’ve been, I’ve been pondering how what we do with the fact that people will act transformatively sometimes, and they will not always be rewarded with for it. In fact, sometimes punishment is harsh and swift and unkind, and it tends to be disproportionately distributed. So that practitioners of color, particularly black practitioners will face and experience harsher and more punitive reaction to being transformative. Queer folks tend to experience it disproportionately you know, across the board, we see disproportionate costs and I’ve been thinking a lot about how do we build cultures, where we sustain and nurture and help each other.

Susan B. Marine:
And where those of us with more privileged take on the burden of responding when people are, are are mistreated as a result of being transformative practitioners. And how do we take that on more? How do we be more courageous about that and how do we stand up and speak back to institutions, to leaders and to others when that happens? Because our kind of media stories are replete with individuals who’ve who have who have practiced transformatively and have paid a price. And that to me is an unresolved question. Our book does not address that. I think it’s the next book the next iteration of this work, and I really hope other folks are willing and able to both hold us to account, but also help us come up with some solution spaces around that because it’s, it’s real, it’s pernicious. And we have to create cultures of support and true allyship around around that. So that’s, what’s been on my mind.

Keith Edwards:
Wonderful. Powerful, thank you. Sunny. What are you troubling now?

Sunny Nakae:
So at CSU, we are building a course called change and community health advocacy and networking engagement, where it’s really trying to shift service learning from a colonial model into community as classroom, where we make genuine contributions. It can never be the same class twice because it’s designed to be reflexively responsible and you know, responsive to our community partners needs and wanting our students to be able to bring and use more of their full selves in the education process. And, it’s messy. So we are struggling with, so getting our MOU done, like we’ve taken much longer because our higher ed processes, our lawyers and all these people like. So, so I, my executive director and I were just talking last week, like we’ve done the thing that we do as higher ed, which is like, take way too long and, you know, drag our heels and these processes.

Sunny Nakae:
And, and it’s just, it is definitely that liminal space of we’re going to make this leap and we’re really going to do this. And our students are courageously going to go with us and also trying to anticipate what disconnects are there going to be, because we need to be ready to catch the fallout of this new kind of messy learning. It’s easier to be colonial and extractive, right. To just shove our students in and pull them out and keep doing the same thing over and over again. It’s a lot harder to knit them into the fabric of these organizations and to take more responsibility, you know, as a school. And so if things are about to get messy, but I think unforgettable for our students and they will be better physicians for having participated in this learning exercise, but also the partnership pieces of it. And hopefully our pedagogical humility in the whole thing of this is us not knowing, but starting somewhere with wanting to do differently.

Keith Edwards:
Well, and that’s where the learning happens, right? Knowing is the end of learning. As soon as, you know, you stop being curious. And so that, that places is wonderful. Mari what are, what are you troubling? Now?

Mari Knuth-Bouracee:
We are really looking at the ways that as an institution and as a campus, we respond to multiple forms of harm and really expanding that that approach in that perspective and thinking about students across all aspects of identity you know, I think the campuses and institutions have learned more about trauma, both in response to gendered violence, but also racism and other forms of oppression. And so we’re really trying to think about new wraparound collaborative ways of responding to students, staff, and faculty experiences in a more, in a more caring, compassionate way.

Keith Edwards:
Awesome. Chelsea, what are you troubling now?

Chelsea Gilbert:
Everything. I feel like that’s my, that’s my job right now as a doctoral student, I guess, trouble everything. But the thing that I’ll elevate, I agree with everything you all said that I’ve sort of brought up throughout this conversation is the importance of practitioner scholarship. So I came into my program really committed to studying staff experiences in higher education, which is not common, right. You’re studying students, we’re studying faculty. Sometimes we’re studying institutions, but we’re not always studying staff. And the experiences of staff. And I think that practitioners, academics, practitioner scholars are really well set up to do some of that work. And so there’s a special issue of college student affairs journal coming out next year. And I, and a colleague of mine, Scott Burden are writing about the importance of senior student affairs officers. So you really set the tone and remove barriers, structural barriers that exist to scholarship. And so that’s the thing that I care a lot about, and that I hope that this book, project and others really push us forward on the importance of practitioner scholarship and how we can not just tell practitioners do scholarship, but set them up for success in that process.

Keith Edwards:
Wonderful. Well, thank you all so much. This has been terrific. You’ve really brought sort of the ethos of that focus on compassion and love and that messiness and finding our own liberation through our own kind of self interrogation is really powerful and it was throughout the book. And so it was really great to see that coming out here today. Thanks for being here, congratulations on the new book, it comes out November 29th, 2021 from Stylus. So you can pre-order or order or get it if you don’t have it already. Thanks you all very much. And thanks our sponsors for today, Stylus & EverFi. Stylus is proud to sponsor Student Affairs NOW Podcast. Browse their student affairs, diversity and professional development titles at styluspub.com, including this one, you use the promo code SANow for 30%, all of their books, including this one plus free shipping, you can also find Stylus on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter @styluspub and EverFi for over 20 years, EverFi

Keith Edwards:
has been the trusted partner for 1,500 colleges and universities. With efficacy studies behind their courses, you will have confidence that you’re using the standards of care for students’ safety and wellbeing, with the results to prove it transform the future of your institution and the community you serve. Learn more ateverfi.com/studentaffairsnow. Huge shout out to Nat Ambrosey the production assistant for the podcast who does all the behind the scenes work to make all of us look and sound good. If you’re listening today and not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please visit our website studentaffairsnow.com scroll to the bottom of the homepage and add your email to our MailChimp list while you’re there check out the archives. I’m Keith Edwards, thanks again to our fabulous guest today. And everyone who’s watching and listening, make it a great week. Thanks all.

Book Details

https://reflectivemeded.substack.com/p/dear-black-woman-boss
https://reflectivemeded.org/?s=nakae