NO STUDY WITHOUT STRUGGLE

An examination of the unsavory limitations that settler colonialism has imposed upon higher education.

Patel, the former associate dean for equity and justice in education at the University of Pittsburgh, sees settler colonialism as a primary driver of violence and inequity in late-stage capitalism. The author ties together diverse strands including contemporary protest, structural racism, and power structures favoring Whiteness. “Settler colonialism is based on the logic of owning land,” she writes, “and that there is never enough land to satisfy the landowners’ thirst.” Both by design and due to institutional half-measures, American educational systems have largely failed to redress this malign history: “Whenever education, specifically higher education, has been made to reckon with its settler colonial structure, it has been largely through the struggles of those cast underneath the heel of oppression, fueled by their own formations to study.” Regarding efforts at diversity, which she discusses in detail, she notes, “gift economies are a colonial structure that imagines some people as worthy only through the benevolence of people with higher status.” Despite such public-facing efforts, prominent universities have not properly addressed persistent patterns of class- and race-based favoritism, to which Patel responds with justified, terse fury, reminding readers how many of these institutions were built by slaves. At the same time, the author celebrates a counternarrative of persistent patterns of protests and alternative learning modes by Indigenous people, people of color, and LGBTQ+ communities. “Learning has…never yielded fully to this settler project of colonization of the mind,” writes Patel. Throughout, the author builds a multilayered discussion by referencing other scholars and her experiences as a teacher and mentor, portraying contemporary academia as a minefield for her bright, diverse students, many of whom carry the extra burden of being a “model minority.” Overall, it’s a passionate and intermittently approachable work occasionally hampered by academic jargon.

A lively, politically engaged jeremiad on issues of identity, multiculturalism, and efforts to redress enduring wrongs.