Wilson Okello, Ph.D., IRT ’08, ’14 is a tenured professor at Pennsylvania State University.
To linger, or tarry, in my work has allowed me to think otherwise – to consider more deeply what I am doing and why. Slowing down, for me, has been an invitation to grapple with the entirety of my relationship to my subject matter, to academia, and with it: precarity, terror, refusals, hopes, rebellions, and dreams.
In this moment of shifting national and state policies – policies that call into question how we know and remember, how we live and be – pursuing lines of inquiry that seek to lift the collective “we” higher are often met with suspicion and ire. It takes work to remember, and resolve to do so intently. My hope is that we will remember the way water remembers, as the ancestor Toni Morrison reminded us – always trying to “get back” to valleys, banks, light, and the route of “our original place.”
Continue reading “Journey Through Academia – Alumni Thoughts”
Institute for Recruitment of Teachers 
You must be logged in to post a comment.