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Centering knowledge production: A matter of historical memory

2023; Wiley; Volume: 54; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/aeq.12473

1548-1492

Bradley A. Levinson,

Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis

By now, my 2016 Council on Anthropology of Education (CAE) presidential address in Minneapolis has become part of our historical memory. Apparently, it has also become infamous. In the pages of this journal, it was called the "big elephant in the room" by Marta Baltodano in the publication of her 2017 presidential address (Baltodano, 2019, 384). Curiously, it has also been characterized pejoratively as a defense of "objective, descriptive research" (Baltodano, 2019, 384), or of research to produce "knowledge for knowledge's sake" (Sánchez, 2019, 402). With this publication, readers can now decide for themselves if such characterizations are fair. After all, only a relatively small portion of CAE members attended the address, and fewer still were there from start to end. Soon after learning what a negative reaction the talk had produced, I resolved to reconstruct the oral version of the talk as faithfully as possible. I then composed a meta-reflection, interspersed with the rawness of the original talk, which I offer to you here. Indeed, I take up Patricia Sánchez's assertion that it is "important for CAE's ethnographic soul to have at least some documentation on what was said that year and how others interpreted the speech" (Sánchez, 2019, 402). Granted, my 2016 message was delivered in an untimely and unskillful manner. There was much to cause confusion or offense; my questioning of the CAE mission statement came to overshadow my broader argument, and the moment was especially poor for that. Perhaps I should have just left well enough alone and continued to lick my wounds in silence. But a stubborn inner voice—not to mention numerous CAE colleagues—kept telling me that there was more value in airing this out than relegating it to the rumor mill of oral history. Even now, perhaps especially now amidst our post-2020 racial reckoning, we need to honor the diversity of our modes of knowledge production in the Council. At stake is both the urgency of change and the longer historical memory of our organization. I hope that you will agree. Since some have wondered why the address was never published in the accustomed fashion, it remains only to give the details of how this current publication came to be. On January 27, 2017, I submitted an earlier version of the following text to then-Editors-in-Chief of Anthropology of Education Quarterly (AEQ), Sally Campbell Galman and Laura Valdiviezo. After their initial encouragement, I continued to revise the piece—with input from at least six CAE colleagues—and submitted a revised version (published here without substantial change) on July 6, 2017. Nearly a year later, on April 2, 2018, I received a rejection letter from the editors. They had been unable to secure a willingness from any CAE colleague to write a response. More importantly, they had asked numerous members of the Editorial Board to consider the piece for publication, and there was apparent unanimity against it, on the grounds that it neither "advances research and knowledge in the field," nor "constitutes a presidential address" worthy of publication in AEQ (Campbell Galman and Valdiviezo, 2018). Firm and well-reasoned rebuttals were supplied by former AEQ Editor-in-Chief/CAE President Katie Anderson-Levitt and former CAE President Bryan Brayboy, and I very much appreciated their forthright honesty and collegiality. I was given the opportunity to resubmit the piece as a wholesale revision within six weeks, by May 20, 2018. I was neither able nor inclined to do so. After letting it sit for more than three years, in the summer of 2021 I approached a member of the new CAE leadership team about whether they thought the time might be right for a reconsideration. As I explained in that initial message, I was fully prepared to publish the piece on my own website and send out a message with a link to the CAE community, for those who might care to read it. To my surprise, they gave their blessing for its reconsideration by the new editors of AEQ, who then fast-tracked the piece for publication. Knowing that this publication may stir more polemic, I thank them for their commitment and courage. Here it is, warts and all, for posterity. Mindful that association with me can still have negative consequences in CAE, and heeding the recommendations of the 2018 AEQ reviewers, I have removed the names of all those who gave me important feedback and suggestions back then. They are deserving of acknowledgement, but they know who they are. Some tried to save me from further displaying my putatively colossal ignorance and insensitivity. Roughly as many of them urged me to drop this fool's errand and spare myself further embarrassment as encouraged me to continue seeking publication. To the former, I plead your indulgence. To the latter, here it is at last. Scarcely 10 days after the national elections, on the evening of Friday, November 18, 2016, I delivered an address titled "The Talk We Walk: Knowledge, Identity, and Action in the Field of Educational Anthropology." The address questioned the current wording of the CAE mission statement as a launching point for reflecting on our identities and actions as educational anthropologists. Scheduled as part of CAE's business meeting and new member reception, the talk was well received by some, perhaps even most, present. But I soon learned that a significant number of those present were distressed, hurt, or deeply offended by the address. Of course, this was very unsettling to me. I had hoped to provoke reflection, even healthy debate, but I was not prepared for the disturbance that my talk produced. Had I offended even one person, that would have been upsetting enough; the fact that I offended a significant number of those