The Urgency of Black Studies and the Insufficiency of Anti-Racism
Professor Handel Kashope Wright delivers the keynote at the Virtual Symposium: Activism and Solidarity Post-Script to the “Scholar Strike Canada” on October 29, 2020. Keynote Title: “The Urgency of Black Studies and the Insufficiency of Anti-Racism”.
Metro Vancouver Forums on Systemic Racism
Recent events have brought the issue of systemic racism to the forefront prompting all orders of government and organizations to take a much closer look at racial discrimination and develop strategies to address this long standing issue.
In response, Metro Vancouver is hosting a series of forums on systemic racism for elected officials in the region featuring Dr. Handel Wright and a panel of storytellers, with discussion moderated by Kathryn Gretsinger, an award-winning CBC broadcaster. Storytellers include Neila Miled, recent PhD graduate of the Faculty of Education.
Anti-Blackness, Imperfect Allyship & Being Antiracist
Handel Wright, Professor- Educational Studies, participated on a one hour moderated discussion (webinar) organized by Fraser Health in October 2020 on the topic “Anti-Blackness, Imperfect Allyship & Being Antiracist.”
Cities as Sites for Transformative Change: How and Why Universities can Contribute
Date: December 1, 2020
Time: 11:00am – Noon
The presenters recent and SSHRC-funded project, entitled “Transforming city governments in response to disruptive change: meeting the challenges of colonization, inequity, and climate change,” is an example of collaborative efforts between UBC and municipal governments that seeks to understand how Canadian cities can transform as they address the complex challenges of colonization, inequity and climate change. Preliminary insights indicate that city staff are under pressure to deliver on set priorities and timelines with little time and resources to reflect on the theories, paradigms and worldviews that inform their decision-making. Through a learning journey, city staff, community partners and researchers will work to unearth the structures within which cities operate and test alternative ways of defining and solving problems. This collective journey will explore questions such as: What histories have shaped our institutions? What processes have led to the erasure of ethno-cultural groups such as Black communities? How can we decolonize our practices? What collaborations are needed for shared decision-making? And what are the enabling conditions for transformative change?
The potential for Black Studies programs in Canada
Provost’s Speaker Series on Systemic Racism
Date: October 23, 2020
Building Black Studies in Canada: Moving beyond Anti-Racism Courses
Andrea A. Davis, Associate Professor, Department of Humanities, and Special Advisor on Anti-Black Racism Strategy, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, York University
Did Someone Say Black British Columbia? Rough Autobiographical Notes on Blackness and the Prospects of Black Studies at UBC
Handel Kashope Wright, Professor, Faculty of Education, and Director, Centre for Culture, Identity and Education, UBC Vancouver
African Canadian Response to the Pandemic and International Uprisings
People of African-descent have been hardest hit by current circumstances. Economic distress and unemployment has disproportionately affected this population in the West, and statistics show that more individuals of African descent have died from the virus than in most other populations. This month, as well, we have had to bear witness to the public lynching of George Floyd and the suspicious death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Canada. Two more names added to the long list of black people who continue to be targeted and/or killed by the police.
Black Activism in Education and Community: Exposing Anti-Black Racism in Vancouver with Shelby McPhee
Our special guest for this event is Shelby McPhee will share stories and comments on how to recognize and address anti-Black racism. Shelby McPhee is a recent graduate of Acadia University who has been speaking out publicly on Anti-Black racism after he was racially profiled at Congress 2019 held at UBC last summer.
Watch the seminar: “Are school textbooks decolonisable? Entanglements of the ‘colonial present’ in Israel and Palestine” by André Elias Mazawi
Watch Dr. André Elias Mazawi’s seminar hosted by the Comparative, International, and Development for International and Development Education Centre (CIDEC), OISE, UoT.
Watch: “Decolonizing Higher Education Internationally” (panel)
Decolonizing Higher Education Internationally
“The enduring educational challenges of setting horizons of hope beyond modern-colonial imaginaries” by Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti (UBC)
“What Does it Take to Decolonize Palestinian Higher Education? ” by André Elias Mazawi
“Youth Activism and Academia as Public Sphere” by Handel Kashope Wright.
Watch: “Look! Listen! Speak! Eat! : Chinese Pride on the Table” by Yao Xiao
I take this presentation as an opportunity to share with you how “decolonization” might be Sinicized, and how a Chinese subject like myself might engage with decolonization differently. Based on autobiographical stories, research projects, and informal conversations with community friends, I unpack the affect of Chinese pride for its decolonial relevance in at least two landscapes: (1) in a landscape of international intellectual work, the anxiously ascending Sinophone interests in dealing with/learning beyond Euro-American academic influences; (2) in a landscape of grassroots lives and activism, the mixed compassion, commitment, as well as confusion in speaking with/learning from people who situate and still struggle in webs of metropoles and margins.