What a great article! It connects very well with my current research project on how decolonial pedagogies can propel gender equality in Middle-Grade school. I really enjoyed the way Prof. Appleton presents multiple sides of how decolonial work can be done in Academia. Something that always stands out to me in decolonial works is how they are very locally targeted, taking into account the particular colonial history of a place, but they are also very global subjects. In other words, even with different colonial histories two places can have similar decolonial actions. I connected in particular with Tuck & Yang (2012) in their article Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor when arguing that decolonial work cannot be used loosely and must look very deep into power relations and control. The Netflix show The Chair also came to mind because it looks upon the lack of representation in higher education, among so many other topics in education. Overall, this was a great opportunity to get new perspectives and vocabulary for my research and everyday learnings.

I had the pleasure of reading Nayantara Sheoran Appleton’s article Do Not ‘Decolonize’… If You Are Not Decolonizing: Progressive Language and Planning Beyond Academic Rebranding. Funnily enough, I actually met Prof. Appleton while on an LIU Global field trip in Wellington, New Zealand. She gave us a lecture on the decolonizing methods that she implements in her classroom at the University of Wellington! So I really enjoyed hearing from her again, especially how she talks about the harmful effects of using ‘buzzwords’ like decolonizing methodologies without explaining what that actually entails. Decolonizing academics starts with hiring indigenous faculty on permanent positions, providing scholarships to indigenous students, and accommodating teaching/learning structures to different knowledge production sites and ways. Decolonizing academia doesn’t end there, it also means diversifying class syllabus and curriculum, decentering knowledge and knowledge production, devaluing hierarchies, disinvesting from citational power structures, and diminishing voices and opinions that stand for hierarchies and magnifying others. The intersectional feminist vision promotes these values, meaning that the intersectional feminist vision holds decolonizing values. It is our obligation as immigrants living, working, researching and teaching on stolen land that we uplift native voices so that we may begin to not only decolonize academia but also society.