CUNY Doctoral Students’ Council Adopts Resolution Endorsing the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions

CUNY Doctoral Students’ Council Adopts Resolution Endorsing the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions

CUNY Doctoral Students’ Council Adopts Resolution Endorsing the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[This statement was released on 15 April 2016.]

The Doctoral Students’ Council (DSC) of The City University of New York (CUNY) has adopted a Resolution Endorsing the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions, by a vote of 42-18 with nine abstentions. At the same meeting, the DSC also overwhelmingly adopted the Resolution Calling for Expanded Tuition Remission for Graduate Center Students.

The mission of the DSC includes promoting democracy within CUNY and enabling students to participate in important social, political, and economic decisions that affect their community. The council also advocates for graduate student interests with the Graduate Center administration, university-wide political bodies, the CUNY Board of Trustees, the New York State Assembly, and the Mayor’s Office.

Historically, the Doctoral Students’ Council has broadly embraced its role as a political entity of and for students. The organization itself was a product of student activism during the 1960s, and the first resolution it passed opposed the Vietnam War.

Resolutions passed by the Doctoral Students’ Council have included calls for CUNY to divest from fossil fuels, respect students’ rights to free speech and assembly, and have condemned police surveillance of CUNY student organizations. The DSC’s past efforts have also resulted in the creation of a Graduate Center parental leave policy for student workers. Members of the council also successfully moved blood drives off of the campus because their policies discriminated against LGBTQ students.

The Doctoral Students’ Council, as an autonomous body within CUNY, affirms its support of student voices in all facets of politics. We are governed by our own Constitution and Bylaws, and we remain committed to providing a respectful platform for student engagement on this and other issues as per our founding principles. The DSC leadership remains committed to free speech and democratic processes. 

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Inaugural Issue of Journal on Postcolonial Directions in Education

Postcolonial Directions in Education is a peer-reviewed open access journal produced twice a year. It is a scholarly journal intended to foster further understanding, advancement and reshaping of the field of postcolonial education. We welcome articles that contriute to advancing the field. As indicated in the editorial for the inaugural issue, the purview of this journal is broad enough to encompass a variety of disciplinary approaches, including but not confined to the following: sociological, anthropological, historical and social psychological approaches. The areas embraced include anti-racist education, decolonizing education, critical multiculturalism, critical racism theory, direct colonial experiences in education and their legacies for present day educational structures and practice, educational experiences reflecting the culture and "imagination" of empire, the impact of neoliberalism/globalization/structural adjustment programs on education, colonial curricula and subaltern alternatives, education and liberation movements, challenging hegemonic languages, the promotion of local literacies and linguistic diversity, neocolonial education and identity construction, colonialism and the construction of patriarchy, canon and canonicity, indigenous knowledges, supranational bodies and their educational frameworks, north-south and east-west relations in education, the politics of representation, unlearning colonial stereotypes, internal colonialism and education, cultural hybridity and learning  in  postcolonial contexts, education and the politics of dislocation, biographies or autobiographies reflecting the above themes, and deconstruction of colonial narratives of civilization within educational contexts. Once again, the field cannot be exhausted.

Table of Contents

  • Furthering the Discourse in Postcolonial Education, by Anne Hickling Hudson & Peter Mayo
  • Resisting the Inner Plantation: Decolonization and the Practice of Education in the Work of Eric Williams, by Jennifer Lavia
  • Neocolonialism, Higher Education and Student Union Activism in Zimbabwe, by Munyaradzi Hwami & Dip Kapoor
  • Reframing Anti-Colonial Theory for the Diasporic Context, by Marlon Simmons & George Dei 
  • Review of The Politics of Postcolonialism: Empire, Nation and Resistance, by Tejwant Chana
  • Review of Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education, by Joseph Zanoni
  • AERA Postcolonial Studies and Education SIG: Business Meeting, by Joseph Zanoni 

[Click here to access the articles of the issue.]