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Academic freedom and the work of CARE

Over the past decade, CARE has had to negotiate the constraints on academic freedom across various spaces of our academic-activist-community interventions.


The constraints on academic freedom of course differ in the form of questions asked, the tenor of the conversations, the scrutiny that the work of CARE is subjected to, and the arguments that are offered justifying the various forms of control that our work at the Center is subjected to.


As a Center located within the University, CARE negotiates the structures within Universities as well as the broader structures in nation states, regions, and globally in its various projects of engaging and interrogating structures. Universities often are extensions of the hegemonic structures, with the discursive spaces of articulation shaped by these structures. Who can and can't speak at/in/from Universities is often dictated by the normative frameworks that are circulated by these structures.


Whereas some of these strategies of control are explicitly threatening, with references to consequences (and actual consequences) for non-compliance with the diktats of/from the structure, other forms of control are calibrated, with rewards thrown in alongside conversations on funding and future possibilities.


Our work with the culture-centered approach (CCA) foregrounds subaltern voice as the anchor to healing and to societal transformation that enables the wellbeing of those at the margins of society. When these voices from the margins speak, they threaten the dominant formations that constitute hegemonic systems. They make visible the taken-for-granted assumptions, often rendering evident the violence of erasure that is written into their configuration.


Subaltern voice, when represented and recognized through ongoing works of cultural-centering, render incoherent the hegemonic cultural logics, including the logics of civility and appropriateness that form the structures of Universities. These voices are reminders of the colonial project that Universities participate in, as sites of knowledge production that legitimize and reproduce colonialism.


Arguing that voice forms the heart of individual and community wellbeing, projects of the CCA seek avenues to foreground the voices of the margins. The creation of communicative infrastructures for the subaltern voices forms the basis of culture-centered collaborations.


One of the first steps to building such infrastructures is to interrogate and resist the forces that constrain academic freedom. 

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