Research and formal teaching, alone, are likely insufficient for realizing emancipation. That is because—for the most part—the two practices are conceptually and geographically bounded, which makes it challenging to perform the wide-ranging cultural work needed for emancipation. When conducting research, although I have the opportunity to work with a variety of communities and engage them in liberatory activities, my ultimate duty as a researcher is to make sense of the contexts that I study and produce new knowledge that gets distributed through the formal channels of peer-reviewed journals and edited books. Formal teaching is similarly limited with regard to responsibilities. Formal teaching includes only teaching that gets recognized as such by institutions of higher education, and for the university professor, such teaching is restricted to classes taught at the collegiate level. Performing service activities allows me to expand my zone of impact and build relationships that transcend the traditional boundaries that have been established in the academy.
I particularly enjoy participating in service activities in which my intellectual or corporeal presence is an anomaly. I think it is critical for all people, including myself, to engage in discourse with people whose experiences and worldviews differ from our own, so that we can construct a shared understanding of reality that can be utilized as an emancipatory tool. Moreover, the presence of a body that differs from the norm of a particular space can be positively disruptive (Reimers, 2020). It can ignite in members of a space the act of self-reflection as those members grapple with the discontinuities between their current reality and their previous experiences and taken-for-granted assumptions of the world (Bell & Valentine, 1995).
I particularly enjoy participating in service activities in which my intellectual or corporeal presence is an anomaly. I think it is critical for all people, including myself, to engage in discourse with people whose experiences and worldviews differ from our own, so that we can construct a shared understanding of reality that can be utilized as an emancipatory tool. Moreover, the presence of a body that differs from the norm of a particular space can be positively disruptive (Reimers, 2020). It can ignite in members of a space the act of self-reflection as those members grapple with the discontinuities between their current reality and their previous experiences and taken-for-granted assumptions of the world (Bell & Valentine, 1995).
During the second year of my doctoral program at the University of Kansas (KU), I voluntarily assumed the role of Vice President of KU Professionals for Inclusion and Social Justice (ISJ), knowing that I would be tasked with leading ISJ’s annual graduate student research conference. I took on this position for two reasons: (1) I thought it was important for KU faculty and students—many of whom are White—to see a Black man in a leadership position; I hoped to challenge any preconceived notions they may have had regarding the (in)ability of a Black man to lead, and (2) I wished to form and work with a planning committee composed of graduate students from different departments across the university, so that we could exchange ideas and plan a conference that was epistemologically, ontologically, and methodologically inclusive. As the conference chair, I built long-lasting relationships with several members of the planning committee, and we—the entire committee—effectively organized an interdisciplinary conference where students from diverse departments shared and discussed their research and received feedback from professors from a variety of disciplines. We also secured Professor Kevin Willmott as the keynote speaker, who spoke about his recent work on the film BlacKkKlansman and its significance within the contemporary sociocultural context.
Two years ago (2020), I was invited to serve as a guest reviewer for the journal Education and Treatment of Children (ETOC), and I accepted the invitation. As ETOC centers behaviorism and the literal treatment of children, it may not readily attract reviewers engaged in scholarship that foregrounds issues of power, oppression, and emancipation. However, I accepted the invitation because I believe that my perspective as a critical researcher can help my peers who are not involved in critical scholarship think and write differently about the work in which they are engaged (e.g., consider how issues of race, class, and ability manifest in interventionist research).
I perform similar knowledge-bridging activities through conference presentations. For instance, if not for COVID-19, my plan for last year was to present at a conference that foregrounds the perspectives and values of those primarily engaged in behaviorist research and practice. I decided to present at this conference to demonstrate to fellow academics that critical scholars and behaviorists can learn from each other and that both perspectives can be leveraged to support the education of students from historically marginalized backgrounds. The goal of my presentation was to show how educators can use supports developed by critical scholars and behaviorists to support Black boys, including those labeled and at-risk for being labeled with emotional disturbance. Oftentimes, these activities are undervalued in the academy, but they are an important form of intellectual and emotional labor (Matthew, 2016). Such labor is disproportionately performed by scholars of color who seek to bring about expansive cultural change to better the lives of historically marginalized communities (Matthew, 2016).
I also enjoy engaging in service activities involving communities of more like-minded scholars who still challenge me as a critical researcher and thinker. For instance, last year, I presented a paper titled, “Black Boys' With and Without Disability Labels Perceptions of Successful Black Parenting Practices” at a symposium at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). I presented alongside scholars with whom I constructed a community of practice during my time at KU. There, I received much-needed feedback from my peers (on and off the panel) to improve my manuscript, and I provided feedback to others as well. This year, I served as a peer-reviewer for the upcoming 2023 AERA conference. I reviewed for the Disability Studies in Education SIG and the Special and Inclusive Education Research SIG.
I perform similar knowledge-bridging activities through conference presentations. For instance, if not for COVID-19, my plan for last year was to present at a conference that foregrounds the perspectives and values of those primarily engaged in behaviorist research and practice. I decided to present at this conference to demonstrate to fellow academics that critical scholars and behaviorists can learn from each other and that both perspectives can be leveraged to support the education of students from historically marginalized backgrounds. The goal of my presentation was to show how educators can use supports developed by critical scholars and behaviorists to support Black boys, including those labeled and at-risk for being labeled with emotional disturbance. Oftentimes, these activities are undervalued in the academy, but they are an important form of intellectual and emotional labor (Matthew, 2016). Such labor is disproportionately performed by scholars of color who seek to bring about expansive cultural change to better the lives of historically marginalized communities (Matthew, 2016).
I also enjoy engaging in service activities involving communities of more like-minded scholars who still challenge me as a critical researcher and thinker. For instance, last year, I presented a paper titled, “Black Boys' With and Without Disability Labels Perceptions of Successful Black Parenting Practices” at a symposium at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). I presented alongside scholars with whom I constructed a community of practice during my time at KU. There, I received much-needed feedback from my peers (on and off the panel) to improve my manuscript, and I provided feedback to others as well. This year, I served as a peer-reviewer for the upcoming 2023 AERA conference. I reviewed for the Disability Studies in Education SIG and the Special and Inclusive Education Research SIG.
During the pandemic, I formed an online book club that centers the intellectual thought of Black thinkers from across the African diaspora. The purpose of this book club is to more frequently engage with the scholarship of Black writers and to make meaning of those texts with my colleagues, friends, and family—some of whom are enrolled in doctoral programs and some of whom possess only a high school diploma. I recognize that each participant in the book club has a perspective that is worthy of consideration regardless of their credentials.