An increase in public expressions of xenophobic and racist nativist sentiments followed the election of the 45th president of the United States, and higher education institutions across the country issued statements proclaiming their support for students impacted by changes to federal immigration policy. Guided by García’s (2017) organizational typology of HSIs and critical policy studies (Diem, Young, Welton, Mansfield & Lee, 2014), we conducted a content analysis of messages distributed via campus-wide email that addressed the vulnerabilities of DACA recipients and other immigrant students at two Hispanic-Serving Institutions in California. Our examination of these messages as policy documents reveals how campus and university-system leaders—even in a so-called “Sanctuary State”—attempt to create a notion of “campus as sanctuary” rather than committing to “sanctuary campus” policies and practices. We conclude with recommendations that push the notion of sanctuary campus beyond symbolic gestures and ask practitioners, scholars, and educators to reflect on the practices that foster true sanctuary environments.

This essay explores a Latinx, queer and trans, student’s resistance to a gender-neutral restroom at a high school in an agricultural community of the Central Coast of California. Through a close reading of a field note, I analyze Joaquin’s narrative of refusal to demonstrate how queer and trans youth engage in an active subjectivity (Lugones, 2003). For decolonial philosopher María Lugones (2003), an active subjectivity is the process through which oppressed communities become conscious and critical by engaging in a meaning-making process centered on their socialites. I argue that queer and trans high school students’ active subjectivity is in relation to their embodied knowledges and geographies. The body and space are both critical in learning to think in community and reflexively. Joaquin’s refusal of the restroom becomes useful in understanding how queer and trans youth tell narratives of their self, grounded in a social history capable of alternating the story told about space and place.

In this interview, conducted on June 24, 2020, we asked Nunu Kidane and Gerald Lenoir to reflect on the resurgence of global uprisings against anti-Black racism, particularly against the backdrop of their decades of transnational activism and movement work across the Black diaspora.Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.JK: What are your priorities right now in your activist work, in terms of this global uprising against anti-Black racism and racialized violence?GL: This is an incredible era we are living through. Unprecedented. Probably the last time we had such a mass uprising was during the Civil War. I came of age in the 1960s, and so I was part of that uprising as a student and then as an organizer, but we have never seen anything like this. You know, a lot of the rebellions historically have come as a result of police brutality. In 1965, I was sixteen years old; I was living in Los Angeles when the first Watts Riots started. That was caused by an act of police brutality that sparked, at that time, the largest uprising in history in Los Angeles. Then in 1967, we had something like 109 uprisings in cities across the country, the overwhelming majority of them sparked by police brutality. President Johnson at that time commissioned the Kerner Commission. Their task was to find out what the root causes of the rebellions were and to recommend solutions. Well, they were extremely straightforward: the cause of the rebellions was white racism, and their recommendations were to pour literally billions of dollars into Black communities for education, job development, community development. None of those recommendations were implemented. Then in 1968, we had another round of social unrest with the assassination of Dr. King. This is when Richard Nixon was president, and similarly to what we are hearing from Trump today, this frame of "law and order" was his main mantra. That was really directed toward white constituencies in the South.Because whites in the South had abandoned the Democratic Party after the passage of the Civil Rights Bills and the Republicans decided that to capture that white constituency-they focused on suppressing the Black movement. So now we are here. We also can't forget 1992, with the beating of Rodney King, the acquittal of those officers, and the uprising that happened in LA. This issue of police brutality is, in many instances, the last straw in our community. It's not just about that one murder of George Floyd; it's about the series of murders that have happened over the last ten or eleven years that we've seen on video. And it's not just about that. It is really about the systemic oppression of Black people in this country. What we are witnessing is a rebellionnot a riot, not demonstrations. We are witnessing a rebellion against a system that has oppressed Black people since they brought us over in chains. What is different about this moment is that it is garnering different levels of support from other communities across the world. And so, I think there's a different qu...