Resources

Sufia Uddin Associate Professor Connecticut College No better time to teach how Islam is “raced” than now. Comments by the likes of Donald Trump provide excellent fodder for discussions about race, religion, and racism. It is also true that the kinds of questions asked by journalists and the stories they

Elias Ortega-Aponte, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Afro-Latinos/a Religions and Cultural Studies Drew University As I geared up to teach two social justice themed courses this Fall, my summer preparations were disrupted by the news of two tragedies and the reflections they prompted. First was the death of Omar Abrego, beaten to death by police on August 2 in Los Angeles. Witness reports claim that Abrego was taken out of his car and beaten up by two police officers for at least 10 minutes, and left in a pool of blood. The father of three would die hours later in a

Higher education is a by-the-book, highly structured reality. From syllabus design (written for students as well as for administrators) to navigating the tenure track process; from classroom lesson planning to student assessments; as well as the preconceived even contrived ways articles and books are selected for publication – those of us who teach in the academic world participate in a rigid reality.     For a scant few colleagues, this rigorous reality creates spaces for thriving and the production of new knowledge. It is the promise of this constructed reality.  Dangerously, the same austere reality creates ease and opportunity for those who are harbingers of racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism to have tremendous platforms of harm against colleagues and students of color.  The strata of oppressive, hegemonic forces in the larger politic of U.S. society are duplicated in the reality of higher education with too few opportunities for checks-and-balances of justice and equity.  Subtle and blatant acts of dehumanization go unchallenged. Gestures of ignorance and insensitivity are commonplace.  Those colleagues who routinely wield their biases, prejudices, ill wills, and ignorance toward people of color and non-white cultures are too often gatekeepers in this reality.  Challenged to navigate this strange reality and stymied to negotiate with persons who would see us fail, there is little sanctuary for us unless we create it for ourselves.  While scholarship is my passion and joy, I never feel at home. My experience of displacement/up-rootedness is neither unique nor rare.  For African American women and other colleagues who are othered and systemically marginalized, the reality of education is designed so that we remain strangers, even in the familiarity of academic spaces.  Our outsider status is galvanized by the white feminist patriarchs, also known as patriarchs-in-drag, who refuse to do critical reflection on relationships with othered women and people of color. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza dubbed this experience of oppression in its many forms as kyriarchy. While naming the experience does not alleviate the circumstance, it does make me feel oriented…known. To never be at home is to contend with the accusations that we cannot do “classical” scholarship while at the same time reeling from the critique that our ethnic/cultural approaches are quaint, interesting…exotic.  Our work and scholarship is othered along with our personhood.  This constant confusion sends firm messages that we are not safe, not welcomed to be authentic or real.  In the midst of this zero-sum experience of hostility, we are expected to be grateful for posts designed for occupation by white men.  In this environment students quickly clue into those who are unwelcomed and deemed to be without authority, making our classrooms spaces unnecessarily conflictual and contentious.  We are not at home.  I have often heard othered colleagues describe this reality as the experience of being erased.  Surely, as those who are Imago Dei, made in the image and likeness of God, we cannot be summarily negated. I am not sure when I started this habit, but it helps me survive/cope.  Each spring, after commencement, I bring a laundry basket to my campus office.  I gather up those personal items that adorn my office.  I pack up the family photos, artwork, cards, and gifts given by students and friends throughout that year.  I pack up my coffee mug, teapot, and the snacks in my desk.  I balance my potted plants on the very top so they do not get damaged or squished.  With heaping laundry basket in-hand, I move out of my office.  Once at home with my laundry basket, I incorporate those items into the décor of my home.  My office plants are nestled among the other plants in my living room, home office, and bedroom.  The artwork and other items find a place on the shelves and in the bookcases.  Then, in late summer, as the fall semester approaches, I make the decision to move back into my office – or not.  If I move back in, I go around my house picking and choosing those art pieces that will adorn my campus office and assist my work in the coming year.  I discuss with my plants and ask for volunteers to come to my campus office.    Once back in my office, I carefully place the photos, paintings, sculptures, and plants. I move back in, only for the year.  Knowing I will move out gives me strength and courage.  Each year, this ritual helps me navigate the death-dealing space that is the academy. It reminds me of my choice and my freedom.  This ritual rekindles my own agency and intrinsic power.  I move back in because of my own choice and not out of obligation, confinement, nor to stave off erasure by these institutions.  Those political practices designed to divide and conquer, which are meant to keep us feeling unwelcomed, are weakened when I exercise this agency.  Moving out of my office each spring lets me know I am free to leave the institutions that do not nurture me or my kind.  Knowing I have a choice helps me keep my rage in check. Moving into and out of my office reminds me that I am not homeless.   The confusion, disarray, and disturbance that would reasonably result from being unwelcomed has little sting and warrants only momentary guile when I remember that our particularity is our gift to the world from the Divine.   We are a people for whom this racist, sexist, homophobic, kyriarachal academic world is a reality that requires the skills of ornery-ness and imaginative cunning—skills for which we are quite adept. The knowledge and belief that the love, sacrifice, and values of our ancestors and wisdom-kin are steadfast provides hope. Audre Lorde wrote, “In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction” (Oberlin College Commencement Speech, 1985).  A Luta Continua.

