On Sept. 8 and 9, some San Jose State instructors participated in Scholar Strike, an action and teach-in meant to raise awareness about racial injustices in the U.S..
Anthea Butler, an associate professor of religious studies and Africana studies on leave from the University of Pennsylvania and presidential fellow at Yale University, organized Scholar Strike in light of the recent National Basketball Association and Women’s National Basketball Association strikes as well as the take-a-knee action by Colin Kaepernick, former San Francisco 49ers quarterback and civil rights activist.
“We want to do an action because we actually care,” Butler said in a Scholar Strike Facebook live video on Sept. 2. “We want to make sure that people understand that this is crazy right now.”
Over the two day event, Butler curated videos by scholars of various disciplines discussing policing, violence and racism to educate the general public.
Shannon Miller, dean of the College of Humanities and the Arts at SJSU, said she stressed to faculty in her college via email that students have been through a lot and that instructors should offer an opportunity in class for students to discuss the civil unrest that happened over the summer, instead of participating in the Scholar Strike.
Miller highlighted in her email five racial justice events, such as the premiere of the documentary “Walk the Walk” by SJSU professor emeritus Bob Gliner, which aired on Wednesday at 6 p.m. on KQED and Atlanta-based reporter Hope Ford coming to speak with MCOM 70 students on Sept.17.
“I asked faculty to not cancel class, but to involve students in these events or some others if that was how they wanted to engage the goal of engaging with and promoting social justice,” Miller said in an email to faculty in her college on Wednesday.
Dr. Rachel O’Malley, SJSU environmental studies professor, participated in the Scholar Strike by holding an event called, “Police Violence, Racism, and Environmental Studies,” to emphasize the relationship between environmental studies and racial justice.
Attendees of the event discussed ways to change the climate on campus in breakout rooms and then came together to speak about solutions with the group.
“The relationship between Black people and the environment is powerful and strong,” O’Malley said in a phone interview with the Spartan Daily on Thursday.
She compared problems in the environment like polluted water and soil directly to where Black people live and grow up.
According to Miller, students in the breakout rooms said they wanted to feel seen and heard on campus, and that faculty had not supported African American students in sharing their experiences in classes.
“We don’t serve the African American community as well as we could at SJSU, including in our department,” O’Malley said.
The environmental studies department has an environmental justice minor discussing issues of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) being historically discriminated against for enjoying and studying the environment.
“If we don’t value other humans, then how are we going to value other non-humans?,” O’Malley said.
William Armaline, associate professor of sociology and director of the SJSU Human Rights Collaborative, also performed a teach-in for his students, comparing historic socialist movements to recent movements.
“The key to class domination in the U.S., along with attacks on worker unionization and the use of [police violence] to expand and discipline markets, has always been racial/ethnic division,” Armaline said in an email to the Spartan Daily on Thursday.
Armaline is saying class division and racial injustice are closely tied together, so much so that he said scholars refer to this worker suppression phenomenon as “racial capitalism.”
He also points out the duplicity of companies marketing their support for the Black Lives Matter movement to demonstrate their “wokeness.” In other words, their support for a liberal agenda without the consideration of policy or action towards those thoughts.
“Capitalism is already demonstrating an ability to sell itself as ‘woke,’ while still depending on the brutal exploitation of ALL workers, where Black, Native, and Latinx populations continue to take the worst of it,” Armaline said.
Armaline also said anti-racist and anti-fascist forms of socialism are humanity’s best chance at addressing racial inequality and our species’ survival.
“Scholars should strike to raise awareness and promote racial justice,” said Dr. Tanya Saroj Bakhru, SJSU women, gender, and sexuality studies and sociology professor, in a phone interview with the Spartan Daily on Thursday.
Bakhru took a personal day to stand in solidarity for the movement.
“We should disrupt business as usual,” Bakhru said.
She said she does not ignore issues like this that affect her students since much of the SJSU campus community is composed of people of color.
According to SJSU Institutional Research, Black, Indigenious, and people of color (BIPOC) made up 83% of SJSU’s student enrollment in Spring 2019.
“It’s so little, but it’s what I can do,” Bakhru said.