by Melinda Russial
It has become commonplace to begin a persuasive piece with a litany of all the problems that sit at the center of the topic in question. I am starting to feel like every news article and every research article does this; it is exhausting to keep reading the same introduction, the same bullet points of tragedy, the same fruits of doomscrolling. I considered trying to find a different way to begin. But then it occurred to me that the fact that these litanies roll off of our tongues (or fingertips) so quickly and effortlessly is its own form of indictment of an epistemological framework that is floundering. As we try to make meaning out of chaos and absurdity, we weave together the details of these litanies with hyperlinks because it helps us feel like we are bringing order to the chaos. We are not. There is no order to the chaos I speak of today, but the litanies persist, demanding constant attention at the forefront of consciousness, in their full, unadulterated absurdity. Thus, I resign myself to the trend once more, in the service of drawing attention to new disasters in US-American higher education, as well as to what those of us working in educational and research contexts in Finland might be able to do to help model and sustain more just and world-building practices in light of these disasters:
In the year since the second election of Donald Trump as US president, the following happened (among many other scandals, tragedies, and ongoing genocidal complicities): The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was defunded; history is under erasure across the Smithsonian Institution; scores of US universities have defunded or disappeared DEI initiatives and programs, and are disciplining or expelling students for engaging in what previous eras have defined as lawful acts of protest; in response to government pressure, Columbia University adopted a new training requirement for students and faculty, based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s controversial definition of antisemitism; Professor Rashid Khalidi withdrew a popular course in modern Middle East history in response to this policy change and other government-mandated changes; Northwestern University just settled with the administration for USD 75 million, caving to absurdist demands in order to regain their federal funding; major research grants for public and private universities have been cancelled because the government has determined that initiatives such as studying Black maternal health no longer support the ruling party’s emerging white supremacist priorities; The US President’s petty feud with Harvard University continues, including threats to revoke patents; the University of Chicago paused PhD admissions across the Humanities and in some Social Science programs; visas for international students across the US university systems are under continual threat of cancellation or denial, and those still interested in obtaining one are now expected to make their social media accounts public as a part of the qualifying process. And so on.
I write today, in this watershed moment for US higher education, as a US-American scholar based in Finland. From this vantage point, and at this moment, I do not feel like there is much I can do about my country’s embrace of fascism on an overt political scale (although many others are working hard to resist every day). Creating a sense of stuckness and hopelessness is part of the fascist playbook, after all, and most days it feels like even those public officials who have taken oaths to represent our fallen democracy (those who haven’t embraced this fascist move for personal gain) have yielded to this hopelessness. To be clear, this is not a piece about preserving “American” values and US hegemony and fighting for a system that was always terminally unjust. Empires fall, and perhaps an empire built over the rubble of (at least) two genocides and inherently oppressive systems and structures does not deserve to survive in its present form.
While I can imagine possibilities of a better world emerging from the collapse of late-stage global capitalism, as many decolonial scholars, artists, and activists have done before me, I do not accept the necessity of widespread grief and loss that are accompanying the conditions of imminent collapse as it begins to manifest in my country. I do not accept the horrors that have been increasing exponentially since the second presidential inauguration of a person who never should have been inaugurated a first time. Far too many people (globally, because of the tentacles of this empire’s reach) are hurting, dying, languishing in cages, separated from lifesaving medication, separated from reproductive health care, separated from loved ones, failing to thrive. I believe every single one of us who either holds US citizenship or is touched by it in some way is failing to thrive, while wondering whether collapse is imminent.
What does this have to do with Finland, some might be asking? This is an essay for the ETMU Blog, and here I am, another US-American talking about the United States with the characteristic national narcissism that projects a stance that everyone in the world must be categorically and perpetually interested in what is happening in the United States. Finland is not, at this moment, collapsing. Finland is nervous about tariffs, nervous about Russia, nervous about unemployment rates, nervous about climate change; Finland is struggling with the rumblings of a re-emboldened far right, which brings with it a whole host of horrors. But, in my experience so far, Finland generally believes that it will get through the current landscape of global instability, even if the US manages to crash the global economy. This country invented SMS, after all, along with the dish drying cabinet and other brilliant gems of modern convenience, and many of its citizens go swimming in holes cut in the ice, for fun. (In other words, I am suggesting that Finnish people might be culturally predisposed to finding surprising opportunities for innovation and solutions to intractable problems.)
