For those of us who work across borders, communities, and institutions, this is not merely a national crisis. It is a global pedagogical one. When reciprocity erodes in powerful nations, it reshapes what is possible in international collaboration, knowledge production, and civil society partnerships. It undermines the cultural conditions required for humility, for learning across difference, and for recognising our interdependence at a time when planetary challenges demand exactly that.

How do we define “success” in community partnerships? Although quantitative metrics have value, the success of a partnership is perhaps best defined by qualitative benchmarks of reciprocity, trust, and mutual benefit.

Pictured from left: Chochi Iturralde, Fundación Pachaysana; Diego Arispe-Bazán, Northwestern; Patrick Eccles, Northwestern; Sara McGuinn, Northwestern

At this year’s Summit it was refreshing to reconnect with old friends, current partners and meet new colleagues who reinforce my trust in what we are doing as a network. The 2-day event provided an important moment for reflection on what we need to do in the years ahead…

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. 

In this blog post, I discuss how educators and program administrators can reimagine community-engaged global programs as tools for liberation. Drawing from research conducted as part of my doctoral dissertation on Community-Based Global Learning (CBGL) programs, I use excerpts from a collective testimonio to honor community voices in reimagining CBGL scholarship and practice.

I don’t know it for certain, but my brief time at Haverford College has led me to gather that the decision to hire me was prompted at least in part by the campus-wide strike of Fall 2020, led by a group of sagacious BIPOC students. After taking part in a summer of Black Lives Matter protests that shook awake American society and empowered young people to lead a multi-racial, intergenerational movement against the forces that oppressed the most vulnerable in our society, Haverford students returned to campus ready to make their school a place of empowerment. Among students’ demands for institutional change were the addition of courses that centered decolonial praxis, that is, philosophy and action. Their privileged education in the distant suburbs of Philadelphia would no longer mean their isolation from integrated approaches to grassroots activism.

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.

When I, a career community engagement professional and administrator with an academic-activist identity in environmental sociology, was approached in Spring 2022 about the possibility of taking on leadership of our University Honors Program, I looked behind me to make sure it was me being asked. As someone for whom community engagement and social justice are core values and drivers in my work, I admittedly saw not just our Honors Program, but the institution of ‘Honors’ as I have come to know it to be in stark contrast with those deeply held beliefs.

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?

Early bird registration deadline is Friday, September 15. Don’t miss this exciting group of speakers and institutional change organizers including Amy Anderson, Samantha Brandauer, Richard Kiely, and Marisol Morales!

Join global educators Samantha Brandauer (Dickinson College), Nedra Sandiford (Dickinson in Spain), and Erin Sabato (Quinnipiac University) for an overview of and opportunity to apply the Global Solidarity, Local Actions Toolkit. Various faculty have used the toolkit in classes, in co-curricular settings, in both civic engagement and education abroad, as well as within sustainability education.

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. 

The Collaborative is proud to accept The Innovative Technology award from the GoAbroad Innovation Awards, recognizing the Global Solidarity, Local Actions Toolkit. When we see the Toolkit in syllabi, or linked in a blog post, or sourced for scholarly articles, or used to develop a workshop or a training – we see each other. We know that there is a team out there, a network, a hive, a tribe – all working in their ways and in their part and in their locations for a world that is more just, inclusive and sustainable.