Book Review: No Study Without Struggle

Editor's Note: This book review was originally published in Manhattan Book Review

Dr. Leigh Patel

Dr. Leigh Patel researches student-led activist movements that have emerged from college campuses, contending that the fervor for social change starts with the grounding and understanding of history and the promise of decolonization and liberation. In No Study Without Struggle, Patel shares her findings about social movements spanning generations, from the Combahee River Collective to Black Lives Matter. To create equitable systems in higher education, activist students and faculty are not only confronting the system of racist power but also settler colonialism. Patel argues that persistent systemic inequities stem from the complex interplay among the seizure of land, erasure of indigeneity, and theft of labor.

I have spent a considerable part of my adult life studying and working in colleges and universities, and this book held my interest. Dr. Patel is an astute scholar and educator committed to truth-telling in order to affect change. Education is not the great equalizer, she proclaims, boldly calling out the commodification of higher education to serve “racial capitalism.” In No Study Without Struggle, she challenges faculty and administrators to critically examine the workings of their institutions, from student admissions to tenure-granting processes. Through the lens of a diversity practitioner, Patel’s observations about unequal power relations inherent in diversity and inclusion functions are spot on.

While it is written from an academic insider’s point of view, the lessons in this book are accessible to anyone with an interest in untangling higher education from the interminable legacy of settler colonialism.

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Lucky Tomorrow: Stories

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Memento - Embracing the Darkness

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