[00:00:00]

 

[theme music]

 

Sara Khan: Hello, and welcome to the first episode of the Decolonising Education mini series. I'm your host for today's episode, Sara Khan, your NUS Vice-President for Liberation and Equality, and my pronouns are she/they. Today I’m joined by a wonderful guest from Goldsmiths Students Union - would you like to introduce yourself?

 

Sara Bafo: Hi, my name is Sara Bafo, pronouns she/her. I'm currently the Welfare Liberation Officer at Goldsmiths Students Union.

 

[00:00:31]

 

Sara Khan: Really lovely to have you, Sara. I'm quite amused by the fact that we have two Saras on today's episode, I love that for us. But, yeah, so in this series, we're gonna be hoping to shed light essentially on what decolonising education might mean, and what it might look like in practice. Decolonising Education is a mini series within NUS Scotland's Developing Ideas podcast, which explores new and challenging perspectives within the student movement. If you have any thoughts after listening to the episode, please feel free to send them our way, either to @NUSScotland on Twitter or on Instagram. This episode is called 'Decolonising Education Past and Present', and today we're going to be chatting a bit about the history, the present climate, and the meanings of decolonisation work. So the first question I’ve got today, which is an incredibly broad one, but hopefully gives us opportunity to get into some different perspectives on this conversation, is simply, in a sentence or two, how would you define the idea of decolonising education? Why is it important, and to whom?

 

Sara Bafo: Yeah, as you said it’s a quite broad question, but decolonising education allows us to confront how white supremacy, imperialism, and colonialism, continues to manifest within our academic institutions. It allows us to reframe and challenge our ideas of knowledge production as a whole, and begin to understand how British universities and schools at the very foundations are connected with colonial views, and white supremacy. It's kind of like beyond adding black and POC scholars into these like inherently violent spaces. It's about questioning and challenging the current method of teaching and learning, and yeah, and it's about questioning the Western canon, that’s very much essential to universities and education system.

 

[00:02:16]

 

Sara Khan: I mean, that’s like a really amazing, succinct answer to start off with. Thank you for that, Sara. Yeah, I want to pick up on some really interesting things that you said in there about kind of like structures of colonialism, within our education, and it was also really cool how you talked about kind of schools and the broader education system, as well as just universities. I think a lot of kind of our membership have been wondering how decolonising education applies to colleges, or applies to schools, or even say you know, like so-called WP universities and post-92s and that kind of thing, cause this conversation, it can be so rooted in kind of elite institutions and Russell groups, right. How do you kind of feel about - I mean could you speak a little bit to the idea that these colonial structures are inherent, kind of throughout our education, not just Russell group institutions?

 

Sara Bafo: Yeah. It's - I think it adds to what I said about like the Western canon, it's looking at that how the British empire, which is like it's based on colonialism and violence, it's inherent to the British education system as a whole. So it's not just, as you said, it's not just looking at like elite institutions and universities, it's saying that the British empire is very much interconnected to our educational system and our learning process. So our learning process, from a very young age, is taught to centre the Western canon, and everything else is just an add-on, into the reading list. So yeah, it's saying that the Western canon is the truth, and the Western knowledge is the truth, rather than like African philosophy, and philosophy in the Global South.

 

[00:03:45]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, absolutely. I think that, so from the perspective of kind of like - yeah, the perspectives that are centred in our education, that’s, yeah, that’s relevant to kind of all institutions, isn’t it. Amazing. What do you think about this kind of question of who decolonisation is important to, and why it's important?

 

Sara Bafo: I really like that question, and I was thinking about it, who is it important to? I think it's important to everyone. It’s important to people who are systematically oppressed under these institutions, and it's also important to people who also reproduce these systems without knowing. It's because, as I said, it's so inherent into our education system, that you don’t question what we're taught. You don’t question what we reproduce. I think it's important to everyone, and especially it's crucial for people who are systematically oppressed under these institutions from a very young age. And it isn't the minute we enter the universities or these elite institutions, it's as soon as primary school, and what’s taught in primary school.