On election night last year when Donald Trump won the presidential election, I was traveling in Greece visiting the historical and religious sites. Several days before the election, I visited the Acropolis and climbed up Mars Hill where Paul delivered his sermon to the Athenians (Acts 17:22-31). The fact that I was in Athens, the cradle of Western democracy, prompted me to think about the development of democratic institutions and their relationships to an empire. The word “democracy” in Greek combines the elements dêmos and krátos, and means literally, “people power.” However, only adult male citizens who owned land could participate in Athenian democracy. Women, slaves, children, and lower-class people were excluded. Athens once had the strongest military power among the Greek city-states and harbored imperialistic impulses. The Delian League, created by the Athenians in the 5th century BCE, captured cities, colonized and enslaved peoples. Athens suppressed revolts among the League’s members and collected dues from them in exchange for protection. In our modern day, democracy has not prevented countries from turning into imperialistic powers. The British once ruled an empire so vast that the sun never set on the empire. While British subjects enjoyed democracy at home, colonized subjects did not have self-autonomy and had to obey British rule and laws. In the US, Donald Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” appealed to deep-seated American imperialistic desire, especially among non-college educated white men. I began teaching a class on liberation theology shortly after Trump’s inauguration. My reflection on the relationship between democracy and empire prompted me to find ways to heighten my students’ consciousness about the image of the US and the impact of American policies abroad. During our first class, we discussed the changing political and social contexts in which we studied liberation theology. There were a significant number of international students from Asia and Africa in the class. I invited them to share reactions to Trump’s election from news reports from their countries. I also asked them to share their thoughts on the slogan “Make America Great Again.” A number of them said that the US is already the most powerful country and has a major effect in their own countries. They were concerned about how Trump’s presidency would affect global stability and foreign policies. After Hillary Clinton lost the election, some commentators discussed what Clinton’s loss would mean for the future of feminism. Others wondered why her coalition of women, racial and ethnic minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people could not pull off a win. I discussed with students Columbia University professor Mark Lilla’s widely read essay “The End of Identity Liberalism.”[1] He warns that American liberalism has focused too much on identity politics and diversity issues, such as race, gender, and sexuality. This focus is disastrous for democratic politics for it fails to provide a unifying principle. Instead, he argues that we have to engage more in conversations about class, war, political economy, and the common good. Lilla’s essay has created a lot of debates, and some said that “identity politics” addresses real problems of discrimination. In our class discussion, I helped students to see two important points. First, we have to take an intersectional approach and see the various forms of oppression as mutually constitutive. Second, we have to avoid the tendency of focusing too narrowly on identity issues in the US, without paying attention to larger social, economic, and political forces shaping the world at the macro-level. Commentators outside of the US have taken the election of Donald Trump and raised it up as an example of how democracy can become dysfunctional. Some of my students were shocked when Trump was elected, and his first 100 days in office have created chaos and presented us with “alternative truths.” When my students felt depressed by the current political situation, I reminded them that democracy is a project and it requires vigilance in protecting it. We should not think that American democracy is the best institution, for it has been polluted by big money and big donors. Trump said during his campaign that he was free from Wall Street’s influences. But his cabinet and close advisors include many billionaires and people from Goldman Sachs. His currently proposed health care policy and tax reforms will benefit the rich and take away from the elderly, the sick, and the poor. I reminded students that democracy has been used as an ideology to further the cause of empire. In the 19th century, the spread of Christianity was part and parcel of the “civilizing mission” of the West. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the protection of democracy has been given as a reason for military intervention and regime change. In the name of democracy, the U.S. has supported military coups, toppled governments, and created regional animosity and instability. Democracy has taken several centuries to develop in Western countries, and cannot be superimposed by power and might from without. Within the course of one week, Trump ordered a military strike in Syria and the U.S. dropped a 22,000-pound bomb on ISIS forces in Afghanistan. It is vitally important to educate students to become global citizens who understand the consequences of US actions in the wider context of the world. A good beginning is to understand how democracy and populism can be used to serve imperial interests. [1] Mark Lilla, “The End of Identity Liberalism,” New York Times, November 18, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-identity-liberalism.html.

I am convinced that all eurocentric philosophical thought and movements – yes all – are oppressive to those who come from colonized spaces. When I contemplate every philosophical contribution made by the so-called Age of Enlightenment, it becomes obvious that the French Revolution’s battle cry for Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité was never meant for her future colonies in Vietnam or Algiers. Hegel’s entire endeavor for a historical truths rests on the presupposition of the superiority of the Europeans and the inferiority of non-whites. In his 1824 book, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, Northern Europe - specifically the German Spirit - is the Spirit of the new World whose aim becomes the realization of absolute Truth as the unlimited self-determination of Freedom, a Freedom which has as its own absolute form itself as its purport (341). Such a Freedom was never meant for the “inferior” in need of civilization and Christianization. Even the U.S. rhetorical end to our daily oath of “liberty and justice for all” was never meant to include those from African descent, nor their neighbors south of the border. The “all” in eurocentric philosophical thought just meant whites, definitely not her colonies or those among the colonized who followed their stolen raw material and cheap labor to the center of Empires. Abstract philosophical thought must be constructed to reconcile the quest for liberty and equality among whites with their purposeful exclusion of those whom they colonized. The issue is not so much hypocrisy on the part of the colonizer spewing rhetoric about liberty; but rather, philosophically justifying oppression through freedom-based language. The move to the abstract serves the crucial purpose of obscuring the economic need of dispossessing and disenfranchising the colonized and their descendants. Universal eurocentric celestial concepts of rights blinds the oppressed to the concrete feet-on-the-ground reality of oppression at the hands of such freedom loving whites.  Over 125 years ago, José Martí saw the danger of adopting a eurocentric worldview detrimental to the existential intellectual space occupied by the colonized. He called the oppressed of the world to create a new way of thinking based on our indigeneity. To make our wine out of bananas (“Nuestro vino de plátano”) means such a wine would naturally be sweet. But if we instead make our wine out of the fruits of Europe and it becomes sour (“y si es agrio”), then we are stuck with it (“es nuestro vino”). Eurocentric philosophical thought not only sours our wine but also our teaching. To build liberative edifices on eurocentric philosophical foundations reproduces the same consequences as pouring new wines into old skins. Even our beloved liberation theological movements have, more often than not, looked toward their oppressors for means of expression. How much richer would our liberative thinking have been if we looked to our own original thinkers like Martí rather than the European liberal thinkers of the time? When those of us seeking a liberative pedagogical methodology rest upon eurocentric philosophical paradigms, we construct resistance on shifting sand, contributing to our own oppression. And worse, when we teach in our classrooms our resistance to eurocentric thought, regardless of how loud, fearless, and passionate we may be, we are undermining our students’ ability to bring about subsistent change. The difficult task before us who call ourselves liberative scholar-activists is how do we think new thoughts that are less a response, and more an indigenous radical worldview different from the normative philosophies which have historically justified our subservient place within society. True, we must learn the Eurocentric canon if we hope to obtain PhDs and be considered learned, even though our white colleagues need not bother with the discourses occurring on their margins. But rather than looking at the esteemed eurocentric thinkers who have historically written philosophies to remove us from humanity and the fruits of liberation, what would happen if we possessed the dexterity to teach what the children of the colonizers legitimized and normalized as well as a different worldview based on lo cotidiano - the every day of those purposely written off Hegel’s metaphysical dialectical history. To teach from the margins disabuses the regurgitation of foreign and deadly philosophical paradigms in favor of those which resonates with the least of these. Not solely to understand the world – as important as this may be, but also for its transformation.

The questions and challenges concerning the teaching of Islam and race that I raised last year in “Teaching Islamic Theology through Black Lives” are no less urgent and relevant now as they were then. In that contribution, I attempted to delineate ways in which I could make important interventions on race and racism in a relatively conventional course offering on Islam. The deepening consciousness and raised campus awareness over the Black Lives Matter movement has continued to spur learning interventions across campuses. One concrete way in which this has emerged here at Fairfield University is the formation and development of a Black Lives Matter course in the spring semester of 2016. Students, faculty, and staff came together to establish what is hoped to be a regularly taught course. I was able to join the second iteration of this course for the present spring semester of 2017. I took this as an opportunity to see if I could develop the converse of what I had implemented earlier, namely to teach Black Lives Matter through the lens of Islam and the experience of Muslims. This new opportunity for engagement, of course, presented a significantly different set of challenges, especially with respect to structure. Typically when I undertake a course, like my Islamic theology one, I have an incredible amount of autonomy because I serve as the sole instructor. I can plot out the content of a course, scale its pacing, and ultimately direct it as appropriate. In contrast, the Black Lives Matter course was designed from the outset to have a collaborative teaching structure. While the students enrolled in the course have a single instructor of record joining them for the duration of the course, a rotating group of University faculty and staff cycle through the classroom. On a weekly basis visiting instructors enter the classroom to offer their perspectives and share insights from their respective areas of expertise. While the diverse array of voices joining the students serve to both broaden and deepen the experience, it also entails negotiating some pedagogical hurdles. As one of the visiting instructors, rather than the instructor of record, I had to work around certain limits. As I sat down to plan out my contribution to the course, two pressing issues rose to the fore: 1) How could I navigate the challenges inherent to teaching in a rotation where my engagement with the students is limited to a single 75-minute session? and 2) How can I introduce most effectively Islam and Muslims as an important frame of analysis for the broader subject of Black Lives Matter? To spell out the difficulties of the first issue, I will enter the course in the fourth week as a newcomer and outsider whereas the students and the instructor of record will have developed by then into an ongoing and self-reflective learning community. My fellow colleagues will be facing a similar dynamic for their scheduled visitations. We will be entering as unknown entities offering ideas and starting conversations that may not be consistent with or may not bridge well with the concepts and terms previously introduced. We will have our own presuppositions and expectations. We will not be privy to the idiosyncrasies of the class. With this set of difficulties in mind, the faculty and staff contributing to the course took several steps in anticipation. First, several weeks prior to the beginning of the semester we came together for a half-day workshop. As a large group and then in smaller breakout ones, we shared our topics and approaches with one another in hopes of better understanding how the course as a whole would unfold and hold together. The syllabus was also circulated in advance so we could get in touch with those who would precede our visit and those who would follow us. We spent time as well discussing general pedagogical strategies for discussing sensitive matters related to issues of race and identity. In sum, efforts were made to prime each of us to connect with one another as we prepared to join the students for our one-time visit and to familiarize ourselves with the learning culture for this particular classroom community. With regards to introducing the relevance of Islam and Muslims to the course, I sought to build explicitly upon previously assigned materials while also providing new pieces for consideration. With respect to prior readings, I identified two pieces in particular that I thought worth recalling and reframing for the set of issues that I hoped to cover: (1) The Racial Contract by Charles W. Mills, which served as the course’s main textbook and presents an incisive critique of the ways in which white supremacy are operative politically and socially, and (2) the 2016 documentary 13th by Ava DuVernay, which explores how mass incarceration came to and continues to target disproportionately black communities. While Islam and Muslims do not figure explicitly in either exposition, I believe both works offered important windows for contemplating connections and points of intersection with the larger subject of Black Lives Matter. As for new material, I settled on the following reading: Edward E. Curtis, IV, “The Black Muslim Scare of the Twentieth Century: The History of State Islamophobia and Its Post-9/11 Variations,” in Carl Ernst, ed. Islamophobia in America: The Anatomy of Intolerance, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 75-106. The benefit of Curtis’s contribution is that it both provides a historical overview of black Muslim American experiences while also shining a light on the ways in which black Muslim groups have been subjected to state surveillance, animus and at times suppression. A week before my visit I pre-circulated several questions for the students to consider. These questions made the task of revisiting and rethinking these earlier works more concrete and fostered a sense of continuity. Specifically, I wanted them to think back to 13th to see how they might imagine how the discourse on Islam and Muslims in America relates to the history of black criminalization and imprisonment in the United States. Furthermore, I asked them to think how the “racial contract” is at work with how Muslims are racialized presently in American society. When the day of my visit arrived, I drew explicit parallels between the country’s political discourse in the late 1970s and early 1980s over the war on crime and the war on drugs with the more recent discourse over the war on terror. I sought to illustrate the ways in which blackness and Muslimness have intersected in a number of significant ways: from the racialization of Muslims in America to the enduring place of Islam in the African American imagination, to the long historical experience of African American Muslims that includes groups like the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation of Islam, and persons like Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali. Finally, we concluded by looking at the ways in which citizenship is used, even weaponized, as a means of exclusion and containment. Ultimately, working with structure of the course, I felt my time was best served by building my discussion of Islam and Muslims as explicitly and carefully as possible upon the ideas already seeded by previous readings and ongoing conversations in the Black Lives Matter course. While the visit produced a rich discussion, the need to adapt and connect is ongoing as this course and the call around which it is built moves forward.

The car service arrived at my house. I grabbed my purse, suitcase, and briefcase and hurried out the door making sure it was locked behind me. As scheduled, we stopped to pick up a colleague who was also attending the conference in Toronto, Canada. Driving east on Highway 78 and almost to Newark International Airport, I gasped. My passport was still at home. My colleague asked if I wanted to go back and get it. I looked at my watch and said, “No.” Going back would likely mean we both would miss the flight. Once at the ticket counter, I handed the gate agent my ticket and driver’s license. I told him I was on my way to Toronto. He looked at my ticket to confirm an international destination. He asked me for my passport. I told him, in my most contrite voice, that I had left my passport on my dining room table. He stopped himself from rolling his eyes, but a faint sigh of annoyance slipped through his otherwise professional demeanor. Still, in a mode of apology, I asked, “Surely there is some other identification that I can use to cross the border . . .  . Not everybody has a passport!” Without looking up from his terminal, he informed me he would accept a U.S. Voter Identification Card. “EUREKA!” I thought and “EEEEEeeeee!!!!!” came out of my mouth. I gleefully reached into my purse, found my wallet, located my voter registration card, and with the pride of the ancestors, I extended my arm to hand it to the ticketing agent. My flurry of emotion had gotten his attention, and he looked up from his terminal and at me. When I handed him the card, he stared in disbelief. Slowly he reached for the worn card, examined it suspiciously, and was flabbergasted. He went from doubt to shock with the reading of the card. He raised my card above his head and called to his left and then to his right—to the other agents at neighboring terminals—“Someone has it!  Someone actually has a voter registration card!” The other agents reacted with nods of approval and surprise. The African-American gentleman processed my ticket and gave me a boarding pass. He said to me while handing back my voter card, “Nobody ever has these.” I thanked him for telling me of the alternative ID and asked if I would have any trouble getting back into the USA from Canada with only a voter registration card as ID. He said, “It’s the law. They have to let you back home.”  