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 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 "draws 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. . .