Heads on Justice

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
– Aboriginal activist group, Queensland, 1970s

The Everett Program aspires to use the technical, educational and research resources of the University to work directly with communities, empowering people to design practical and enduring solutions to persistent problems. 

To do this effectively requires more than just good intentions–in fact good intentions can be dangerous and simply reinforce hierarchies, inequalities and exploitative relationships.  With this in mind, our program draws upon social science analysis of power relationships in society to target mor eeffective strategies for achieving justice.

Why start with power?  Because power is the key to understanding social structures and dynamics. Relationships of power construct and shape the institutions and norms, the social, cultural and economic systems, that dominate social life.  Understanding power requires an understanding of communication systems. While power is sometimes exercised by obvious means of coercion, it is also rooted in the construction of meanings in people’s minds, through the control of information and knowledge.  

If we want to create a more socially just and environmentally sustainable world, we have to understand…

1. the ways that dominant actors in our society embed their interests and values into institutions, laws and communication systems, and 

2. how the interests and values of marginalized and oppressed people are expressed, amplified and empowered in transforming unjust and environmentally destructive systems. 

Building on a long and vibrant tradition inspired by Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, we recognize both the existence of multiple forms of knowledge, and the importance of ‘praxis.’ We believe in linking action to change in the world with dialogue and reflection, in order to gain knowledge of our social reality even as we seek to transform it. 

Our emphasis on technology in the Everett Program is rooted in the understanding that digital information and communication technologies now permeate all aspects of contemporary societies. Technological systems are enabling new forms of social and economic organization and new dynamics of interaction and communication, both in the U.S. and around the globe. Novel communication infrastructures simultaneously enable the diffusion of business and service networks across the globe and facilitate the intense concentration of economic control. Emergent information technologies support the accumulation of unprecedented economic power, while simultaneously  creating new barriers to opportunity and new methods of media-based propaganda and misinformation. Thus, these technological and economic changes are everywhere implicated in the growing inequality and social divisions that seem to be evident in all societies, as global connections combine with local disconnections in complex ways. 

But the same technologies that threaten to dislocate and disadvantage populations around the world are also enabling powerful new forms of networked social movements, advocacy efforts and social entrepreneurship. They facilitate connections across time and space, and are bound up with complex community-building efforts that combine both telemediated and in-person interactions. 

What does all this mean practically, in our classrooms, project partnerships and program? 

It must impact how we model relationships and roles in our classrooms from the first day of class.  The very first day of class students are immediately challenged to examine their  expectation that the professor is there to provide the answers, and told that if they aren’t here willing to contribute to their shared part in the work, they are just wasting theirs and everyone’s time.  But if those same students care about creating a more just world, and are willing to work with each other, the professor, and community partners to help achieve that goal, then they are in the right place, and will be supported in this community to achieve their success regardless of their background or preparation. 

In the Everett Program, the  very first class begins with a peer-to-peer exercise in which students learn to see themselves, and each other, as important sources of knowledge and expertise. This approach is further developed in our “flipped classroom” structure, where students spend time outside class listening to recorded presentations, exploring online resources, and doing individual assignments and work. This opens up shared classroom time, which has almost no lecture, and is instead devoted to interaction and small group work designed to develop shared  insights from synthesis and collaboration. 

Our “heads on justice” philosophy is also reflected in the structure of student projects with community partners.  Many Universities use the term “service learning” to describe similar types of experiential education and  work with community partners, but we explicitly reject this terminology. The notion of students ‘serving the community’ all too often reinforces paternalistic and even colonialistic relationships. While ignoring this projected imbalance in practice, many experiential education projects end up loading  significant burdens on community partners, who quite often are the ones providing a service to students.  With this in mind, our student projects are intentionally distinct from internships, which are typically structured as students gaining work experience within an organization, under the direction of staff of the organization itself. Instead, Everett student projects can best be understood as mini-versions of the kinds of technology for social change projects that might be implemented by skilled consultants working on contract with community partners–a ‘contracternship’ rather than an internship perhaps. Students consult with community partners, conducting a needs analysis and collaboratively developing a project proposal, with clear goals and objectives, deliverables, time-line and budgets. This project proposal is submitted for approval and funding, giving students experience of writing proposals and an introduction to the non-profit funding world. Reciprocity reigns, and  in this process, students  ideally bring valuable resources and skills from their work within the Everett Program, while simultaneously acknowledging, working collaboratively with, and learning from, the assets of their community partners. [see  ‘collaborative community partnerships’]

Overall, through the entire year-long process of developing, implementing, evaluating and reflecting on their project, we have clearly defined learning outcomes related to ‘heads-on justice’. 

Students should be able to:

• Understand what systems are and how to research and analyze their structures and dynamics
• Analyze and evaluate the implicit and explicit theory of change of different social justice strategies
• Identify and analyze the role of information technology in shaping system dynamics and power relationships
• Conduct applied organizational needs analysis around information and communication systems.