Anti-Racist and Decolonial Organizational Change Work in Agricultural Higher Education

Agriculture colleges at Historically White Land Grant Universities (HWLGUs) were founded by selling of Indigenous land via the First Morrill Act of 1862 and still receive public funding to produce an educated workforce trained to serve each state’s agri-food system needs. Yet the HWLGU public service mission is premised on ideological/institutional and organizational logics of racism and colonization, evidenced by the ways in which their agricultural research, educational programs, and campus services create inequitable access and experiences among minoritized populations. Race-based inequities also pervade the U.S. agri-food system, across issues of labor, access, and health. In the last decade, many HWLGUs began acknowledging that their organizational logics create and uphold white supremacy. They are questioning, and seeking to address, how they perpetuate simultaneous educational and agri-food system injustices. Yet pursuing organizational change in deeply entrenched, historically-shaped agricultural colleges is complex and multi-level. Little is known about how universities are integrating anti-racism and decolonization into their everyday organizational practices and educational approaches, and about the ideas, strategies, and discourses proponents of change mobilize. Previous research has highlighted the broader discursive, cognitive, social, and organizational barriers that can impede anti-racist and decolonial change in academic culture, but little exists with regard to agricultural education. I conducted a mixed methods in-depth case study of the University of California (UC) Berkeley College of Natural Resources (CNR) to investigate how one HWLGU envisions and enacts—and inhibits—organizational change to advance anti-racism and decolonization in their agricultural education. I draw on critical and abolitionist university studies as an overarching framework, and also employ an interdisciplinary mix of critical theories that address racism and colonialism; organizational theories on inequality and change-making; and critical pedagogy of agri-food systems. My research design includes: (a) 129 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 75 individual CNR faculty, staff, students, postdoctoral scholars, and administrators; (b) interviewee identity surveys; (c) content analysis analysis of organizational artifacts; (d) critical visual examination of agricultural teaching and research spaces; and (e) critical reflexivity and critical autoethnographic practices. The case consists of four substudies that each examine different levels and processes for envisioning, enacting, and contesting organizational change. Study 1, “The First Morrill Act and Its Afterlife: Settler Conquest, White Supremacy, and the Founding of the University of California Agricultural Education,” examines the development of agricultural settler conquest and white supremacy from the beginning of the U.S. occupation of California in 1846 through the first six decades of the UC College of Agriculture. Across two chapters I analyze archival texts, secondary sources, and physical spaces to uncover CNR’s historically-specific development and entrenchment of racist and settler colonial ideologies/ institutions. Study 2, “The 2020 Racial Justice Movement and Organizational Change Possibilities in the College of Natural Resources,” provides an “ecosystem view” of ideas, discourse, and perceptions of change circulating in CNR in the 2020 context through two semi-longitudinal interviews with 45 agricultural scholars and administrators with different professional positions and personal identities. Studies 3 and 4 investigate two interventions within CNR to understand how actors mobilize change practices and counter-hegemonic discourse to try to enact anti-racism and decolonization. Study 3, “The Campus Foodscape as Praxis: Participatory Mapping, Pedagogy, and Organizational Change,” examines the six-year UC Berkeley Foodscape Mapping Project, which used the campus as a living laboratory for members to generate agri-food systems knowledge while developing programs, campaigns, and cartographic resources to advance equity. Across three chapters I analyze the ways in which a multi-year organizational change project that used pedagogical and research practices aimed at participatory, student-led learning experiences worked, and not, and what this reveals about change-making processes in CNR. Study 4, “The ‘Critical Engagements in Anti-Racist Environmental Scholarship’ Course as a Site of Organizational Change,” investigates a course developed by doctoral students during the national racial justice protests of 2020 for members of CNR’s largest department to engage in collaborative learning to deepen understandings of anti-racism in academia, and through action projects, attempt to change departmental structures and culture. The course was distinctive in that it was a learning environment that aimed to flatten traditional academic hierarchies: graduate students, faculty, staff, and postdoctoral scholars took the class together, and the teaching team consisted of doctoral students. I examine how the course cultivated an undertheorized relational and affective aspect of organizational change work which I call “feeling of community.” Previous scholarship has largely ignored racism and colonization in agricultural education, despite land grant universities’ explicit mandate to serve the public through agricultural research, education, and outreach. A large body of literature examines how higher education fails racially and otherwise minoritized communities, and while some scholars provide roadmaps to addressing racism, there are few studies of what these efforts are doing. My multi-level, thick analysis of the University of California, Berkeley, College of Natural Resources provides a rigorous understanding of the processes, agents, and constraints of change-making work. These analytical tools can be used to assess how other Historically White Land Grant University agricultural colleges approach anti-racism and decolonization, and whether their actions lead to transformative learning and change

