As we sat in our online reading group meeting for the third time over winter break, about an hour into this particular meeting and 5 hours of previous discussion behind us, a silence bloomed and blanketed our discussion. It wasn’t your classic online meeting awkwardness, it wasn’t that we were lost discussing the issues at hand, instead it was a shared understanding that we just opened a box and that we couldn’t ever stuff the goods back inside. It was the moment of realizing that we had set off the first movements for liberation, that we were confronting, challenging and rejecting the status quo in order to better address student inclusion, belonging and success.

Here, we consider higher education for the world we need, we advance the notion that we need to bring farm life generally, rural life specifically, from the margin to the center of higher education policy. Rural education K-16 often resides at the periphery of both the policy arena and academia (McShane & Smarick, 2018; Schafft, 2016; see also Center for American Progress, 2020). Not only is “The peripheralization of rural ... detrimental to rural people and places,” (Schafft, p. 138), “...a critical and pragmatic rethinking of education policy in the rural context may help to illuminate new educational practices that enhance the vitality of rural communities and clarify a U.S. rural policy” (p. 139). This is because, within rural communities, education is a principal site for rural social and economic development. 

Perhaps most daunting about imagining higher education for the world we need is the indisputable fact that we are being asked to navigate a complex and turbulent world while sitting within institutional structures that reward us for exclusion, binary thinking, silos and narrow expertise instead of inclusion, interdependence, collaboration and iterative processes.

Poetry is not a luxury for the colonized, the enslaved, the exploited, the silenced. It is not a luxury for the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated poets, artists, activists, and intellectuals we’ll be reading and talking to over the course of the semester. But is it a luxury for “us,” the “us” of the liberal arts classroom, with our access to technology, to the communal kitchen, to the intellectual property of people in prison?

Agenda and resources (Powerpoint presentations) from the 2023 Collaborative Institute at Haverford College.

This experience led us to ask: how can we better work together knowing that our sense of “borrowed time” is dependent not only on the structure of our institutions, but also on matters of access, oppression, ability, and resources?

This institute is an opportunity for faculty, staff, administration, and community leaders to connect with colleagues who are making space for integrated, experiential learning aligned with public purposes, disciplinary understanding, inclusive student development, and civic and global learning. 

Most of us have experienced it. We see a social media post from an individual, university, or organization that is promoting an experience that runs counter to ethical global engagement and fair trade learning practices.

How we respond may depend on the context, our relationship with the poster (speaker, writer), and our own positionality. Regardless, our approach can greatly determine our impact. Here are a few things that I consider or do when determining how to respond: