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Reflecting on the final week that @DrIbram and I are SIS faculty colleagues, I wanted mainly to thank the two SIS faculty who introduced me to Prof. Kendi in Oct 2016. 1/
In 2016, we created faculty research clusters to provide some funds to generate cross-fertilization in the school, and @maliniranga and Jordanna Matlon helped start one on Ethnographies of Empire https://www.american.edu/sis/research/clusters.cfm#ethnographies-of-empire 2/
They invited @dribram to speak on his book Stamped from the Beginning. I thought I should be a supportive dean for my then junior colleagues and attended. I knew nothing about the author or his book. (If you haven’t read Stamped, you should.) 3/
The talk and discussion were amazing. I read the book and got in touch with Prof Kendi to tell him I was going to find a way to hire him. @maliniranga and Prof Matlon were extremely encouraging, which I really needed to hear. Why? 4/
A too common response initially was: why is he a fit for an international affairs school that offers a professional Master’s degree? Doesn’t he study race in America? But of course that reflected deeply held understandings of where race fits in our university curriculum. 5/
What do we teach in our policy schools? Traditional IR theory, some econ, maybe diplo history, methods, program evaluation, functional/area expertise. Is the study of race, gender, class central to the curriculum? It is in parts of my school, but not everywhere. 6/
Colleagues like @maliniranga and Matlon point our attention to too-often understudied topics. From (the now tenured, yay!) Prof Ranganathan, I have learned a great deal about the impact of race, gender, class, and caste on water and housing inequalities https://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/malini.cfm 7/
If you don’t already know about Prof Matlon, you can read her piece on Black Masculinity under Racial Capitalism here http://bostonreview.net/race/jordanna-matlon-black-masculinity-under-racial-capitalism 8/
What have @maliniranga @dribram + Matlon done most for me? Taken me far outside my comfort zone. That’s what learning is all about. I have a long way to go. It’s not just reading one article or one book or attending one talk. Or taking one course. It requires sustained effort. 9/
I’m grateful that @maliniranga and Matlon introduced me to @dribram, and I wish him and his family well as he continues his important work at BU. 10/
And I hope that when we talk about training future leaders in our policy schools, we broaden the scope as @MeredithLoken and @kelly_zvobgo have written recently in @ForeignPolicy https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/19/why-race-matters-international-relations-ir/ w/ lots of great responses. We have a lot of work to do. 11/11