Multidimensional treatment foster care for preschoolers: early findings of an implementation in the Netherlands

Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC) has been shown to be an evidence based alternative to residential rearing and an effective method to improve behavior and attachment of preschool foster children in the US. This preliminary study investigated an application of MTFC for preschoolers (MTFC-P) in the Netherlands focusing on behavioral outcomes in course of the intervention. To examine the following hypothesis: “the time in the MTFC-P intervention predicts a decline in problem behavior, as this is the desired outcome for children assigned to MTFC-P”, we assessed the daily occurrence of 38 problem behaviors via telephone interviews. Repeated measures revealed significant reduced problem behavior in course of the program. MTFC-P promises to be a treatment model suitable for high-risk foster children, that is transferable across centres and countries

Health, Health-Related Quality of Life, and Quality of Life: What is the Difference?

The terms health, health-related quality of life (HRQoL), and quality of life (QoL) are used interchangeably. Given that these are three key terms in the literature, their appropriate and clear use is important. This paper reviews the history and definitions of the terms and considers how they have been used. It is argued that the definitions of HRQoL in the literature are problematic because some definitions fail to distinguish between HRQoL and health or between HRQoL and QoL. Many so-called HRQoL questionnaires actually measure self-perceived health status and the use of the phrase QoL is unjustified. It is concluded that the concept of HRQoL as used now is confusing. A potential solution is to define HRQoL as the way health is empirically estimated to affect QoL or use the term to only signify the utility associated with a health state

Trabajo Social de la Universidad de Columbia: una escuela urbana e internacional para graduados en Trabajo Social.

Sin resume

La escuela de Trabajo Social de la Universidad de Columbia: una escuela urbana e internacional para graduados in Trabajo Social

La Escuela de Trabajo Social de la Universidad de Columbia en Nueva York (CUSSW”, Columbia University School of Social Work) es la más antigua de los Estados Unidos de América. Creada en 1898, continúa consideránclose actualmente como una institución académica pionera e innovadora. CUSSW se encuentra en la ciudad de Nueva York, centro de numerosas instituciones educativas, de negocios y de organizaciones de bienestar social tanto de ámbito local, como nacional e internacional. Tiene además una extensión en el condado de Westchester, en las afueras de la ciudad de Nueva York. Al tiempo que la economía de Nueva York se recuperaba de las numerosas pérdidas de puestos de trabajo motivada por la recesión económica del perfodo 1969-77, esta recuperación dejó al margen, tras sí, un número creciente de negros e hispanos, de inmigrantes de América Latina, Asia, Africa. La transformación de una economía industrial en una economia financiera y de servicios amplió las oportunidades de trabajo para ¡os que disponían de mayores cualificaciones y habilidades profesionales. Pero en otros casos, los altos y crecientes índices de fracaso escolar en las enseñanzas medias, así como el aumento del analfabetismo en los adultos, excluyó a muchos que sólo podían realizar trabajos marginales. Así, los indices de pobreza de Nueva York están por encima de los niveles nacionales. Las desigualdades en ingresos y en la riqueza son mayores hoy que en el pasado. El paro y los despidos afecta especialmente a los jóvenes, por encima claramente de los promedios nacionales. La industria continúa en declive, y con él la posibi- ¡idad de acceso a un puesto de trabajo. Estos son los resultados: una depresión económica que vieneacompañada por una nueva alienación y patología sociales. Los “sin techo”, el sida y la drogadicción han alcanzada niveles sin precedentes, que marcarán el contexto y la práctica de los años 90. Estos problemas —junto con otros tales como el maltrato a menores y ancianos, los embarazos de adolescentes y las necesidades de los minusválidos— salpican todos los grupos sociales y económicos, pero son particularmente visibles en la población que circunda la Escuela de Trabajo Social. Los propósitos de la Escuela toman estas condiciones sociales como su contexto natural

