EditorialÉditorial[Notice]

  • Eva Lemaire,
  • Rim Fathallah,
  • Kumari Beck et
  • Dale McCartney

…plus d’informations

The idea for this editorial grew out of a discussion among colleagues that ended up becoming rather delicate. What was intended was a rapid account of the recent ratification of the Scarborough Charter by the Association of Deans of Education. Based on the double initiative of fighting anti-Black racism and promoting the inclusion of Blacks in higher education in Canada, the Scarborough Charter was launched and then virtually signed on November 18, 2021, by nearly 50 Canadian universities and colleges. During this virtual ceremony (https://youtu.be/yZ02CGs5Zfc), Adelle Blackett, principal author of the Charter, explains that this document is meant to provide archiving and guidance. As an archive, the Charter affirms the contributions of Blacks, and as guidance, it catalyzes and informs research and action to hold each other to account. The Scarborough Charter document identifies four fundamental principles directing all of the policies or actions envisioned by its signers. First, Black flourishing, second, inclusive excellence, third, mutuality, and fourth, accountability. The document is divided into two main parts: one entitled “Institutional Action,” with four subdivisions (one for each of the above-mentioned principles), and the other, “Action: Cross-Sector Inter-Institutional Commitments and Accountability.” This latter part, concluding the 22-page Charter, proposes three actions: (1) the creation of the Inter-Institutional Forum on Inclusive Higher Education; (2) the support of the Inter-Institutional Steering Committee on Inclusive Higher Education; and (3) the implementation of the Charter and the support of the Inter-Institutional Forum. A mandate and calls for action like these can easily seem bound to bring together faculty who are involved in higher education. But is it correct to target anti-Black racism like this? Can we even use this term? Does racism not hit other populations, too, and if so, why this Charter? Should we be talking about a struggle against racism or is this term not a bit too strong? Does this end up becoming the responsibility of programs in education? The emergence of questions like these might be surprising, might call into question … Their emergence together, though, has had the effect of showing how important it is to keep publishing on the struggle against anti-Black racism and the inclusion of Blacks in education. Until now, the Charter has not come up much in academic publications, and although these sources do recognize the importance of the Charter and the promise it holds for the promotion of action against anti-Black racism (Duhaney et al., 2022), most publications criticize its limits or raise questions about its impact. For example, the Charter has been criticized for not dealing with larger and more structural local problems (Cummings & Mohabir, 2022) and for having no Francophone Quebec universities among its signers (Ingabire, 2022). The need has been noted for research on racialized students’ experiences in order to understand them better (Turner, 2022), as has the importance of making the signing institutions accountable for implementing the changes called for by the Charter (Redmond, 2022). The delicate discussion that we had with colleagues has in any case brought to the fore a number of questions that seem crucial to examine: Who takes on the burden of talking about anti-racism in postsecondary institutions? What do we know about our practices involving our students? How are these practices complementary? How can they be clarified, and how can research enrich them? These are areas for reflection that seem to us to fall within the purview of the journal Comparative and International Education, and we invite our readers to publish on these subjects. In the first article of this issue, the title of which translates as “Life Stories of Young Immigrant …

Parties annexes

Parties annexes