attending, and drove a wedge between segments of the CAE membership, drove me to tears. Some of these people were my friends, my dear colleagues, my long-time comrades in work and struggle. How could I have let them down so badly? How could I have sown such division when my aim, ironically, was to promote greater inclusiveness? Since that evening, I have endeavored to find out more about just what exactly some people found so distressing or offensive. This has been a painful process, as very few have been willing to share their perspectives with me directly. Instead, I have had to learn much through second-hand commentary. I have also read and re-read my written text, and I have cringed at times in recognition of how some of my points could have been construed. Consonant with CAE tradition, I had planned to refine and expand the oral text into a full-length article, providing more examples and making more complete and nuanced arguments for publication in AEQ. Some have urged me to overhaul the talk in this fashion and retool it more clearly around its central argument for a diversity of modes of knowledge production, dissemination, and action for social justice. However, to overhaul the talk completely feels almost like a cowardly act of whitewashing (yes, the pun is intended). As a result of the strongly polarized reactions to the spoken address, and even with the risk of re-opening old wounds, I have decided to do something a bit different: embrace my vulnerability and create a multi-layered, reflexive text. Leaving intact the text of my address from which I spoke, and trying to reconstruct the address as faithfully as possible,1 I provide a species of meta-commentary to frame the talk, reflect on some of its problematic formulations, and clarify or expand some points. I believe this strategy serves an important purpose of transparency and accountability to the organization: all those unable to be present can judge for themselves, and all those who were present can now have a fuller record and reflect on what produced such strong and varied responses.2 My hope is that such transparency will foster learning and have a healing effect. Some of this learning is personal, of course, and I trust that readers will not find this reflection too self-indulgent. If this reflection seems too focused on me, well, there's really no way around it: my professional reputation has been damaged, and I am called to both recognize and defend myself. But much of the learning, hopefully, is organizational. The fallout itself can be instructive about the assumptions we make about each others' scholarship and politics, and about what CAE's central mission should be. Ongoing dialogue should be our guiding principle. Though I referred to this briefly at the outset of the address itself, I want to start here by providing a fuller context for the scheduling of the address and the decision to move forward with it at a time of such obvious soul-searching and emotional trauma following the election. In part I do this to acquit the CAE Executive Committee (EC) and Mission Committee co-chairs from any blame for the divisive reaction my talk produced. In one way or another, I had been thinking about delivering such an address for several years. I worked on it sporadically from time to time, typing up notes and ideas. In June 2016, when the EC was deliberating over the proper scheduling of CAE's many special events, they knew that my address would make a case for altering the mission statement and could be potentially controversial. The decision was made to schedule the Mission Committee's town hall after the address, to give proper time for full discussion of the issues raised by my talk and the membership survey conducted earlier in the fall. Some consideration was given to the prospect of scheduling the presidential address as its own independent session, perhaps over the noon hour; but partly to avoid too much overlap of CAE special events, and partly to follow CAE tradition, we decided to keep the address as part of the business meeting. I assured the EC that I was going to avoid explicitly polemic argumentation and that my main goal would be to celebrate the diverse range of work that CAE produced—thus adding to the traditionally celebratory nature of the business meeting. Most of the talk was written well before the day of the national elections. I confess that in the final weeks of the election cycle I was, like many, way too complacent about Hillary Clinton's prospects for victory. As terrified and disgusted as anyone by Donald Trump's racist and misogynistic campaign, I simply believed too much in the ultimate "wisdom of the American people," as President Barack Obama often put it. My own electoral energies focused on the Democrats running for office to represent the State of Indiana. Thus, I was shocked and outraged over the course of election night and in the following days. In our final video-conference before the American Anthropological Association (AAA) meetings, held the day after Tuesday's election, I once again raised the issue with the EC about whether to stick to my planned address or to give this time over to an open discussion about how we might respond as an organization to the current political moment. I expressed a willingness but also some reluctance to do the latter because I had already invested a good deal of time in preparing a talk (and the accompanying slides) that was very specific to CAE and could not be delivered in any other forum. This is when the EC decided to give over a significant portion of our three-hour board meeting to an open discussion with the CAE membership about action strategies. It was also decided that the town hall meeting planned for the Saturday afternoon after the address could be devoted primarily to such strategizing as well. With such commitments in place, I felt that I could "safely" deliver my address as planned. Hindsight is always sharper than foresight, as they say. I now recognize what poor judgment I used in persisting