 

[00:04:42]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Sometimes kind of in recent years getting into kind of this language of decolonisation, and that kind of framework of anti-racist work, it's really wild, isn’t it, like when you think about - when you kind of reflect on your childhood in these institutions, and you reflect on the extent to which, like, as a person of colour you normalise whiteness as well. So that’s, yeah, that’s a really interesting answer. I also think a lot about how it applies to the - as you said very aptly, like the groups who are oppressed under that system. I think a lot kind of about who that means and what that means, because I did some work kind of last year, and continue to do some work on the intersection between queer politics and anti-racist politics, and that question of kind of colonial power, and coloniality and how it manifests, and how it affects queer people, is a really interesting one, isn’t it.

 

Sara Bafo: No, yeah. I was gonna say it is really interesting to think about coloniality and queer literature, and also looking at... colonialise - I can't say that word now! But it is interesting to look at how colonialism impacts racialised bodies, and the queer folks, and yeah, been doing a lot of research over the summer about that.

 

[00:05:58]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, me too actually! [laughs] I’ve been doing some dissertation research, and I came across this essay, I don’t know if you’ve read it, 'The Coloniality of Gender' by Maria Lugones, I think that’s who you pronounce her name, I hope. It's really good, I - while the first kind of segment is like a little bit difficult to access, cause I think it like presumes previous knowledge, but she makes some really interesting arguments about basically like, you know the difference between colonialism and coloniality first off, where in kind of coloniality is, I guess more about the ideology of colonialism, and the function of kind of binaries, and she talks about how like the coloniality of binaries, of binary gender, is, you know, kind of something that Western imperialists imposed on like various societies throughout the world, from like Native American tribes to like West African tribes, where perceptions of gender and womanhood, but also kind of like queerness, family, relationships, were all kind of very different from this patriarchal structure, and then that’s something that was imposed on a lot of societies by colonialism. But in any case, I kind of want to ask a bit more of a question about you now, if that’s OK. I’d be really interested to know some more about kind of your involvement with decolonisation work, like what that’s been. How you got involved, like why decolonisation, and how did you personally come to that?

 

Sara Bafo: My involvement in decolonising education has varied over the years. From being involved in co-organising a reading group with black women and non-binary folk, working in youth centres and occupying a building for 137 days. I will start with being with GARA, Goldsmiths Anti-racist Action Group, because that had the most known structural impact. For more context, a few of us, black and brown students, occupied the building at Goldsmiths University, which is known as Deptford Town Hall, which is a crucial building. This building  has slave statues, also the senior management team was situated in that building. For us to occupy that building had very much a symbolic and strategic impact. It was to say that this is a town hall that a lot of community members, which has - the area has a huge Afro-Caribbean population, should have access to this building, especially because Deptford Town Hall has a historical context surrounding it. When we occupied the building, we knew that we had to come up with like practical demands, and we came up with 12 demands, and in varied form, having Palestinian scholarships implemented, because in that very year the Palestinian scholarships was gonna be stopped, from also saying that community members need to have access to this building, because Goldsmiths were refusing for them to have access for many years. Before 2004 the community members had access to the building, but Goldsmiths Student Union bought the building and then refused access. Yeah, so I think it was - it was a magical movement, because it wasn’t about the demands, it was about organising beyond the institution. It was about who can we produce knowledge, how can we distribute knowledge to community members, and also community members distribute knowledge towards us. And it was kind of like disrupting this very like elitist power dynamics between students, student organisers and the wider community, and to say that our organising has to start off with grass roots. It has to speak to people beyond these structures, beyond these walls. So yeah, it was a space we wanted to cultivate, that reimagined new ways of organising and new ways of existing. We had a communal dinners with community members, we had over like 137 events. We had events with community organisers, we had events with activists, we had events with academics. So essentially these events was about how can we come together, as a whole, to say that we have 12 demands, but these 12 demands are demands that can help us survive with an institution, but let's begin to have a conversation about what is beyond these 12 demands, what’s beyond what we're talking about, which is institutional racism. Yeah, that was the main organising, and that happened last year, which definitely involved a lot of violence, of course with the work we were trying to do, and the work of like imagining new ways of existing, had consequences from the institution. We experienced mental, physical violence. We were taken to court, we were threatened with police and bailiffs. A lot of the times we questioned 'why are we doing this?', and then we sat down and said 'this is about community', this is about community building. But yeah, there was - not to romanticise the eternal issues that occurred, which happens in every movement, but the one goal was to have these 12 demands fulfilled, not just for the current students but students who are going to enter these inherently violent spaces that we’ve already spoken about. We speak about decolonising education for many years, but students are still entering a system that deems them as subjects, deems then as non-worthy. And I think for us it was how can we protect and centre black and brown students who are going to enter these spaces, and not experience the same violence we did. That’s the occupation I was involved in last year. There’s still a lot of problems that’s occurring with trying to make the institution fulfil the 12 demands. I've had a tweet a few weeks ago which said that the minute your organising becomes committees and working groups, then essentially it won't go anywhere, it'll become institutionalised, and I think that’s what’s currently happening with GARA. However, we are still trying to fight for these demands, as I said earlier, these 12 demands are beyond the people who organised the occupation. It's about current students and students who are going to enter Goldsmiths. Yeah, that’s the organising I did. Why did I - why - what was your question about, why did I... ?

