Yinam Cohen’s Post

🚨 Important Development in Higher Education: Florida's Chancellor Initiates Antisemitism Review of College Courses Recent events in Florida highlight a significant intersection between education, politics, and ethics. The State University System of Florida, led by Chancellor Ray Rodrigues, has initiated a review of public university courses for potential antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias. This comes in response to concerns raised over educational content at Florida International University. The review will involve a digital search for keywords related to Israel, Palestine, and Zionism, followed by a faculty review to assess instances of bias. As someone who values both inclusivity and accurate representation in education, I am pleased to see steps being taken to address potential antisemitism. While this move has sparked discussions about its implications for academic freedom, it underscores the importance of ensuring that educational materials reflect a commitment to fairness and respect for all communities. (Source: Inside Higher Ed, 8/9, Quinn) #HigherEd #AcademicFreedom #Antisemitism #FloridaEducation

Antisemitism has always been a part of American higher education, and recently it has increased dramatically. Can anything be done to stem this tide of hate in our colleges and universities? I discuss this in my latest commentary. https://lnkd.in/e6FWtVz8

Solidarity with the students organizing for a better and more just world and against genocides and crimes against humanity. Our many struggles are interconnected and it’s the students who are taking the lead and showing the way forward. Solidarity, too, with the staff who are supporting the students, despite all the threats and intimidation. Universities like to talk about changing the world and about social justice, racial justice, human rights, critical thinking and else. But when the students decide to do this in practice, as university brochures and websites claim they should, the administrators of our neoliberal institutions, together with the state, often brutalize and suppress them. We have seen this in South Africa in 2015/2016 and we see it across the United States today. And we will continue to see this until or unless we dismantle coloniality, capitalism and neoliberalism. I don’t know if this is even possible, but we have to keep pushing and fighting for a better world.

The result [of modern educational reforms] has been an intellectual anarchy imperfectly controlled by the crude methods of the examinations system and of payment by results. The mind of the student is overwhelmed and dazed by the volume of new knowledge which is being accumulated by the labour of specialists, while the necessity for using education as a stepping-stone to a profitable career leaves him little time to stop and think. And the same is true of the teacher, who has become a kind of civil servant tied to a routine over which he can have little control. Christopher Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, [1961] 2010), p. 91. In Mathematics: Exploring Beauty - Trinitarian Perspectives (soon to be published), p. 8.

💭Some thoughts playing on my mind since visiting the students encampments at SOAS and UCL. 🍉The failure of the education system become apparent when it perceives its own students, who stand firmly and resiliently in solidarity against oppressive structures of apartheid akin to those figures in history taught in their very own curriculum, as being on the wrong side of history. As I observe the resilience of these courageous students that occupy universities in their noble movement for change, I am reminiscent of my studies as I can hear echoes of my seminars on Empire and Nation. 🏛️In these supposedly intersectional educational institutions, we discover the irony that the historical figures frequently cited for their own credibility were the very students at the forefront of movements advocating for change and demanding independence.The students gathered in masses to protest, raising awareness on the oppression, leading to revolution. Ultimately, the empire had felt betrayed as all there efforts in attempting to modernise and educate the youth into staying loyal to their ideology backfired and led to calls to independence from the injust state. And once again, history repeats itself, with students at the forefront of change, standing in solidarity and demanding freedom from the very oppressive structures of education that allege themselves to be progressive. ‼️Let's make it very clear: as educational institutions, you cannot dare to claim that your curriculum is at the forefront of empowering students and embodying intersectionality in its education endeavours, whilst you are simultaneously complicit in funding a genocide. You cannot use your institution, to educate the youth about the injustices of the past and then not expect them to stand in solidarity against the very same double standards and atrocities that you continue to enable. More power to the courageous students who are calling for transparency to disclose, decolonise and divest. #student #activism #decolonisation

New research highlights importance of equity in education A new study looks at the impact of learning environments on the academic success of racialized students. Compared to their peers, these students feel they have less control in their academic environment, less confidence and self-efficacy in their academic abilities, and weaker connections to other students and professors. https://bit.ly/3Wt453y #connections #academic #environment #confidence #abilities #self-efficacy #peers #learning

Change starts with our students. Our CEO, Shamil Idriss, shares the key steps universities in the United States can take to better equip students to deal with conflict on campus. Read the full article: https://lnkd.in/gYXgDTQ7

Universities and epistemic justice in a plural world: Knowing better. What kind of knowledge is valued and considered legitimate in universities? How do norms around academic knowledge include or exclude people as knowers? This book explains why universities, and academics within them, must engage with the diversity of knowledges and knowers that exist in the world. It explains how higher education can better serve the purposes of social justice by re-evaluating the types of knowledge it promotes. Contributions are included from authors working in varied disciplinary and cultural contexts in universities around the world, who describe and explicate their work towards identifying epistemic injustice and finding spaces to advance knowledge justice in theory and in practice. The book will be of interest to academics and those with an interest in the role of universities in serving the public good. https://lnkd.in/eS4eA9yj

📢 New Study Published: Predictors of Academic Success in Majority-Minority Schools 📢 We are pleased to share our latest research with Jozefien De Leersnyder "Against the odds: predictors of academic success and excellence in majority-minority schools," published in School Effectiveness and School Improvement! Our study examines factors influencing high and excellent performance in schools with a high concentration of ethnic minorities. Key findings include: * Positive impact of strengths-based, anti-racist curricula on academic achievement * Importance of school belonging and a growth mindset * Negative effects of discrimination experiences on student performance For more details, read the full study here: https://lnkd.in/gk_qhxUW

“To help repair our ruptured society, universities require a new vision of how to encourage students to know and respect one another, to neither tiptoe around their differences nor use them to bigfoot or sidestep others. Campuses need to foster encounters among diverse students that do not simply underscore their differences but generate empathy—an essential bond for a pluralistic society…   Basic education on sexual harassment, assault and consent is now universal on college campuses, partly to protect the university from legal liability. So is education about academic offenses like plagiarism. The fundamentals of free speech demand no less attention, not just to avoid damaging controversies and lawsuits but to safeguard the university’s basic mission. Students and faculty alike need to understand what kinds of speech are and are not protected and why. But more than that, they need to see that free speech is most valuable not as a weapon to wield against ideological opponents but as a tool in the search for common truths… But free-speech education must not end there. Today’s students have come of age in the era of social media, where speech too often consists of short, angry ideological salvos. The speech promoted by engagement-driven algorithms is long on outrage and virtue-signaling, short on nuance, balance and basic politeness. It teaches young people a discourse of absolutes—the antithesis of the pluralistic give-and-take that our society so desperately needs. Universities must provide an alternative.” Worth the read. https://lnkd.in/esH-9Jjb