with the planned address. In the aftermath of the elections, most CAE members came to the meetings looking for succor, solidarity, and insight for the struggle ahead. It was a poor moment to open a big can of worms. In retrospect, too, I erred in some of my word choices and flow of argument. The talk was too raw and had not been sufficiently reviewed by colleagues. All that said, I cannot apologize for the principal questions I raised in the talk or for the discomfort that its central intellectual challenge may have produced. I insist on my central thesis: that our field is defined primarily by the forms of knowledge that we produce, not the problems we try to solve. The two are often inseparable, of course, but we are strongest and most inclusive, organizationally, when we recognize our diversity of knowledge production and honor the many paths that lead to solving (or, perhaps as often, redefining) problems—including, and perhaps especially, problems of social injustice. And this is where I can let the address begin to speak for itself … **** Good evening, folks. I can't tell you how much of an honor it is to stand before you tonight. As I look out over the audience, I see so many dear colleagues and friends, and, indeed, many past CAE presidents. It is humbling to participate in this venerable CAE tradition and to join the ranks of such esteemed colleagues. I have to be honest with you and tell you that I sure didn't expect to be standing here after a Trump electoral victory. In the agony of this post-election context, it's certainly been tempting to just throw out this address and use this time to talk together about what has happened in our national political scene and what we might do. In fact, in the Executive Committee we actively discussed this possibility. If much of what characterizes CAE work is a sense of passion and urgency about correcting injustice, then that passion and urgency is now magnified more than ever, and we have to draw on it to resist the reactionary forces that have managed to capture our political system. As you'll see in a moment, although I'm going to open up a critique of our mission's statement's focus on advancing solutions to educational problems, I have to say that right now we've got a big fucking problem on our hands, and we have to figure out how we can help solve it. That said, because I'm confident that enough other spaces have been opened up for these more forthrightly strategic and political discussions,3 I'm going to stick to my original intent. The timing might not be great, but I'm going to forge ahead anyway. So, grab a drink and strap yourselves in. What I've got to say may have a bit of polemic, may rub some folks the wrong way (hence the "sassy" in the title4), but my aim is to generate discussion in a way that will make our organization even stronger, more inclusive, and more effective. **** OK, so big red flag at the start here. Didn't I tell the EC that I was not going to engage in much polemic? Why did I put my audience on edge from the beginning and admit that I knew the talk might offend some folks? I naively hoped that my audience would clearly see the noble intentions that animated my critique, and thus take it in the spirit of scholarly debate. But even as I spoke these words, I knew that I was setting the wrong tone. I had a gnawing sense of doubt about whether I should proceed. ***** So … over 10 years ago, a mission statement was drafted and ratified by the CAE membership. I know a little about the circumstances of its creation but not the principal drafters. I don't even recall voting for or against it, or what I thought about it the first time I really noticed it. But over the last several years—especially the three years of my presidential service—I have become intimately familiar with it. And the more familiar I become, the more it chafes against some of the sensibilities that are inseparable from my identity as an anthropologist. So, I want to use the mission statement as a kind of launching point for examining, questioning, and ultimately celebrating what we do as anthropologists of education. Now, it's not my job to question whether CAE as an organization has aligned itself fully and well with its mission statement. That's the job of the Mission Committee, and they've been doing it quite well, I must say, asking in recent years, "Are We Walking Our Talk?" The question I'd like to ask here instead is: What's the talk we're trying to walk? Is the talk itself—in the form of the mission statement—adequate and inclusive enough for what we all do in our field? I'm going to try to point to an answer to the first and second sets of questions; I'll leave it to the Mission Committee and the membership more generally to answer the third. So here is the heart of the current mission statement, what I call the core statement: "The mission of the Council on Anthropology and Education is to advance anti-oppressive, socially equitable, and racially just solutions to educational problems through research using anthropological perspectives, theories, methods, and findings." This is followed by a more extended statement of "purpose," along with three substantial clauses on research, collaboration, and advocacy.5 Purpose The mission requires strategic responsibilities and actions in research, collaboration and advocacy, including commitment to racial and social justice inside the organization itself. 