 

[00:11:29]

 

Sara Khan: Why did you get involved, I guess. And I guess like part of the logic for that question is, how kind of decolonisation as a framework became something that was important to, you know, your activism, like exactly like you’ve just spoken about?

 

Sara Bafo: I don’t - I don’t think decolonising like education, and the framework around it, started the minute I entered academia. I think I was a part of it, but just didn’t put the name to it. However, I started it because, and I became involved in it, simply because it was about survival. As I said earlier, like these spaces in institutions are inherently violent, and if I didn’t become involved, I was scared to become complicit in a system that I knew will have an impact, a detrimental impact on my community, and the community I’m trying to organise with. So again for me it was more of survival. I know - I knew I was going to be in this space for the next few years, especially, you know, in the context of like universities. I knew I was going to be in it for a few years, so it was a matter of, how can I now cultivate a community within these institutions and within these spaces? But before - before I entered university I did work in youth centres, and that was about like redistributing like any resources I had to my community members. Again, I think - I think you can decolonise education beyond universe - in the university context. As I said earlier, it's about how can we decolonise a system, a structure that has colonial and imperial roots.

 

[00:13:02]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, 100 percent. Colonialism is everywhere, isn’t it, so sometimes it can be quite difficult to go into these conversations about decolonising education, and kind of like act like decolonising the institution is something that you can do in kind of this individualised or focused way, when really it's about the entire structure of the society that we live in, isn’t it.

 

Sara Bafo: It's also to know that becoming a part of this process is a lifelong process of organising, and to say that it doesn’t end the minute you leave university, it doesn’t end the minute you leave high education, it's to continue to build the foundations of doing anti-racist work, or doing decolonialising work.

 

[00:13:41]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's so important to think of it as a process, isn’t it, cause I think sometimes we get so bogged down in this idea of what a decolonised education system looks like, and I think that question is not only one that we can't really answer, but one that it isn’t necessary, actually, to answer, because I think that more important to - you know, to use perhaps a cliché, more important is the journey than the process. But kind of on that, in terms of kind of what you were saying about GARA and the occupation - first off, like the work that you guys did was absolutely incredible, and last year, when I was able to, I remember like visiting London and visiting Deptford Town Hall while you guys were in occupation, and I was so incredibly like moved and struck by what you had done with that space. And I think a lot about that space when I think about decolonising education, because for me, like what you were doing, of like reclaiming that space as space that, you know, symbolically and very materially was used - is used to perpetuate racist violence, the work of like reclaiming that space, opening that space, using it for community education, using it for nourishment and this kind of really very democratic learning space - like not democratic in the way that we think perhaps of Western democracy, buy like democratic in like an actual - like in a collective sense, you know? And I think that, as much as, exactly as you’ve identified sometimes when we talk about the histories of our struggles, we can fall into, you know, the trap of romanticisation, what really struck me about that space, and being there for the brief time that I was, is that for me that’s what decolonisation - decolonising education is all about, it's about the joy and the community and the openness, and the collectivity of knowledge, and that was just something that I think that very beautifully, you were putting into practice in the face of this colonial violence that you spoke about.

