Ian Cook on FreshEd Podcast
CMDS Fellow Ian Cook and Prem Kumar Rajaram discussed their co-edited volume, Opening up the University: Teaching and Learning with Refugees, put together with Celine Cantat, on the FreshEd podcast.
In the podcast, they talk about some of the challenges, for example, bureaucratic or financial ones, students who have experienced displacement may face. They also discuss some of the challenges the teachers and the learners face when it comes to both learning and assessment, given the displaced students’ diverse educational background.
“It’s about recognizing different forms of knowledge that may have been learned in very different systems, and both inside and outside the university and whether or not that is valued in the classroom and valued as part of learning,” Ian Cook says.
He also explores the big question of what the point of a university is and how to handle the neoliberal turn of universities. He views opening up the university to students who have experienced displacement as an opportunity to reimagine what a university can be, and he calls for “disruptive education.”