Critiques for Transformation: Reimagining Colleges and Communities for Social Justice ed. by Lorenzo DuBois Baber and Heather McCambly (review)

Reviewed by: Critiques for Transformation: Reimagining Colleges and Communities for Social Justice ed. by Lorenzo DuBois Baber and Heather McCambly Stephanie Aguilar-Smith and Dani Myers Lorenzo DuBois Baber and Heather McCambly. (Eds.) Critiques for Transformation: Reimagining Colleges and Communities for Social Justice. Information Age Publishing, 2023. 269 pp. $45. ISBN 979-8-88730-259-1 In the United States, people and policymakers often position higher education as the remedy for the country's broad range of societal ills (Grubb & Larezon, 2004), only to decry it quickly for falling short of their aspirations of its curative potential. This is a tired song, one that absolves the pressing need for more expansive social and political support for higher education. It also neglects higher education's extensively evidenced role, both historically and presently, in reproducing inequality. Lorenzo DuBois Baber and Heather McCambly's edited volume, Critiques for Transformation: Reimagining Colleges and Communities for Social Justice, counters these trends and keenly recognizes assorted shortcomings of higher education. With such a setup, prospective readers may instinctively steady themselves for a heavy read—a book chock-full of hopeless chapters reviving higher education's endarkened history and ongoing complicity in societal oppression—in "reproducing society as it is" (p. 80). But this 12-chapter volume is a fantastic love letter to the future, collectively committed to offering "pathways toward healed, liberatory, and decolonized futures" (p. 252). Indeed, this volume stands as a well-considered compilation of hope-filled freedom-making dreams and a powerful embodiment of the Freirean notion of critical optimism—a grounding belief that the future, indeed, "arc[s] toward justice" (p. 3) through concerted individual and collective efforts. Embodying this belief, across the chapters, the authors "substitute causal principles for magical explanations," "reject the current reality," and "avoid preconceived notions" (Freire, 1974/2021, p. 15) to inspire radical hope and usher change. More specifically, the volume presents research- and practice-based possibilities toward the "holistic re-envisioning of colleges and universities as transformative spaces for societal change" (p. 3). With such a focus, this volume is a beneficial resource to higher education scholars, campus administrators, and student affairs practitioners, particularly those with a basic understanding of higher education's settler colonial foundations and troubled history. Moreover, this volume is an asset to higher education and student affairs programs across the United States. For instance, this collection, especially the last two sections, may serve as inspired reading for graduate courses on the organization and administration of higher education; the first part may particularly benefit courses pertaining to pedagogical and curricular possibilities. The Volume at a Glance The volume includes three well-executed sections that address possibilities for (a) Transforming Postsecondary Pedagogies (Chapters 3–5); (b) Transforming Campus and Culture (Chapters 6–8); and (c) Transforming Systems and Structures (Chapters 9–12). In particular, "each chapter of this volume packs up a different facet of U.S. higher education as a settler colonial institution, examines it, and struggles to reimagine it for what it could be outside of our narrow and narrowing confines" (p. 11). To set the scene and need for these transformational possibilities, Baber and [End Page 561] McCambly first provide an overview the settler colonial origins of the U.S. higher education system and the neoliberal logics galvanized by former President Reagan. Building on this introduction, Gottesman (Chapter 2), discusses additional efforts to undercut critical thought and social justice over time, including recent attacks on Critical Race Theory (CRT). Gottesman's historicization of oppressive educational systems and CRT slightly overlap with the opening chapter but his points are a strong addition to the text—ones which also flow well into the volume's first section, Transforming Postsecondary Pedagogies. The first main section "draw[s] our gaze to the multiple, simultaneous possibilities for (re)arranging the college classroom" (p. 252). In particular, Rodgers et al. (Chapter 3) and Doran (Chapter 4), in the ensuing chapters, envision classrooms as spaces "where students learn to witness and understand themselves in the fullness of their identities rooted in history, politics, and the present in order to then chart out their futures" (p. 252). Meanwhile, in Chapter 5, Wilson discusses the transformative potential...