 

Sara Bafo: And as you said, it's about collectivity, right. It was about centring radical imagination into what we do and into our organising, and to say we have to reimagine a new space, to continue to force the university to fulfil our demands. Yeah, GARA was about having the central 12 demands, but it was also beyond the demands. It was how to cultivate a community of radical imagination, which did happen. And that’s not for me to romanticise what happen internally, but it was to say that we came together as a community, regardless of different opinions and different ways of organising. Because there isn’t one central way to organise, or to occupy a building. And to be honest - to be quite frank, we didn’t know we were going to occupy the building for 137 days. We thought it would last two weeks, three weeks, and the institution would fulfil our demands. For us it was acknowledging that mistakes would happen, but at the same time, this organising, this occupying a building is beyond the students who began it, and it's beyond the students who decided to do a protest against institutional racism, and against Goldsmiths as the whole.

 

[00:16:52]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, again what’s so amazing about it is that like, you know, in any kind of like occupation or action of that kind, and I’ve definitely like had my fair share of direct actions which have, you know, had their internal issues and stuff, but I think like the real beauty of it, and I think the thing which, in my opinion, is decolonisation put into practice, is centring those principles of like community and openness and transparency in your practice. Oh yeah, I also want to, kind of on that, go back to what you said, which I thought was really interesting about, you know, this idea of like bureaucracy, and working groups, and stuff like that, and how, you know, we can't decolonise in that way. I think that’s, you know, it's so true, because those are - those are tools of colonialism and they’re forms of coloniality, like kind of, like I alluded to before with the queerness of binaries, I really understand coloniality as this process, kind of in Western culture, right, of labelling and taxonomising and dividing, and putting bureaucratic processes in place, and putting things in boxes, and stuff like that. That’s so much part of the essence of what coloniality is for me, in a world which, you know, frankly is - it doesn’t make any sense to do that in, because people are complex and things are complex. I really think about that - those kind of things as part of the impulse of colonialism, so to me when I think about those kind of processes in our institutions, I really do think of them as a form of violence.

 

Sara Bafo: Yeah, I agree. And it's something that I’ve been rethinking, especially working in the student union, where you have to sit and work in groups and you have to see - sit on committees, and to say that the work will not be done by the institution. The institution benefits from these - perpetuating violence upon systematically oppressed people. So I think again it's not expected for an institution that benefits from structural - structurally oppressing groups, again, it's to say that these institutions will not be a part of the liberation process. But yeah, it's to say that, we can’t wait for these structures to change, or reform these structures, and they say that abolition has to be at the heart of our organising.

 

[00:19:04]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, 100 percent. Amazing! So, moving on to the next question, then. A lot of these questions are, you know, inter-related, so it's more than OK that we're having more of a conversation than following a format, because - cause that would be slightly hypocritical, probably, wouldn't it. My next question is, our education system was founded on the legacy of colonial violence, that part isn’t a question, it's a fact. But how is colonial violence present and active in our education system now? And I think we’ve kind of begun to, you know, allude to that a little bit. You talked about it in education broadly, not just in universities, and also kind of we’ve talked about coloniality a little bit, but would you like to speak to that a bit more?

