Mission

The Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Advanced Study is committed to critically examining and reshaping the lives and education of socially precarious and racialized populations. Drawing from critical theories, the institute is an undercommons that does work that is voraciously interdisciplinary, intellectually curious, methodologically creative, and agenda setting fugitive planning and study. Our mission is to understand, challenge, and dismantle the effects of power, structural oppression, colonialism and settler colonialism, global racial capital, and the seemingly most socially intractable issues in education, culture, and society; and, to actively work towards a more equitable, anti-colonial, and transformative educational system.

Core Principles:

1. Interrogating Power Structures: We are dedicated to critically examining the power structures and systemic oppression that perpetuate educational inequities within education and racialized communities. We seek to deconstruct and challenge the hidden dimensions of power, colonialism, and capital which produce and reproduce difference, including in the examination of sociotechnical systems.
2. Decolonizing Education: We recognize the colonial histories that shape educational systems and aim to decolonize curriculum, assessment, pedagogy, and policies to enable multiplicity in being, knowing, and know-how.
3. Community-Centered Liberation: Our work centers the voices, experiences, and knowledge of local communities, supporting them to take control of their own educational and social futures and redefine the paradigms of education.
4. Innovative & Critical Methods: We employ innovative and critical methods of research and inquiry to resist positivist objectivism, foster alternative ways of being and knowing the world, and produce other-wise knowledges that will challenge the currently overdetermined modernity and enable radically transformative futures. 
5. Preparing Abolitionists: We seek to empower individuals and communities as abolitionist teachers and activists, preparing them with the knowledge, tools, and abolitionist praxis to drive profound changes within schools and society.
6. Cultivating Critical & Ethical Users of Technology: We seek to cultivate individuals and communities as critical and ethical users of technology, equipping them with the knowledge, tools, and a critical and ethical consciousness to drive profound changes in uses of artificial intelligence and educational technologies.
7. Nurturing Change Agents: We aim to nurture individuals and communities as agents of change, equipping them with the knowledge, tools, and critical consciousness to transform schools and communities.
8. Courageously Speculative: We cultivate an intellectual community that houses and encourages scholars to be willing to imagine and ask the ‘what if’ questions, and risk pursuing those futures through inquiry, policy, design, and practice. 
9. Policy Transformation: We advocate for structural change by influencing policies, institutions, curriculums, and practices to address the historical and ongoing injustices in education and society.

The Gordon Institute seeks to deconstruct, reimagine, and rebuild educational systems, fostering an educational environment that liberates, decolonizes, and radically transforms and ultimately contributes to a more just and equitable society.