1. Research I want to make a critique of this core statement, especially the way it places the goal of "solving problems" of social and racial justice up front—in fact, when you strip away all the qualifiers and dependent clauses, you can see that in its essence our mission is to "solve educational problems." Now I know this can sound disingenuous coming from a White man in this society, and I'm keenly aware of the risks I incur in taking such a position. My aim is by no means to offend the statement's drafters and supporters; in fact, I've assiduously avoided digging into the details of how the statement was drafted, because I don't want to personalize this. I went to the so-called Canterbury event in 2004, from whence this mission statement emerged. I had a one-year-old at the time and another on the way, plus ongoing fieldwork in Mexico, so I guess I was missing in action, so to speak. For people who know me well, or anyone who knows my work and both my professional and personal conduct, I don't think my strong commitment to social and racial justice is in doubt (though perhaps it will be after this talk!). So, if I share a commitment to advancing social and racial justice through my work, as the mission statement proclaims, and I do appreciate much of what the extended statement of purpose tries to accomplish, then why does the core statement still bother me so much? It has to do, above all, with the ordering of its clauses, and the centrality of this notion of "problem solving." Indeed, the use of anthropological theories and methods seems largely an afterthought. So, let me just show you an alternative formulation that keeps the emphasis on justice but that I would prefer: "The mission of the Council on Anthropology and Education is to produce knowledge about education, everywhere it occurs, through research using anthropological perspectives, theories, and methods; where possible, such knowledge should advance socially equitable and racially just solutions to educational problems."6 Ah, that just feels so much better. What does it mean that we place the commitment to justice first, in terms of problem-solving, and the "use of anthropological theories, methods, etc." in a secondary position? What does it mean that we mark racial justice but not other forms of justice? Does it mean that if our commitment to racial justice is not explicit and foregrounded in our work, then we are out of line with CAE's mission? Does it mean that if our work doesn't specifically and immediately aim to solve problems of justice, or even recommend possible solutions, that we have failed in our fundamental duty as educational anthropologists? Indeed, does our mission statement allow for enough inclusivity and diversity in how we conceive of going about our work as educational anthropologists? Ironically, I submit to you that in our zeal to create a more socially and racially just society, we may be creating further divides within our own field. In sum, with regard to our field I'm a "big tent" sort of guy, and the tent seems diminished with this statement. ***** This entire section is undoubtedly one of the more off-putting and controversial moments of my talk. First, I showed tremendous hubris (and ego) in assuming that most of those present would have known me, or even some of my published work, and thus given me the benefit of the doubt in terms of my intentions. People who know me well are familiar with my penchant for sarcasm and playful provocation, but to think that most people in attendance knew me was foolishly presumptuous, to say the least! Moreover, even knowing my published work in critical anthropology does not give colleagues a view into the commitments and sacrifices I have made for many years in the pursuit of social justice. Again, to assume such familiarity was the height of folly. I also showed an awareness that what I was going to say was dangerous for a "White man in this society," but blithely continued on, nonetheless. It could seem as if I was cleverly trying to make excuses, in advance, for what I knew to be a problematic argument. Reading this now makes me understand why one of my colleagues told me the next day that "it seemed like you said, 'I'm not a racist,' and then went on to tell a racist joke." My heart sank when I heard that. I was trying to express a sense of risk-taking, since a White man would not normally dare to question the mission statement's strong articulation of racial justice. More hubris. Clearly, I had little sense of the racial (and gender?) privilege I was wielding at that moment, not to mention the privilege of my presidential office. I ignorantly assumed my Whiteness as a privileged position from which to speak. The other potential problem is that I proposed an actual change of wording to the core of the mission statement. This seemed high-handed. Instead of allowing such a change to emerge from a more organic process of consultation, I was simply proposing a change unilaterally. Moreover, it was likely viewed as a direct affront to the drafters of the statement, who had undoubtedly spent much time crafting its clauses. In response to that, I would say three things: First, I had assumed it was clear enough that this was just an informal proposal, a little thought experiment to see how the statement might look if it put the production of knowledge front and center but still preserved a statement about justice as an ideal rationale and application for producing such knowledge. Second, my challenge to the ordering of the statement's clauses was also based on numerous conversations and emails I've exchanged with (sometimes former or potential) CAE members over the years. Some of these folks have quit CAE or stopped coming to our conference as frequently. So, I felt that in making such an argument I was channeling the concerns and frustrations of a good number of CAE members, past and present. We need to accommodate the full diversity of ideologies, methodologies, and action commitments of our fellow educational anthropologists. There's a fine line between striving for unified commitment and enforcing ideological orthodoxy. In our zeal to manifest our commitment to particular causes, or solving particular problems, we run the risk of alienating those who don't put the same problems front and center in their work. Third, my decision to rhetorically propose a change to the mission statement, even for heuristic purposes, undoubtedly came as an unwelcome surprise to many of those present. It wasn't meant to be the focus of my talk; it was a launching point for questioning, and perhaps reminding ourselves, what