 

Sara Bafo: Yeah. The knowledge production constructed in our education system continues to pay little to no attention to like indigenous knowledge, knowledge produced in the Global South, African nation. These system centre, as I said earlier, the Western canon as true, and anything else is an add-on. The British empire and European imperialism is founded on white supremacist ideologies. which are soaked into our education system, so as you said, right, our education system was founded on the legacy of colonialism, and colonial violence is not a matter of a question, it's a matter of a fact to say that our very education system is reinforced by colonial violence. And again, I think the discipline, as I said earlier, we were speaking about anthropology as a discipline, it was known as the handmaidens of colonialism. We need to discuss eugenics, anthropology played a massive role on the genocide, and present violence of black and brown folks. So again, it's - and I think that’s one discipline in a discipline that - many disciplines that’s very foundation is built on colonial violence. So I think again, when we think about colonialism, it's to say that it's soaked into our education system. I don’t know if that actually directly answers your question.

 

[00:20:53]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, it definitely does, and I think that that’s like a huge part of it, because I think - and I’d be interested in kind of like your thoughts on this, like on what the distinction might be, first off, between an idea of diversifying the curriculum, and an idea of decolonising the curriculum, and again I know that it can be difficult to talk about 'the curriculum' in isolation from systems, but could you speak a little bit to the - what the difference might be between diversifying and decolonising in that context?

 

Sara Bafo: I think diversifying the curriculum would just be adding a few black to brown scholars into the reading list, without talking about the very structural foundation of the discipline or the curriculum, while decolonialising axes the question of what is the canon, what is the truth. what is knowledge production? So I think decolonialising the curriculum goes at the very roots of the curriculum and the education system, whilst diversifying the education system is just putting a bandage over like a wider structural issue, an institutional issue. And I don’t know what’s your thoughts on that.

 

[00:21:50]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, I mean I completely agree. I think it can be quite a difficult thing to think about the specificity of, but like, you know, one of the things that I like immediately kind of clock onto, or think about now, in a classroom, is, you know, how those dynamics of power manifest in the classroom for example, so, you know, what is my lecturer's background, and what kind of position of power and knowledge do they like occupy, and you know, who do they pick to speak, and of those students who's taking up space, you know, and that kind of thing. I think about that like a lot now, like I actually have to have conversations with myself a lot of the time where I have this instinct of telling myself that I’m speaking too much, or that I’m taking too much space, and now I try and like stop myself and be like 'No, actually you should take up space'.

 

Sara Bafo: That just reminds me of one of my only classes I’ve ever had in Goldsmiths, which kind of disrupted the current pedagogy of like teaching and learning, and it was with [Gal Lewis? 00:22:48], and the class was about the black feminist queries. And how she even structured the classroom was in her standing up and just speaking to us and teaching us and distributing knowledge, it was us coming as a circle, and like disrupting the power dynamics of like the teacher and student. It was saying that we're all learning in this very room, which was amazing. So I think again it's decolonising the curriculum and education as changing the current pedagogy of how we are taught in a education system. Which is [co-opt? 00:23:13], right, like I think when we look at how many black professors we have in that education system, if we look at how many lecturers we have in these universities, especially in these like Russell universities, it's not that many. And then we must question ourselves, what structural good is adding a few black and brown scholars into the reading list, if we do not even have the scholars in the room, or we don’t even have the scholars in our education system?

 

[00:23:35]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, 100 percent. The question of the lecture formats an interesting one, isn’t it, cause increasingly I think that I hate lectures. Because the idea of someone - like the image that you painted of someone standing above you and kind of distributing knowledge was quite powerful one, isn’t it, because that is what the lecture format is about. And I think that there are ways that perhaps that could be troubled, or subverted, depending on who occupies that position, or who occupies that space. But inherently it's a dy - like a power dynamic of, you know, a teacher purporting to have superior knowledge to a student, right, and to be importing that knowledge on the student, and the student doesn’t take an active role or process in that. And of course the lecture format is quite popular in the Western education system for that reason, I think.