My voter registration card has been in my wallet since 1980 – age 18. I carry the card as a symbol of ancestral work and sacrifice that created the democratic republic, the United States of America. The free labor of my African enslaved people provided ease in the creation of a democracy for those white men who reaped untold financial benefits and whose families still benefit from this legacy of blood and dehumanization. I carry my card to mark the progress of Black women. Through the leadership of such women as Barbara Jordan, Sojourner Truth, and Madam C. J. Walker, we are surviving. The card reminds me that in 1994, the brothers and sisters in South Africa seized democratic rights. I cried when after a three-day journey by wheel barrel—with grandchildren taking turns pushing—the grandmother cast her vote for Nelson Mandela as president. I cried because so many grand-women did not have wheel barrels for transportation to the polls. Lest my repletion become hollow romantic recollection and foolish sentimentality, I admit that I would have, even in 2002, known that my voter ID would allow me to cross the US/Canada border. Welding the power of democracy means knowledge of my rights as well as voicing my dissent when my rights and the rights of others are challenged, and even taken. The politicians and the system that benefits from my not knowing my rights must be challenged and dismantled. Undoubtedly, the recent executive orders by the newly elected president that would have banned Muslim brothers and sisters from entering the United States was stopped by mobilized voters. Unquestionably, the House and House Leader Paul Ryan, on March 24th, canceled their vote to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act due to the pressure of grassroots efforts by churches, synagogues, and mosques; by grassroots advocacy organizations like Black Lives Matter and Indivisible; and by those Republicans, likely voters for President Trump, who felt betrayed when the bill would shrink Medicaid. With widespread acts of protest and resistance in the first hundred days of the presidency of #45, the complacency of the American voter has been shed. It is, for voters, an exciting and dangerous time in democracy. We are coming to the realization (again!) that liberty depends upon a voiced constituency. Without a voiced constituency, we have only ourselves to blame for the creation of a dictator as president. Democracy is not in the DNA of the United States. Instead, democracy is one of the most powerful ideas on earth and each generation must make the decision to doggedly pursue this profound belief or not. Classrooms hold the possibility of being the invaluable spaces where the idea of democracy is re-inscribed on every generation. While I do not believe classrooms are in-and-of-themselves democratic spaces, I do subscribe to the view that classrooms are training grounds for learning to use the spectrum of voices needed for our flourishing democracy. Our students must become border-crossing sojourners able to discern what is right and just. The classroom is where informed and thoughtful citizens should be shaped, constituted, and inspired for the work of justice. Classrooms are the spaces to cultivate the voices that would challenge the oppressions that have a stranglehold on our democracy. What are the rights of students in your institution?  By what means are the rights of students known and owned by students? How do these rights enter into the course design for formation and accountability?  What would it mean to discuss the rights of students in the classroom, and then juxtapose those rights and responsibilities with those of the local and national democratic system? In what ways does a banking system approach to teaching truncate citizenship? In what ways does a banking system approach contribute to a voiceless democratic constituency? Which pedagogies prepare students for full participation in democracy?  What would it mean to assess all introductory courses to discover the kinds of voice students are expected to develop and utilize through class participation and assignments? What would it take to expand the repertoire of voices developed across the introductory courses? What would it mean to raise the awareness of faculty concerning the ways the U.S. democratic system affects international students and recently immigrated students? In what ways can faculty better support international students and recent immigrants through their course design?

What do you know to be true now that you used to think was false? What do you know to be false now that you used to think was true? What is something you’ve always thought true that remains true?  I once heard a conference presenter ask a version of these questions and now I occasionally use them in my teaching. Such questions suggest that the status of knowing grows and changes, shifts and turns over time. This is good news for teachers and students everywhere!  The pliable character of knowledge is also a political matter. Libraries and lives are filled with stories about the politics of teaching and learning, particularly around matters of deeply held faith convictions and religious practices embodied in various histories, bodies, and communities today.  Learning itself evokes a kind of devotional practice in which the desire to learn and to unlearn are political acts of room-making in the mind, heart, body, soul for more than this moment’s capacity. Deep learning is often accompanied by a desire to be moved, even an expansive desire that surprises us in the learning process.  In and beyond my seminary teaching and learning experiences in middle America in this political climate, I am seeing a troubling divergence around the changing status of knowledge: is learning now less or more important than ever? Do expectations of room-making lean toward being moved or rather thirst for antagonistic encounters? With the striking contrast of embracing the urgency of deepening learning around current social issues such as #syllabi devoted to blacklivesmatter, sanctuary cities, women’s health, islamophobia, refugees, and more on one hand, and abandoning intellectualism in favor of relentless questioning sources of expertise or even verifiable facts on the other, how do we teach into a political moment that threatens the status of learning itself?  Five Threats to Syllabi “It’s in the syllabus” is the punch line to many an academic riddle. Syllabi are blueprints, detailed instructions for shared learning experiences. Syllabi outline plans for the way in, through, and out of the course of study. The best syllabi align student learning outcomes, assignments, and learning activities in clear and compelling ways.  A syllabus can also be open to change and can never be totally locked in from the start if it intends to guide a living, breathing classroom.  