Emancipatory Education Speaker Series

Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings (Twitter: @gjladson) is the former Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and faculty affiliate in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She was the 2005-2006 president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Ladson-Billings’ research examines the pedagogical practices of teachers who are successful with African American students. She also investigates Critical Race Theory applications to education. She is the author of the critically acclaimed books The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children and Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms, and numerous journal articles and book chapters.

She is the former editor of the American Educational Research Journal and a member of several editorial boards. Her work has won numerous scholarly awards including the H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship, the NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the Palmer O. Johnson outstanding research award. During the 2003-2004 academic year, she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. In fall of 2004, she received the George and Louise Spindler Award from the Council on Anthropology and Education for significant and ongoing contributions to the field of educational anthropology. She holds honorary degrees from Umeå University (Umeå Sweden), University of Massachusetts-Lowell, the University of Alicante (Alicante, Spain), the Erickson Institute (Chicago), and Morgan State University (Baltimore).  She is a 2018 recipient of the AERA Distinguished Research Award, and she was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2018.

As a sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist, Jonathan Rosa's (Twitter: @DrJonathanRosa) research theorizes the co-naturalization of language and race as a key feature of modern governance. Specifically, he analyzes the interplay between youth socialization, raciolinguistic formations, and structural inequity in urban contexts. Dr. Rosa collaborates with local communities to track these phenomena and develop tools for understanding and eradicating the forms of disparity to which they correspond. This community-based approach to research, teaching, and service reflects a vision of scholarship as a platform for imagining and enacting more just societies. Dr. Rosa's research has been published in scholarly journals such as Harvard Educational Review, American Ethnologist, American Anthropologist, Language in Society, and the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. In addition to his formal scholarly research, Dr. Rosa is an ongoing participant in public intellectual projects focused on race, education, language, (im)migration, and U.S. Latinxs, and his work has been featured in media outlets such as MSNBC, NPR, CNN, and Univision.

- Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism, Elizabeth Povinelli

- Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm, Yarimar Bonilla & Marisol LeBrón, editors

- Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis, Katherine McKittrick, editor

- Born Out of Struggle: Critical Race Theory, School Creation, and the Politics of Interruption, David Stovall

- Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Antiblackness, and School in San Francisco, Savannah Shange

John B. King Jr. (Twitter: @JohnBKing) is the president and CEO of The Education Trust, a national nonprofit organization that seeks to identify and close opportunity and achievement gaps, from preschool through college. King served in President Barack Obama’s cabinet as the 10th U.S. Secretary of Education. In tapping him to lead the U.S. Department of Education, President Obama called King “an exceptionally talented educator,” citing his commitment to “preparing every child for success” and his lifelong dedication to education as a teacher, principal, and leader of schools and school systems.

- School Discipline and Climate Guide Produced with the National Women’s Law Center: "And they cared: How to Create Better, Safer Learning Environments for Girls of Color" by Kayla Patrick, Adaku Onyeka-Crawford, and Nancy Duchesneau

- Social, Emotional, and Academic Development Report: Social, Emotional, and Academic Development Through an Equity Lens

- Inequities in Advanced Coursework: What’s Driving Them and What Leaders Can Do by Kayla Patrick, Allison Rose Socol, and Ivy Morgan

- Teacher Diversity Policy Scan: Is Your State Prioritizing Teacher Diversity and Equity?

Leslie D. Gonzales (Twitter: @ldgonzales1) is an associate professor in the Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Learning unit at Michigan State University. She also serves as an affiliate faculty member in the Center for Gender in a Global Context and Chicano/Latinx studies. Since February 2020, Gonzales has served as the Faculty Excellence Advocate for her College—a role in which she brings research, theory, and practice together to advocate for a more just and inclusive academic culture.