it is that we all have in common as educational anthropologists. But in retrospect, it was still an unskillful, arguably disrespectful, move. In retrospect, I should have done my research and reached out to the mission statement's original authors, asking them for an accounting of the reasons behind the statement's current formulation. At the very least, I should have sought them out for dialogue and input so they would not feel struck by what might have seemed like an unanticipated lightning bolt. In this regard, ironically, I violated one of the key anthropological "modes of acting" that I introduced later in my talk: the importance of context and dialogue. Word has also gotten back to me that my use of the qualifier "so-called" to describe the 2004 CAE meeting held at the Canterbury Hotel in San Francisco sounded overtly disrespectful. It really wasn't meant to be; it was just a convenient shorthand. I was an enthusiastic participant at what came to be called the "Canterbury Convocation" and have the utmost respect for the discussions and presentations that occurred there, even as I may quibble still with the wording of the mission statement. Finally, I can now see more clearly why my posing of the question of "What does it mean to mark racial justice?" could be seen as rhetorical and thus inherently hostile to the inclusion of such phrasing in our statement. I truly meant to pose it as an open question, to ask whether it was inclusive enough of concerns about gender justice, for instance, or even class justice. But I can also now see, in retrospect, how the very posing of the question could be seen as a direct challenge to the ongoing inclusion of the phrase, and for that I am sorry. No doubt it was especially disconcerting in light of the Trump electoral victory and the deepened assault on civil rights that his administration would pursue. As I comment further on, my concern was about whether the statement adequately represents the intersectionality of manifold forms of oppression. Some have noted for me since that a critical race theory approach is inherently intersectional. But for many scholars less familiar with critical race theory, the current formulation of our statement could be seen to privilege race as the form of oppression most deserving of our attention and action. A case can be made for this: after all, we are a society that lives forever in the shadow of dual genocide (of Indigenous Peoples and African Americans) and deeply entrenched racism; post-2016, we faced a federal administration openly abetting white nationalist aspirations. I am thus more chastened than ever about the need to preserve a specific mention of racial justice in our mission statement. Still, the broader point about assumed intersectionality seems to me worthy of debate rather than definitional fiat. ***** Now some people would say, "Well, a mission statement doesn't matter much anyway." And perhaps some of you have not bothered to look at the statement in years, if ever. But I think it does matter and both to internal and external constituencies. For internal purposes, it very much does matter because there's been a deliberate and self-conscious effort to align our practices with the mission statement throughout our organization—expressed in this notion of "walking our talk." This means that we even use it in our evaluation rubrics for accepting papers to the program of this meeting and especially when making awards. And frankly I've been mostly biting my tongue for the past three years I've served in CAE leadership, dutifully and diligently carrying out this charge, even when it felt at times like a kind of litmus test that unfairly disadvantaged those who could not or would not articulate their work in terms of directly advancing a social or racial justice agenda. I've waited till this very moment, literally when I am stepping off the Board and am really just becoming a "typical" member of CAE. So clearly the mission statement matters to us internally as an organization—we created it and a series of actions to hold ourselves accountable to our values as an organization. It's actually part of what makes me love this organization so much—because it's so well aligned with my own values. And yet, and yet … I do worry about it approaching a kind of litmus test. ***** First, my statement about now "becoming a typical member of CAE" is disingenuous, I see now. Having held various leadership positions in the organization, I can hardly shed this achieved status. Also, in reading this now, I worry that some might have taken my clumsy confession here as an argument against a kind of affirmative action that CAE has taken to diversify its membership and express its commitment to social and racial justice through specific organizational processes. Nothing could be further from my intentions—after all, I say I love CAE because of how well it aligns with my values, which includes these kinds of organizational affirmations of justice. The "litmus test" that I refer to here has nothing to do with the racial identity of individual students and scholars. It refers to the centrality of the focus on "problem solving" and on a kind of immediacy of impact that is implied by the mission statement. A litmus test tells us who is "real" or "authentic." It tells us who really counts. Our current mission statement and its associated practices suggest that if you don't show how your work solves problems of social and racial injustice, then you're not authentic enough to our mission to warrant support and inclusion. ***** Even internally, in the community of educational anthropologists, we have to ask how inclusive this mission statement is. This is especially so if we aspire to serve as an international organization that represents anthropologists of education outside the US. In the absence of any truly global organization for educational anthropologists, many of us have aspired to make CAE such a space. Yet one of our challenges as an organization is that we are based in the US,