From private struggle to parentscholar solidarity: collective organizing during a pandemic to humanize the academy

Abstract

This article details our pathway in forming an activist caregiver collective at our institution in response to the unsustainable conditions of concurrently working, parenting, and caregiving during a pandemic. Through a parentscholar collaborative autoethnography, we interrogate structures deeply embedded in higher education that perpetuate existing inequities and invisibilize the labor of caregiving faculty--structures which have been made more visible with the coronavirus pandemic. The narratives documented here were all written in the midst of a global health crisis and a global reckoning for a more just world, and have enabled us to process our personal relationships to the dominant business model of higher education, also referred to as the “neoliberal university.” As caregiving academics, educators, and activists, we believe it crucial to enunciate our stories of struggle and joy in dialogue with the important interventions and conceptual maneuvers of the “Decolonial Turn.” We write with the following intentions: (1) To center caregivers as agents of change in the interrelated projects to decolonize both schools and society; (2) To document our voices and experiences as living curriculums that others may draw upon, extend, or even recreate for their specific contexts; and (3) To identify how our lived experiences, shaped by larger social forces, have enabled us a particular way of seeing/being that recognizes the critical relationship between decolonizing and caregiving.