As a working-class-Latina-first-generation-college-student-turned academic, who earned all three of her academic degrees from Hispanic Serving Institutions, Gonzales is committed to building an academic profession that honors the contributions that scholars of Color bring to the academy. To this end, in her research, Gonzales focuses on the interplay of evaluation practices, departmental, disciplinary, and organizational cultures, and faculty experiences and outcomes. Mainly concerned with the evaluation of scholars' knowledge production, Gonzales studies how hiring, tenure, and promotion norms and practices can marginalize scholars of Color, especially scholars of Color educated in historically under-resourced institutions (e.g., community colleges, Minority Serving Institutions). Gonzales has published work in several venues, but in recent years, she has moved her research into action and often works with individual faculty members, departments, or entire colleges as they strive to unsettle exclusionary practices and norms to foster more inclusive workplace settings. Much of this work underpins Gonzales's research in Aspire, a multi-million-dollar project sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Gonzales is the daughter of Thomas W. Gonzales and Louise D. Gonzales, to whom she owes her love of learning. Gonzales is partnered with Ruben Flores, Jr., who is her best friend and greatest support. Finally, Gonzales is the mother of a fiercely smart and fun daughter, Sudeshna, who keeps her grounded and inspired to work towards a just future.

- Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza. Aunt Lute Books.

- Bernal, D. D., & Villalpando, O. (2002). An apartheid of knowledge in academia: The struggle over the" legitimate" knowledge of faculty of color. Equity & Excellence in Education, 35(2), 169-180.

- Burciaga, R. & Tavares, A., (2021). Coraje y amor: Cultivating leadership through cultural intuition. In M. Martinez & S. Méndez-Morse (Eds)., Latinas leading Schools, (pp. 53-65), Information Age Publishing.

- Clauset, A. et al., (2016). Systematic inequality and hierarchy in faculty hiring networks. DOI: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005

- Dotson, K. (2011). Tracking epistemic violence, tracking practices of silencing. Hypatia, 26(2), 236-257.

- Finkelstein, M., Conley, V., Schuster, J. (2016). Taking the measure of faculty diversity. TIAA Institute Full Report available here: https://www.tiaainstitute.org/sites/default/files/presentations/2017-02/taking_the_measure_of_faculty_diversity.pdf [pdf]

- https://epistemicjusticeiarslce2018.wordpress.com/resources-on-epistemic-injustice/

- Gonzales, L. D. (2013). Faculty sensemaking and mission creep: Interrogating institutionalized ways of knowing and doing legitimacy. The Review of Higher Education, 36(2), 179-209.

- Gonzales, L. D. (2015). An acción approach to affirmative action: Hispanic-serving institutions as spaces for fostering epistemic justice. Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, 9(1).

- Gonzales, L. D. (2018). Subverting and minding boundaries: The intellectual work of women. The Journal of Higher Education, 89(5), 677-701.

- hooks, b. (2014). Teaching to transgress. Routledge.

- Liera, R. (2020). Moving beyond a culture of niceness in faculty hiring to advance racial equity. American Educational Research Journal, 57(5), 1954-1994.

- Ortega, M. (2016). In-between: Latina feminist phenomenology, multiplicity, and the self. State of University New York Press.

- Settles, I. H., Jones, M. K., Buchanan, N. T., & Dotson, K. (2020). Epistemic exclusion: Scholar (ly) devaluation that marginalizes faculty of color. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.

Fabiola (Twitter: @FabiBagulaPhD) is the Senior Director of the San Diego County Office of Education's Equity Department, which has designed a one-year model of partnership and support for equity teams from school sites and districts to learn, explore, and lead through issues of equity. We believe that leadership comes from the inside out, and we pay close attention to our own personal development and understanding and, simultaneously, build skillset for practical application. Fabiola is also an adjunct faculty in the SJSU Department of Educational Leadership.

Rebeca Burciaga (Twitter: @qvo) is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership & Chicana and Chicano Studies. Her research is nested in the nepantla (borderlands) of Education and Chicana/o Studies and focuses on the schooling experiences of Chicanx and Latinx students, families, communities, educators, and leaders. Her current project focuses on culturally sustaining approaches to school leadership. Dr. Burciaga’s areas of expertise include qualitative methodologies (testimonio & ethnography), critical theories (critical race theory & Chicana feminist theory), and critical pedagogies. Her research has been supported by highly competitive funding including the Spencer Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.

