Ethnicity, Race, & Migration | Pierson College

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Senior Essay Title: "“What is the university, until we arrive?”: Anti-Racist Student Organizing at Yale and Negotiating Personhood in the Neoliberal University"

Adviser: Roderick Ferguson

Abstract: This project aims to understand how marginalized students negotiate their personhood at Yale through a critical analysis of three moments of student action: the fight for Black studies in 1969, the minority recruitment efforts of the early 1970's, and the activism of Next Yale in 2015. Through the analytic frameworks of critical university studies, Ethnic studies and abolition, I sketch the rise and limitations of the existing narratives of "excellence" and "belonging" while exploring the possibilities for marginalized students to create ways of being and learning that do not engage with the university's neoliberal conceptions of time, labor, and value.