Liberatory community college leadership: Education, decolonization, and emancipation

Abstract Building from Freire's ideas of liberatory education in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed , Carter G. Woodson's The Mis‐Education of the Negro , and Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth , we outline a new and audacious approach in this chapter, in hopes that it will better position a more transformative and revolutionary approach for community college leaders to profoundly address the systemic inequities that exist in their colleges. Additionally, we critically examine current notions related to the principal tenets of equity‐minded leadership that are currently couched in anti‐racist frameworks, arguing for the need for leadership approaches rooted instead in liberatory ideas. Current anti‐racist frames are limited and ultimately fall short of producing the type of leadership that will lead to the deep systemic change necessary to dismantle, decolonize, and reconstruct systems that are rooted in institutional racism and colonialism. Our views are shaped both by scholarship and our holistic multifaceted experience. We draw from a variety of our own experiences and knowledge as community college leaders, including serving as college president, chancellor, and faculty, who have worked in rural, urban, and suburban institutions and both private and public and single and multi‐district campuses. Our analysis is rooted in our collective practitioner knowledge and commitment to social justice to examine radical leadership and its impact on campus culture.