No Study Without Struggle
2022–23 Selection
The One Book, One Richmond Committee selected the 2022-23 book No Study Without Struggle: Confronting Settler Colonialism in Higher Education by Leigh Patel.
Dr. Leigh Patel is a professor of educational foundations, organizations, and policy at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a transdisciplinary scholar who studies the narratives that create material realities in society. Her research focuses on both the ways schooling delivers inequities and how education can be a tool for liberation. She is a highly sought-after speaker and well-regarded scholar across the fields of education, ethnic studies, critical higher education studies, and literacy.
Praise for the book
“Challenging two centuries of US colonialist higher education, Leigh Patel provides an analysis of and a road map for decolonizing the settler-colonial university.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
“Today, most American universities have adopted obligatory land acknowledgments, recognizing that their massive billion-dollar campuses are on stolen land. And yet, inside the classroom, the administrative halls, the financial arrangements, and in the relations between universities and their neighbors, the legacy of settler colonialism persists, unremarked and unheeded. Until now. Leigh Patel delivers a powerful, penetrating analysis of the settler-colonial roots of the modern university and the consequences for higher education and our society at large. The lesson is clear: we can’t ‘reform’ the university; it must be decolonized through critical study and struggle. This book is the essential guide.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
“Leigh Patel’s writing is consistently bold, concise, timely, and filled with nuances. . . . Her moving writing is backed by historical context that brings theory to light.”
—Bettina L. Love, author of We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom