Day 5: Academia Failed Me When I Needed Them Most by Rashida Mustafa
My teaching philosophy is rooted in criticality. Liberatory, decolonial, anti-colonial, and anti-racist teaching philosophies gear me to believe that these theories are not merely to be written about, they are principles to live by and enact in my everyday life. I learned that education is deeply political; and that advocacy is inherently and intrinsically part of how these philosophies manifest in our curriculum to improve our students’ lives. Mentors taught me how to create learning opportunities for all students with considerations of all their differences; forcing me to sit with the societal challenges that are imposed on our students.
Early one Monday morning, I eagerly prepared for the week’s reading discussion. As a Palestinian-American PhD student studying education at Teachers College, Columbia University, this semester felt even more pressing to discuss Lorde’s essay. Like every semester that I assign Audre Lorde’s “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House,” students poignantly make connections with their worlds and the oppressive structural systems permeating society. I teach at a college in Manhattan where a large population of the students are Black and brown teenagers whose parents immigrated to this country and/or who proudly identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community.
Lorde grapples with the disparity between the material realities of the United States’ societal, cultural, and political paradigm, and the shortcoming of the academic institutions’ efforts to consider the “lesbian consciousness” on these matters. It was the ’70s, and efforts to highlight and promote those scholars and their work within this field were scarce. Little was being done in the academic communities to provide opportunities for the scholars who were doing that work to share their findings. Lorde contends with the larger issues engulfing academic communities, and their marginal efforts to discuss issues around race, sexuality, class, and age from feminists and queer perspectives.
I don’t expect my freshman students who are just starting college to come to class prepared with insight on the structural and institutional limitations and restrictions within the liberal academy. I do, however, encourage them to see the ways that education is a means to understanding the world when they engage in critical dialogue around issues that implicitly and explicitly show up in their lives.
I took pride in attending Columbia University knowing that I was able to work on research that could possibly change the educational outcomes for countless students who were just like me. I am pursuing a PhD because I believe education is the vehicle for change. I couldn’t believe that I, a child of Palestinian immigrants, would be working and studying alongside some of the most established, successful, and acclaimed critical scholars in the field. I reveled as I thought about all the possibilities I, and other scholars, could collaborate on to acknowledge and recognize Palestinian and Arab adolescents in educational discourse and research, especially during this heated time.
I dreamt and imagined the boundless possibilities when able to apply a Palestinian consciousness to education and share it with those driven by the same social justice orientations. I saw my dreams quickly become a reality when editors of various journals asked me to reflect on my experiences as a Palestinian-American educator. I presented my work at national conferences where I spoke about the importance of expanding learning opportunities that support and affirm Palestinian students as they make sense of their identity in the classroom. I was invited to speak on an online panel series about what it means to enact solidarity in education, within the context of Palestine. I basked in all the ways I was beginning to see possibilities unfold.
My dreams of those possibilities came to a screeching halt when I realized that most educational organizations receiving federal funding are quickly succumbing to Trump’s administration threats to withdraw funding from their schools. The shocking haste with which they have done so warrants an examination to the integrity of these institutions. Many of the same educational institutions that boasted about their efforts to develop critical scholarship and inquiry are the same ones to turn their backs on the very people who are doing so. This juncture conveys clearly how quickly universities turn against their foundational ethos, especially for those from disenfranchised populations.
Lorde’s message ruminates more clearly as I draw parallels between her struggles and my own. She raises an important question about the overall functioning of the university: “What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy?” (p. 98). I reflect on the discrepancies between the democratic principles that Columbia University often boasts about and the exclusionary practices they impose on those who dissent. To whom do those democratic principles apply to, who is protected, and whose research matters? It certainly isn’t those of us advocating for justice for Palestine.
Students at Columbia University have protested their university’s silence of Israel’s war on the civilian population in Gaza; demanding that Columbia end their financial ties with Israel. They joined students across the nation who demonstrated for months, they started campus encampments, they collaborated with various student organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace and the Student Workers Union with the hope that their universities would heed their demand.
Columbia University’s administration responded to the protests with hostile reproach, mischaracterizing students as violent and antisemitic — despite the fact that many of those students are Jewish. Between 2023 and 2024, student protestors were arrested, spied on, harassed, and doxxed for practicing their constitutional rights as U.S. citizens. This antagonization both by the media and the university ultimately branded student protesters as the disruptive “Others” within the academic community and facilitated a swift U.S. government takeover of the university.
The oppressive and restrictive policies taking shape at these major institutions have crept up on me. I became aware of my own naivety. My life, passions, and desires for a better future crumbled as the university administration vociferously acted in support of Trump’s demands to silence dissent and scholarship. I wondered what the outcome of my time spent researching, studying, and writing about Palestinian-American adolescents would amount to.
My belief that using the tools I’ve learned within these institutions would work to change the very institutions themselves sends waves of embarrassment through my soul. I’m overcome with shame as the pangs of hopelessness and defeat wash over me. Thoughts roil as I rethink how to navigate my identity, my research, and my future. I often ask how I can continue to conduct research on the educational needs of the Palestinian-American student population when they are being deliberately shunned from public discourse and censored from intellectual inquiry for being too politically charged. How do other scholars who work with vulnerable populations continue their life changing research in the midst of all this chaos?
The Trump administration’s attack on American constitutional rights like free speech and protest have sent a ripple effect across the country, specifically targeting students who were involved in any pro-Palestine/anti-genocide demonstrations. In March 2025, news of multiple international students disappeared by ICE agents flooded the media. Videos of Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder who attended Columbia University, circulated the media when ICE agents in plainclothes arrested him without explanation. Recently, a video of a Turkish student with a visa to study at Tufts University encountered a similar approach in Boston as she waited for her friends outside. She screamed in fear as masked ICE agents detained her. News of more student activists and protestors being arrested, kidnapped, and threatened with deportation chill me.
The façade of these institutions unraveled, displaying their true nature. The same institutions that pride themselves as being spaces that promote critical thought and exploration, are the same institutions that silence those same students who pursue their degrees hoping to improve their lives and the lives of others. First Amendment rights to free speech and protest are dismantled by censorship of scholarship, revocation of funding for life-changing treatment and care, and other discriminatory practices specifically against LGBTQ+ and Palestine-related research.
Regulations and policies to censor Palestine and Trans-related scholarship have severe implications on real people. Our society’s pitfalls and shortcomings, specifically with how different forms of inequality are manifested in the material reality of what our students experience. I proceed to go through life determined to believe that educators do and can make a difference in our students’ lives when we don’t shy away from the discomfort of those unjust realities. The theories that root my beliefs underscore that teaching and learning are political acts. We can’t sit aside and let things continue to unfold in ways that perpetuate the marginalization of others just because those with power say otherwise. We need to organize and come together as a unified front to prevent a widescale takeover of our educational system and protect our students, families, friends, peers, and colleagues. We need to craft new tools to address the threats our educational system faces.
Like Lorde professes, the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.Lorde’s words appear to taunt me as I meet with the reality of how these institutions prevent us from bringing about genuine change.