The Law and Policy of Child Maltreatment

Each year in the United States some four million children are reported to child protective services and hundreds of thousands of children are confirmed victims of maltreatment. This chapter provides a brief overview of the civil and criminal law’s response to child abuse and neglect. It summarizes the major federal statutes that provide funding to the states to support both civil and criminal law responses to maltreatment. It discusses the division of responsible for responding to child maltreatment between the federal and state governments (federalism). It also provides a summary of the constitutional framework for handling both civil and criminal child maltreatment cases

Cultivating anti-racism in the classroom and beyond through collaborative learning in the environmental sciences

Spurred by nationwide protests against anti-Black violence in the summer of 2020, academic departments across the USA saw an uptick in efforts to integrate belonging, diversity, equity, justice, and inclusion initiatives into their programs. In this vein, graduate students in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley, developed and led a semester-long course, “Critical Engagements in Anti-Racist Environmental Scholarship.” The course cultivated anti-racist mindsets through collaborative learning and action projects. We designed and taught the class as a team of doctoral students, and course participants consisted of faculty, staff, postdoctoral scholars, and other graduate students, thus disrupting traditional academic power structures. In this article, we draw on our experiences from two years of developing and teaching this course. We begin by outlining our theory of change, depicted as a tree rooted in our pedagogical approach, which ultimately bears the fruit of anti-racist mindsets and actions. We then provide an overview of our pedagogical approach, which includes attending to the roots of curriculum, classroom structures, and teaching practices. Next, we highlight the four key elements of the course’s success: (1) Centering Black voices and experiences, (2) Flattening academic hierarchies, (3) Fostering a community of learners, and (4) Developing action-oriented mindsets to sustain long-term anti-racist praxis. To conclude, we reflect on the successes and challenges of this approach two years later. Overall, this article shares our experiences conducting an environmental sciences-specific version of this course, with the understanding that this model can be adopted by other departments seeking to implement anti-racist praxis through coursework and long-form professional development training for academics

The differential effects of concurrent planning practice elements on reunification and adoption

Objective: The child welfare practice of concurrent planning attempts to shorten children\u27s stays in foster care. There is very little quantitative research on concurrent planning\u27s effects. This study examines the influence of concurrent planning practice elements (reunification prognosis, concurrent plan, full disclosure, and discussion of voluntary relinquishment) on reunification and adoption. Method: Using a sample of 885 children, an observational design, and statistical controls, children who received concurrent planning elements were compared to those who did not. Results: Findings show discussion of voluntary relinquishment to be positively associated with adoption and full disclosure to be negatively associated with reunification. Conclusions: Concurrent planning\u27s benefits may require more intensive services to be fully realized. Care should be taken to ensure activities achieve their intended effects

Protecting children from their families and themselves: State laws and the constitution

State laws provide a variety of means to protect children from self-inflicted or parentally-inflicted harm. In recent years, the Supreme Court has imposed stringent procedural requirements on juvenile delinquency laws. In the past year, however, the Court has refused to extend these procedural stringencies to analogous child-protective state laws. This article explores generally the rationale for court application, by constitutional mandate, of procedural safeguards to a broad range of child-protective legislation. The article suggests that some criminal-procedure rights are vitally important to protect children and their parents from inappropriate state interventions, but that wholesale application of all criminal rights, as if these laws were no different from criminal laws, unduly restricts proper application of these laws. Guidelines for determining what criminal rights should and should not be applied to child-protective legislation generally are suggested .Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45257/1/10964_2005_Article_BF01537066.pd