 

Sara Bafo: It's also to say that the student can also distribute knowledge, right, the student can also teach the lecturer, or the person who’s like leading or facilitating the classroom. Cause I think that’s really important about like changing like the pedagogy of that classroom, and taking a much more like holistic way of teaching and learning in the education system, but as you said, like the current Western way of teaching isn’t that right, it's centring one person. And usually it is very much a white lecturer or a white scholar teaching students, so it's like disrupting the way knowledge is produced, and the was knowledge is distributed.

 

[00:24:51]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I also think a lot about the place of different types of knowledge, right, within the institution, and what types of knowledge are privileged over others. The knowledge of lived experience simply doesn’t have like a place in the institution, and that’s like a real struggle, cause like you’re in a classroom, and - I think back to this module I was taking in my first attempt at third year, that was about early 20th century South Asian literature of the Indian independence struggle, or like purportedly that was what it was about, so I was quite excited for it, but ultimately, a white lecturer led that class, half of the texts were Kipling and Forester rather than Indians writing about themselves, but beyond that, like there was no place in that classroom for like me and the maybe two other Asians in the class to talk about our lived experience of, you know - if we're talking about the early 20th century, then I’m literally talking about the experiences of like my grandparents. But there was no space in that classroom for me to be like, it makes me feel less than human that a white man is standing at the front of the classroom and pretending that he knows more about like partition, which my grandparents literally went through, and there’s no space for me to share that knowledge of my ancestors in that space.

 

Sara Bafo: Yeah. It goes back to what we said about like, earlier, how whiteness is the canon, right, like whiteness is the objective truth in these educational spaces, and to say - and that’s really interesting that you said that lived experiences are not the truth. Our lived experiences are not incorporated into our educational process. I know myself, I studied anthropology, and a lot of times when anthropologists were doing ethnographic fieldwork in East Africa, specifically Somalia, I could never say my lived experiences. But again, it's a true - as whiteness as the truth, as whiteness as the central canon of our education process. And that’s the experience of a lot of black and brown folks who enter higher education, and education as a whole.

 

[00:26:48]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, definitely. And it's difficult, and it's a painful experience, isn’t it. Moving on like a little bit to talk about kind of the root of this movement, or this framing, I’d like to talk a little bit about where the idea of decolonising education came from, and to discuss, kind of - you know, the amazing stuff that we're talking about now, and particularly the amazing stuff that GARA did in the occupation, but to put that in kind of a context of a history of the movement to decolonise education. How much do you know about the history of the movement?

 

Sara Bafo: Going back to your question, I think decolonising education is grounded in African philosophy and African nations. And I think it is important to say contemporary movements in decolonising the university, builds upon its own histories of resistance, and emancipation, which is grounded in like a really specific context. For example, Thomas [Ankara? 00:27:41], who is a revolutionary leader in Burkina Faso. He sought to basically fundamentally reverse and change the structural social inequalities, inherited by French colonial borders and leaders. So again, I think it's about, how can we rethink, and also understand that decolonising education is beyond Britain and the US, and basically the US and like a very Western context. For example, in Paris between like 1930s and 50s, a generation of black African diaspora students inherited the movement. I’m gonna butcher the name, but it's called Negritude. I’m so sorry if French people are listening to this. But that was a kind of response to like the systematic anti-blackness in France, and changing the educational system, of like policies of like assimilation, and just essentially inflicting violence upon French black people, in the 1930s and 50s and also currently now. So when you say where did the idea of decolonising education come from, it comes from its own context. It comes from its own very specific histories of resistance, and it varies, and then you have our UK version of like, my curriculum is so white, and you have current movements such as like Free Black University, that has just recently emerged. I think when we think about decolonising education, it has to move beyond the Western and European notion of activism and resistance, and to say that we must learn from the Global South and African nations, because it has existed, and that’s how we can continue to build on movements, in recognising the past and having these intergenerational dialogues, from people who have done the work.

