School for Liberating Education

While teaching at major universities on both the East and West coasts for nearly two decades on topics like race and anti-racism, empire and anti-imperialism, neoliberal globalization and transnational activism among others, I experienced first-hand how the kinds of knowledge I taught was being systematically undermined. 

Administrators and other major funders failed to invest in or were actively divesting from scholars of color like me who research and teach on the kinds of topics I did. This was true even when I was working in the more traditional academic discipline of Sociology. Then when I took a position Asian American Studies, I could see how my department and others similarly situated in interdisciplinary fields born out of social justice movements (e.g. Chicanx Studies, Black Studies, Native American Studies, Comparative Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, etc.) were even more vulnerable to divestment and sometimes out-right attacks. It was not uncommon that I and my colleagues  faced intimidation tactics by right-wing students in our classrooms and colleagues on other parts of the campus for the kinds of things we taught and wrote about as scholars. This was well before Trump came into office in 2016. 

Meanwhile, outside of academia, I was alarmed by the growing campaigns against critical race theory (CRT)--a framework used by many Ethnic Studies faculty--by right-wing parents and elected officials that began in earnest under the first Trump administration and continued under the Biden administration. I couldn't believe that books were being banned at the K-12 level and in public libraries.

By 2021, I decided to retire early from my university job to start SLE so that the communities I care about can get the transformative knowledge we deserve.

I'm not surprised by the January 2025 executive order of the second Trump administration to end "radical indoctrination"  - which ultimately attempts to ban Ethnic Studies, an interdisciplinary field of study that invites students to be critical of  structures of power and domination like white supremacy, racial capitalism, heteropatriarchy and the like, of which Asian American Studies (where I taught) is also part.

These are scary times. But we do not need to be afraid. There are many of us who can and will preserve the histories of our communities that the current administration will try to erase. The powerful want to eliminate our histories so we don't know about the incredible ways our ancestors and people like us have resisted, fought back and created alternatives. "No history, no self." At SLE, however, we provide our communities with the tools to "know history, know self." 

At a time when our public educational institutions are crumbling and when social media algorithms circulate lots of information but not necessarily knowledge, I invite you to take advantage of the resources offered at SLE. 

-Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, Founder