Many syllabi thus include a caveat somewhere that goes something like this: “instructor reserves the right to amend the syllabus for the sake of deepening student learning, but not to add unexpected work.” I usually write a version of the first part on my syllabi and discuss the second part in class because change is work, even and especially change for the better amid threats to learning. In this highly charged political moment that pit bodies and communities against each other, I am seeing an increase in five interconnected syllabi threats: (1) Rejecting Close Reading: I’ve noticed increased charges of irrelevance of reading that takes time in favor of a formula such as “I used to believe that doing the assigned reading before every class was important, but now I see that it doesn’t make a difference.” Discourse includes more and more references to headlines and skimmed resources. (2) Retreating from Deep Connections across Difference: As the political moment threatens to recode inclusion as political correctness, the allure of unrestrained exclusion is appearing in class discussions in relation to readings, to other students, to contemporary figures that appear in a posture of “I don’t have anything to learn from you.” I have heard this disturbing phrase uttered in the classroom directly twice recently. (3) Receding Horizon of Moral Imagination: While I think it’s a mistake to see empathy as perfectly achievable, the act of considering the consequences of my words and actions for other people and places is critical. Therefore, I welcome many voices from texts read to voices represented in the class to perspectives notably absent from any class. Learning in conversation with many voices requires sustained willingness to consider familiar and unfamiliar perspectives – a requirement that appears less compelling in much public discourse today as relationships between texts, persons, and ideas lean far toward the antagonistic pole rather than a desire to be moved. (4) Pressuring Quick Undisciplined Performance: It can take more time to write more succinctly, yet the pace of twitter both models and encourages quick, undisciplined performance. Respond now! The pressure is on to shortchange the discipline of public discourse for rapid response. There is an art to brevity and real-time public debate that can be learned, but right now time-pressure is relentless.  (5) Acting Out Around Power: Power always flows through teaching and learning, sometimes in more subtle and sometimes in more obvious ways. This political moment is evidencing more blatant efforts of grasping, hiding, pushing, and pulling people and ideas out of the way for the sake of accumulating power.  These five threats aren’t unique to the moment, but also describe predictable patterns of dehumanization that we can trace over time through resurgences of oppression that depend on these kinds of threats.[i] All five of these threats to learning were sharply evident in the classes I taught during the 2016 US Presidential election.  This semester, several of the same students enrolled in a different seminar class.  What’s a teacher to do to support pedagogical response to these syllabus threats to the promise of becoming?  How could I respond to these threats pedagogically, helping to transform my teaching plans into a syllabus of becoming?  As a scholar discerning which organizations and conferences to attend, writing projects to adopt, I often ask myself, “to what extent does this support my learning and becoming?” A syllabus of becoming opens this question in the arena of teaching and learning: does this assignment, set of texts, teaching practice invite becoming? A moving syllabus transforms predictable threats into invitations of becoming. I am experimenting with the following responses to the above threats to learning: A Syllabus of Becoming (1) Reading More: In my seminar this semester we are reading fewer texts, but more closely. There is much to read. And sometimes, the very texts needed to translate careful study into prophetic and pastoral speech in today’s contexts are not yet written.  So we are also creating original texts that are not eliminating, but beautifully and quite unexpectedly responding to the above threats. (2) Connecting to a Sacred Third Text: Every week, the seminar shares in common assigned reading of published texts and reading of the class itself.[ii]  In addition, I invited each student to choose a third text that they consider sacred in their context. Across the first half of the semester, students have engaged lectionary readings, other Bible texts, a musician’s canon, music in general, visual art, photography, and poetry.  Assigning a search for the sacred without predetermining the form has opened unexpected depth this semester. (3) Imagining Publics, Remembering What’s at Stake: In crafting the short weekly writing assignment, I left open the possibility that the set of texts we produce, or a subset of them, could be assembled as a devotional resource for a larger public within and/or beyond the seminary. Reading the first half of Patrick B. Reyes’s new book Nobody Cries When We Die[iii] early in the semester has provided language for remembering the real lives and loves at stake in reading and writing about human suffering and healing. An imaginary public also joins the room when each student reads their reflection aloud during class each week.  (4) Practicing Every Week: Even though the pace of reading, writing, and conversation is deliberately slowed down with less reading and shorter writing assignments, I am amazed how class time flies by. Instead of the increased resistance and fatigue with many of the same students last semester in which I decided to scale back on practice in class (we were all exhausted and shocked albeit for many reasons), in this seminar, energy is sustained at a high register. Weekly practice with each other is creating room for mutual invitation, calling out profound connections between texts and students. (5) Sharing Voice and Power: Instead of coordinated turn-taking across the arc of the semester with different student presentations different weeks, I am trying a model where everyone shares their brief reflection or summary of it every week. Instead of power-grabbing, there are palpable and powerful moments of power-sharing every week.  Politics are interwoven with personality and it doesn’t escape me that every class is its own microcosm so that what works in one class can be less successful in another and vice versa. However, I am astonished that structuring a syllabus of becoming has not only tempered palpable threats of the contemporary moment, but also made room for invitations of becoming.  When discouraged at the very real threats to learning at this historical moment, I am reminded of the power and promise of a syllabus moving toward room-making. What have you found moving in your teaching and learning in such a time as this?   [i] To interrogate this point with my students, we are reading Beverly Eileen Miltchell’s Plantations and Death Camps: Religion, Ideology, and Human Dignity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009).  While Mitchell makes plain patterns of threat that contribute to the violence of dehumanization, books like Angela D. Sims, Lynched: The Power of Memory in a Culture of Terror (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016) reminds us how taxing remembering these patterns can be, especially for more made-vulnerable communities.   [ii] The field of pastoral theology uses the metaphor of “the living human document” to point to how humans can learn to read (and misread) each other on par with published texts about human experiences.  For a brief overview of this metaphor, see Robert Dykstra’s Images of Pastoral Care: Classic Readings (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2005) or a more recent postcolonial interpretation in my “Literacies of Listening: Postcolonial Pastoral Leadership in Practice(s),” in Postcolonial Practice of Ministry: Leadership, Liturgy, and Interfaith Engagement, eds. Kwok Pui-lan and Stephen Burns (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington, 2016). [iii] Patrick B. Reyes, Nobody Cries When We Die: God, Community, and Surviving to Adulthood (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2016).

Earlier this semester, a number of faculty on our campus organized a “teach-in” to address growing concerns over the Trump administration’s recent executive orders and presidential leadership. Entitled, “Freedom from Fear: American Democracy in the Trump Era,” these sessions ran in 30-minute blocks from 9 am to 4 pm with faculty from a wide range of disciplines – sociology, political science, English, economics and criminal justice – covering topics such as Islamaphobia, right-wing populism, fascism, truth and rhetoric, sanctuary cities, and immigration. One of my Religious Studies colleagues, Dr. Jennifer T. Kaalund, and I gave a presentation titled, “Criminalizing the 'Other' - The Creation of Enemies and the Corrective of Catholic Social Teaching.” Our intent was to demonstrate how the recent executive order “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States” (signed 1/25/17), with its stipulation to “make public a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens,” echoed similar attempts to create criminals out of people considered to be “other.” In our remarks, we referenced examples from Germany’s run-up to World War II and newspaper coverage of the “Central Park Five” case in 1989. In the first case, the newspaper Der Stürmer warned of a Jewish program for world domination and published “crimes” committed by Jews. One article “Who is the Enemy?” (1934 issue) blamed Jews for destroying the social order; the tag line on every issue’s opening page read “The Jews are our misfortune!” In the second case, a number of New York newspapers ran headlines such as “Wolfpack’s Prey” and “Wild Savages” to describe the five Black and Latino boys (between ages 14 – 16) accused of raping and beating a 28-year-old woman, Trisha Meili, as she jogged in Central Park. At the time, Donald Trump purchased full-page ads in four New York newspapers calling to reinstate the death penalty (even before the boys had their day in court) to “serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.” (New York Times 5/1/89) At the end of our presentation, Dr. Kaalund and I fielded some questions from students attending the day’s sessions. One student stood up, let’s call her Anna, and commented that she was insulted and disheartened, not by the presentation, but by the reaction of students behind her who were, in her view, disruptive and disrespectful during the teach-in, making it difficult for her to learn. She voiced her concern that students were wasting an opportunity to learn something new, perhaps because the content challenged their political views and assumptions. Things got heated very quickly. One of the students sitting behind Anna, let’s call him Will, wasn’t going to be “called out” without a response. Our time was up, but he refused to comply with repeated requests to continue the conversation in another venue. I had to escort him out of the auditorium with the promise that I would give him an opportunity to speak his mind. I had no idea what to expect. When the three of us – Anna, Will and I – sat together (I made sure I was strategically positioned between them), Will admitted that he had reacted quite strongly to how I had, in his view, equated Trump’s executive action with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Once that connection was made in his mind, everything else was less than credible. He simply shut down and proceeded to carry on the conversation with his friends seated with him. Anna asked him, “Why didn’t you raise your hand when you had an opportunity to share your question with the presenters?” Will thought it would be a waste of his time and he wasn’t as invested in the process of engagement at that particular moment as was Anna. He wasn’t prepared to share publically what he was more at ease sharing privately: that religion, in particular, Catholicism, had nothing to say in response to the executive orders; that everyone has the right to their own political views; and that “you might have a Ph.D. but I can believe you’re wrong.” He heard something he didn’t want to hear after which he foreclosed the possibility of learning altogether. A number of things were learned from this encounter. First, the faculty who organized the next teach-in built in more time for questions and discussion. It was clear to us that we needed to provide a space for processing the information shared at the teach-in; it was our responsibility to model with and for students what civil engagement can look like. Second, we developed a list of norms for civil engagement that were shared at the beginning of each new teach-in session and at the onset of the Q&A period so that everyone in the room would be mindful of the commitment to listen openly and speak respectfully. Finally, we organized fewer sessions the second time around, so as not to overwhelm students with too much information all at once. While I learned from this particular teaching moment, I must admit that the entire encounter saddens me as I reflect upon it.  I did not mention the racial and gendered dynamics of power and privilege in the mix – myself and Dr. Kaalund as two women of color faculty, Anne as a student of color and Will as a white male student –  but I believe these dynamics were operative and had much to do with a willingness (or lack thereof) to listen. In fact, this is what is encountered in the religious studies and theology classroom all the time, even as we try to steer so far away from it. In addition to the content of the encounter between religion and politics, as loaded as that is already, I believe this demonstrated the need for our constant vigilance and mindfulness – indeed our moral obligation – to keep religion and politics at the forefront of our public discourse. I agree with Roger Gottlieb when he said, “…it is morally unfair and psychologically impossible to expect religious citizens to check their values at the door when they enter the town meeting of democracy. Religious authority must not directly translate into political authority, but a religious perspective has as much – or as little – of a role to play in shaping our vision of our common life as any other.” (Liberating Faith [Rowman and Littlefield 2003], xix) The question for us, in the Trump era, is whether we have the courage to sustain that necessary engagement alongside our students, in and out of the classroom.