 

[00:29:10]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting thinking about kind of the connection between some of the more overtly political struggles of self-determination that you’ve alluded to, and kind of the current movement to decolonising education, cause I think that, I feel like I talk about decolonising education all the time, and people don’t usually make that connection, so I’m really glad that you did. Sometimes when you’re trying to kind of look into the topic using this language, people will talk about decolonisation as something which has happened. They’ll talk about decolonisation of certain nations after the Second World War - which is a very interesting kind of use of that language, isn’t it, and a very kind of limited understanding, potentially, of what decolonising means, definitely not the understanding that we’ve been discussing today.

 

Sara Bafo: It's to say that decolonialising education is far beyond a notion of our contemporary conversation about diversifying the education system, it's to say that we have to learn from the past to continue to build contemporary movements. And that’s a really important, I really like the question about where the idea of decolonising education come from. It came from far beyond recent years of media portrayal of student movements. It's to say that it came from - I’ve given examples of like Burkina Faso, Grenada, Paris in the 1930s, South Africa - these are the examples we can learn from and continue to build from.

 

[00:30:32]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, 100 percent. And I think what’s really interesting about that is that a lot of those struggles might not have used this language of decolonisation, or decolonising education, but you know, in the terms that we're talking about it, like you know, struggles against white supremacy, struggles of liberation to build kind of collective, compassionate futures, I think that, you know, that is what we're talking about.

 

Sara Bafo: And it's also to know that like the power of naming, right, like the process of naming, or continuously shifting change. So as you said right, it's the name and the language wasn’t necessarily used, the process and like the liberation fight has been done and completed. So I think it’s important to know that, when we talk about liberation, it's to say that the name and process will continuously shift. Right now we're talking about decolonialising education, but in 20 to 30 years it might be something completely different. But it's to learn from their tactics and their strategic planning of how they - how they was involved in the liberation movements.

 

[00:31:26]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, especially when on the flip side, some people who use the language of decolonisation might not actually be putting that into practice. Yeah, I mean that question of language reminds me of something that a couple of years ago now, I think, maybe in like 2018, I saw Angela Davis speak at Woman of the World Festival, and one of the questions that someone asked was, you know, about what we do, or how we respond when the institution starts to co-opt our language, and the language doesn’t seem radical any more because it's been co-opted by the institution, and she was just like 'Then we come up with something new.' If decolonisation isn’t enough, then we come up with something new, cause it's all about that process, isn’t it, it comes back to the principles of it.

 

Sara Bafo: Yeah. I’ve - I watched that lecture, and her talking about the... the power of the name, and also [Tina Cam? 00:32:16] talks about it, the power of like naming, and the importance of it. And who has autonomy to name something in the first place. And it ha - our tactics and our naming has to constantly shift, as a way to organise.

 

[00:32:27]

 

Sara Khan: You’ve kind of alluded to this already, but my next question was kind of around what the movement to decolonise education looks like now. And you’ve kind of spoken about this a bit already, with the amazing work that you took part in, with Goldsmiths Anti-racist Action, but I’d be really interested to kind of hear more about the current climate from your perspective, and also, as we kind of alluded to earlier, you know, just like what’s beyond the 12 demands, like what’s beyond decolonising education?

 

