Thread by @TaraVanHo

Remember how I said you can't crowdsource a 'race & int'l law' reading list? Also true about decolonizing your curriculum. Geraldo's twitter-sourcing provides an important entry point to a tough convo we need to have re: IEL education in light of the decolonizing movement.
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https://twitter.com/VidigalGeraldo/status/1302620476020269060

First, white men 'invented' modern IEL by imposing it on others via colonialism (IEL *practice* predates colonialism, but Europeans forget that). If you start there, you can start the process of decolonizing IEL by asking how others responded to realities imposed on them.
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Given how & why white men invented modern IEL, you are fooling yourself if you think white men are the ones coming up with the answers for how to deconstruct & rethink it. So, your second step is asking who is coming up with interesting deconstructions, responses, & reforms?
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(Hint: if, like me, you come from the UN's WEOG, it's not us. We might have some interesting thoughts at times, but we're really not the interesting thinkers we think we are. Yes, I'm generalizing. Yes, I'm still being truthful.)
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In light of the above, if your reading list is full of white WEOG men, a couple token white WEOG women, and no one else, you are absolutely, critically failing in your job as a pedagogue.
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To fix this requires doing your own homework. Good pedagogy is not something that can be transferred readily from one person to another. Good pedagogues do their own reading & thinking about the field, they stitch together their own reading lists, & they bring their own approach.

And that's just basic pedagogy before you even get into decolonizing your curriculum or adopting an anti-racist pedagogy. Decolonizing & developing anti-racist pedagogy is a process, not an outcome. And no one can go through that process for you.
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As @CelineCLTan said, "Decolonising the curriculum, pluralising & diversifying scholarship & pedagogy is not just colouring in your reading list." This is about changing your approach to the material, to how you teach, & to what you value in teaching.
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https://twitter.com/CelineCLTan/status/1302698911870615554

Just like a student who copies & pastes paragraphs from a textbook into their coursework won't get good results, copying & pasting in some scholars of colour will not get you a decolonized curriculum because you haven't done your own damn homework.
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For those honestly looking to decolonize their curriculum, the *start* to your process can be found in @KentLawSchool @suhraiyajivraj's publication on decolonizing the law school curriculum. Start now & you might have a decent course/module in 2 yrs.
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research.kent.ac.uk/decolonising-l…

If you want some recommendations of people doing important & interesting thinking on IEL, go to the pages of @afronomicslaw & @iel_collective & then publications-stalk the scholars you find there.
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NB: I have deleted 2 tweets that appeared to be attacking @VidigalGeraldo when my intention was to point to the seriousness with which decolonizing work needs to be undertaken--i.e., not on Twitter--& that the labour of developing a decolonized curriculum
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is actual labour that we owe & that we should not & cannot rely on others to do. It creates an unfair burden on those who have been doing the work when we ask them to ineffectively transfer their labour to us.

I apologize unreservedly to Geraldo for the tone of those tweets.
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As a white American, I enjoy a great deal of privilege, including the privilege to decolonize my curriculum unreservedly & without fear that it will not be taken seriously by my students or peers. Not everyone enjoys that. I need to do a better job of remembering that.
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I do however stand by 2 points I was trying to make:
-Stop coming to Twitter for your decolonized/anti-racist curriculum. It won't work.
-Stop asking scholars who have done their work on this to teach you. They get paid to teach. Their labour deserves that compensation.
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