My grandmother used to speak in adages, parables, metaphors, similes and symbols. Now I call her proclivity for language, literature, and meaning-making “wisdom-speak.” Then, I thought she was being corny. She knew her wisdom-speak was meant to teach me enough until I am ready to know more. Her adages came from bible verses, poetry lines, and quotes from novels, cultural remembrances and living life as an African American woman in the USA, born in 1887. Folks like Langston Hughes, Booker T. Washington, Sojourner Truth, Pearl Bailey, Jesus, and Sarah Vaughn were regularly invoked. Wisdom-speak is colorful, witty language - easy to recall and recite, with a depth of multiple meanings. Wisdom-speak is part of everyday conversation. It is a pithy quote or well-placed refrain woven into a conversation like salt on fried fish. It is accompanied by a hmmm or tongue click, a foot pat, a shoulder shrug or an eye roll. Wisdom-speak is a body, mind and spirit lesson. Grandmother Vyola would say, “All that is is not visible.” As a child, I thought she meant that there is more to creation than what can be witnessed with the naked eye. If knowing is only about what is directly in front of us – then we miss so very much of all that is. Learning to see the invisible is the task of knowing. Learning the ways of the wind and the saints, angels, ancestors, cherubim and seraphim; the dream world and the day dreaming world; the ways of prayer and meditation are the learning of the invisible. Then as a young adult, I decided she was talking about identity politics and the politics of domination. The genderless politics of patriarchy, with its racist undertones and dictates, considers much of “all that is” to be too much for women, many children, and most men. The truncation of imagination engineered by systems of domination and control renders the capacity of many people as inferior thus negating all that is. Poverty drastically limits opportunities for in-depth exploration – so when we meet persons who have carved out an education in the wake of social depravity we should be in awe.   As a young adult, I came to understand good teaching meant finding ways of seeing the manifestations of oppression in my own classrooms, church, society, and world. And I encountered Alice Walker and figured Grandmother Vyloa was talking about what Dr. Walker was talking about. Grandmother Vyola is resonant with novelist, poet Alice Walker’s four-part definition of a “Womanist” from In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, 1983. The first part of the definition reads in part: “….Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered ‘good’ for one.” It seems as though Vyola and Alice were cut from the same cloth. In the last few days, I have turned my attention exclusively toward preparation for school. I have my head down as I put finishing touches on my syllabi, design learning activities, schedule guest colleagues, locate films, and order art supplies. My mode is one of efficiency and my mood is closed off. I am, in my planning, working from an attitude of indubitability. I have a clarity about what I will teach, how I will teach and what my students will learn. While immersed in my preparations, grandmother whispered in my ear. Grandmother Vyola says that patent planning is not good for me or my students. She advises that the better way is to be more opened ended – like Jesus’ parables. Allow the students’ voice to affect most aspects of the course design, not just the convenient parts. Consider that you cannot see all there is to see so leave room for your own learning while you teach. Most of all, the plan that that which is revealed will be marvelous and know it is unplannable, but can be readied for – Get Ready! I have learned to pause when grandmother speaks. I take a second look at my plans and see that I have relied, a bit, on stale redundancy and a few too many current conventions. I recognize that when I start telling myself I know what will happen, what can happen in my own classroom – I am in danger of not allowing for surprise, the unexpected, or the un-expectable activity of Spirit. My grandmothers Vyola and Alice remind me that my certainty is likely a trap. If I plan for only what I know, only what I can see, only for what I can do – then I am not being womanish, not acknowledging all that is in the world. With this wisdom, I have begun to incorporate more ways of acknowledging the hegemonic forces which hide in our midst. I have adjusted and added ways which invoke the freedoms of learning for my students – freedoms like their own questioning, curiosity, and concerns being integrated into the full length of the course.   School starts the week before Labor Day --- I am less certain of my plans and better for it.