We too have been seduced by the false assumption that the goal of academic freedom is best served by postures of political neutrality, by teaching methods that belie the reality that our very choice of subject matter, manner, and style of presentation embodies ideological and political signifiers. Assuming this posture, there are black professors at Yale and other universities who feel it essential that they do not call attention to race and/or racism, who feel that they should behave always in a manner that deemphasizes race. This is extremely tragic. Such behavior in no way serves the interest of academic freedom. Instead it participates in the construction of a social reality wherein conformity to a racist, white male norm of representation prevails, where difference and diversity are assaulted, denied place and value. Academic freedom is most fully and truly realized when there is diversity of intellectual representation and perspective. Racism has always threatened the realization of this ideal. Rather than become accomplices in the perpetuation of racial domination, black scholars who value academic freedom must continually work to establish spheres of learning in institutions where intellectual practice is not informed by white supremacy. If such a place cannot or does not exist, we betray the radical traditions that enabled us to enter these institutions and act in a manner that will uphold and support our exclusion in the future. It is our collective responsibility both to ourselves as black people and to the academic communities in which we participate and to which we belong, to assume a primary role in establishing and maintaining academic and social spaces wherein the principles of education as the practice of freedom are promoted.
—bell hooks, “on being black at yale: education as the practice of freedom”; Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black; (1989); (p. 64-65). (via agradschoolbreakup)
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