Melissa A. Martinez (Twitter: @mamartinezphd) is an associate professor in the Education and Community Leadership Program at Texas State University. She is a native of the Rio Grande Valley, and a former bilingual elementary school teacher and school counselor. She earned her Ph.D. in Educational Administration from The University of Texas at Austin in 2010 and earned her B.A. (1998) and M.Ed. (2002) at The University of Texas at Brownsville. Her research focuses on equity and access issues along the P-16 education pipeline, particularly in relation to: 1) improving college readiness, college access, and fostering a college going culture for underserved communities, 2) the preparation of equity-oriented school leaders who understand and can meet the needs of underserved communities, and 3) the preparation and retention of faculty of color. Through her research and teaching, Dr. Martinez is committed to preparing future educational leaders who are thoughtful, critical, and reflective in their practice and adhere to the tenets of social justice.

Sylvia Mendez-Morse is a retired Associate Professor in Educational Leadership Program in the Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership at Texas Tech University. Dr. Mendez-Morse conducts qualitative studies, phenomenological approaches primarily on issues concerning gender, women of color, and Latinas educational leaders.

Ana, most recently the principal of the Rafael Hernández PreK-8 Dual Language School in Roxbury, has worked for 26 years as an urban bilingual educator dedicating her life’s work to dismantling systems of oppression. Ana is a graduate of Harvard University Graduate School of Education and began working in the Boston Public Schools in 1999. Ana joined the Hernández school in 2011 after a national search by the Hernández community, and she became Principal in April 2012. Ana’s school leadership experience has focused on increasing the learning of students of color in a bilingual setting, partnering with the school’s teachers and families to provide access to high-quality bilingual public education for all students. Ana also recently began her doctoral studies.

- Burciaga, R., & Tavares, A. (2006). Our pedagogy of sisterhood: A testimonio. In D. Delgado Bernal, A. C. Elenes, F. Godinez, & S. Villenas (Eds.), Chicana/Latina education in everyday life: Feminista perspectives on pedagogy and epistemology (pp. 133–142). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

- Employing Multilevel Intersectionality in Educational Research: Latino Identities, Contexts, and College Access from Anne-Marie Núñez First Published March 1, 2014 Review Article https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X14522320

- Intersections: The Simultaneity of Race, Gender and Class in Organization Studies from Evangelina Holvino First published: 06 May 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0432.2008.00400.x

- Intersectional what? Social divisions, intersectionality and levels of analysis from Floya Anthias First Published October 31, 2012 Research Art https://doi.org/10.1177/1468796812463547

- Martinez, M.A., Marquez, J., Cantú, Y., & Rocha, P. (2016). Ternura y tenacidad: Testimonios of Latina school leaders. Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, 10(3), 11-29.

- Martinez, M. A., Rivera, M., & Marquez, J. (2019). Learning from the experiences and development of Latina School Leaders. Educational Administration Quarterly, 56(3), 472-498. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X19866491

- Mendez-Morse, S. E. (2004). Constructing mentors: Latina educational leaders’ role models and mentors. Educational Administration Quarterly, 40, 561–590.

- Méndez-Morse, S., Murakami, E. T., Byrne-Jiménez, M., & Hernandez, F. (2015). Mujeres in the principal’s office: Latina school leaders. Journal of Latinos and Education, 14(3), 171–187.

E. J. R. David, Ph.D. (Twitter: @ejrdavid) is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Alaska Anchorage, with his primary duties being with the PhD Program in Clinical-Community Psychology that has a Rural, Cultural, and Indigenous Emphasis. Dr. David has published theoretical and empirical works on Racial or Ethnic Minority Psychology, including four books: Brown Skin, White Minds: Filipino -/ American Postcolonial Psychology (2013; Information Age Publishing), Internalized Oppression: The Psychology of Marginalized Groups (2014; Springer Publishing), The Psychology of Oppression (2017; Springer Publishing), and We Have Not Stopped Trembling Yet (2018; SUNY Press).

- An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

- W.K. Kellogg Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation

- Brown Skin, White Minds: Filipino -/ American Postcolonial Psychology by E.J.R. David

- We Have Not Stopped Trembling Yet by E.J.R. David