Sara Bafo: Regarding GARA, I think I was speaking to someone about it recently, one of my friends, about how movements are situated in a time and space. So it comes, it organises, and a new movement - new movements emerge. That’s not to say GARA is no longer there, but it's to say that at that very moment, it had that structural impact of having 12 demands, and cultivating a community. And now it’s like, we’re having discussions about how can we organise with GARA for new demands - as I said earlier 12 demands isn’t enough to dismantle institutional oppression and institutional racism. It's - it's a starting point, it's a starting point to have a conversation. But, going back to your question, what does the movement to decolonialise education look like now? My favourite person who currently right now is Free Black University, felt - one of the founders is [Mels? 00:33:39] and a great and amazing organiser. And the idea of like centring black feminist, black queer folks, black thinkers, just like black spirituality in like the centre of education, and redistributing that back to the community, and to say that high education no longer needs to be an elitist space that reproduces violence, reproduces structural oppressions, reproduces anti-black racism, and anti-blackness. I think it's saying that decolonialising education has to move beyond these institutions and structures. We’ve had conversations to diversify these structures. We’ve had conversations to reform these structures. The next step is to organise outside these spaces. And there’s people who are doing amazing work in these structures around institutions, but it's about redistributing these resources back to the community, back to grass root organising. And I think that’s what Free Black University is doing, and that’s my current favour... work slash movement that is currently doing amazing work, and go check them out, go spend money on them, go fund them. The idea of centring black feminists and queer folks, and spirituality at the centre of everything we're doing, and reimagining a new world, that’s - that’s what decolonialising education has to be about. That’s - that goes to your question, what is next? What is next is radical imagination. We’ve had these discussions for years now, we’ve been organising, again let's reimagine, let's re-envision new ways of existing, and new ways of education, and learning and teaching, which is happening.

 

[00:35:02]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah. Yeah, that’s amazing, I think that like there’s a real kind of spiritual and ideological connection between the work that you described during the GARA occupation and the work of the Free Black University, right, in that it's about putting into practice kind of building collective community space for education and for sharing knowledge, that is - that’s been built by the community for the community, and it's free - you know, about kind of putting into practice, like imagining an education free from the violence of our institutions. So I’m really glad that you kind of brought up that example, and the other work that they’re doing is totally amazing, but I think that - yeah, that connection between those two examples is.

 

Sara Bafo: And it's also moving away from like the marketisation of education. It's very much anti-capitalist, anti... marketisation, and everything that we’ve been fighting for for the last few years, which is amazing. And it's to say that education should be free for all.

 

[00:35:59]

 

Sara Khan: Yeah, I agree. I mean for... for me I think that like it has to be an inherently anti-capitalist struggle, doesn’t it.

 

Sara Bafo: Yeah

 

Sara Khan: Which is great.

 

Sara Bafo: Yeah. And I think for me I’m at - currently at that process of reimagining a new world, and centring abolition into my organising, which it has to happen, and I think decolonising education, as we said earlier, is this step to dismantling, disrupting these institutions, and the next step is imagination now. Which is a beautiful process, and to say that these institutions are not end-all, be-all. Our organising has to start - not start with these institutions, but it cannot end with these structures. It has to be far beyond it, which I hope we can all do, myself first and foremost, to hold myself to account in doing that.

 

[00:36:43]

 

Sara Khan: Absolutely, really beautiful and kind of hopeful note to wrap this up on, so thank you for that. We're really hoping that one of our future episodes is going to focus on this idea of imagining futures in a little bit more depth, so I’m really excited for that. Thank you so much for chatting to me today Sara. I had loads of fun, I hope you did too. Thank you, as always, for your insight, and your knowledge. And thank you to the listener for listening to Decolonising Education, a mini-series within NUS Scotland's Developing Ideas podcast. Before we wrap up, Sara, is there anything that you want to kind of plug, or share with the listener, like if you have any social media you want them to follow, if there’s anything you want to suggest that they read, or explore?

 

Sara Bafo: My Twitter is Sara, S A R A, Bafo, B A FO 1. And I will just say, we spoke about Free Black University a lot. Just check them out, go check out their go fund me. And just support them in this amazing movement of imagination.

 

[00:37:43]

 

Sara Khan: Amazing. Yeah, to re-iterate the essay I recommended earlier, it's 'The Coloniality of Gender' by Maria Lugones, and if you’re interested in learning more about the conversations that we’ve begun to have toady about abolition, I’m always very happy to have an opportunity to suggest that you check out abolitionistfutures.com. A really accessible and really helpful way to get into learning more about that movement. Remember to follow @NUSScotland on Twitter and Instagram, and please send in any responses, or any questions that you’ve got for us after listening to our conversation today. We'd really love to hear what you think. And watch this space, as I said, for more Decolonising Education episodes, hopefully out in the near future. Speak to you soon!

 

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