As an immigrant in Finland, I am negotiating entry into this creative and compelling country as I watch my country of origin descend into full embrace of the worst aspects of our long history of violence; many of us are struggling against despair to maintain connection to the legacies of resistance that have always accompanied that violence, and are finding ourselves feeling stuck. Many of us have new challenges to navigate that are taking much of our time and attention, and many are experiencing the (sometimes literal) death blows of new impossibilities that have arisen from old problems. Nonetheless, as an immigrant in Finland, I feel more hope than I have in a long time, as I learn to navigate the logistics and cultural differences of country where social welfare (mostly) works, where people generally treat common areas with respect, where people often choose to bike to work instead of using their car, where summer holidays are taken seriously and no one sends emails on vacation, where Everyone’s Rights allow for egalitarian access to berries and mushrooms and camping spots, where health codes and food safety are taken seriously, where employment is not a precondition of receiving lifesaving medical care.
Under the sheen of berry-picking, mökki saunas, and social safety nets, however, I also see hints of something more akin to the seeds of the US-American Fascist Experiment. Racially motivated stabbings in Oulu shopping malls. Bids to remove the work-from-home exemption in taxes. Increases in timeframes to qualify for permanent residency and labyrinthine asylum seeking procedures. Economic language employed to justify systemic racism. Name-based bias in hiring practices. The creep of US-style global capitalism and isolationism, and an increase in fascist noise.
Working opposite these trends, so far, is the country’s serious commitment to education and investment in knowledge in ways that sit deep inside the culture and the political structures of Finland, ways that my country has long since lost track of. While I don’t always agree with the details of policy, I can see why the Finnish educational system across the full human lifespan remains the envy of the world. This reputation carries responsibilities, for those of us working in fields of knowledge creation, maintenance, and dissemination in Finland, as we learn to navigate this latest stage in global-scale oppression and knowledge erasure.
While I can’t yet see a way through the growing challenges of global polycrisis and the related impact of deliberate knowledge loss in my own country, I plead for those of us working inside the Finnish system to adopt three interventions:
- Practice Small Refusals
Push against neoliberal creep in small and large ways, whenever possible. Interrogate and challenge structures that sustain anthropocentric, world-breaking excesses of capitalism.
Challenge the primacy of publication counts. Write articles that need to be written, rather than articles with a primary motivation of increasing an author’s collection of titles. Write slowly, and read more. Read slowly. Read twice. Read backwards. Read across disciplines, and across time, place, and language. The knowledge of a single discipline is not enough for the work we have ahead of us.
Resist the urge to ask for article revisions that privilege “meta-text” and bullet point-style arguments. Resist calls for simplicity, and choose to embrace complexity – the challenges of our world are not simple, and simple solutions will not address them.
Challenge concepts of “decorum” at times when it primarily serves as a tool for silencing. Say the thing that must be said. Aim to protect the agency of those who have been repeatedly harmed by the systems of injustice we work within, rather than the feelings of those who sustain those systems.
- Commit to Preservation and Safekeeping of Justice-aligned Scholarship
Recognize that all education is political, and that the status quo is maintained by tendencies to experience it as “neutral.” Search for ways in which the “neutral” is anything but neutral, and name them, in writing, in teaching, and (perhaps especially), in meetings.
Scholars can say things out loud in Finland that are becoming increasingly difficult to say within the boundaries of the United States borders. Say them. Embrace the foundations and histories of “DEI” (critical legal studies, critical race theory, post/de/anti-colonial theories, gender theories, critical migration studies, Indigenous knowledges) in your writing and teaching as much as possible, as they are rapidly being stricken from the US legal system and historical record, and banned from US college campuses, their wisdom turned into Orwellian doublespeak tropes.
Resist Eurocentric narratives of “both sides” logic, a tragic vestige of coloniality that persists in its objectifying hegemony. Sometimes there are ten sides. Sometimes there is one side, and we do violence to the conversation (and its material implications) by pretending that all opinions are valid. Sometimes they are not.
Continue pushing Finnish universities to recognize the genocides in Sudan, Palestine, DRC, Myanmar, as well as the violences that are threatening to become genocides. Speak to these human-made global catastrophes in research and teaching with care and nuance.
For those empowered to do so, embrace authentic collaborations with scholars from locations of violence, war, genocide, climate catastrophe, epistemicides, and social and economic erasure. Sponsor these scholars on research visits. Embrace first author publications for these scholars, supported by the systems and financial backing of your neoliberal university, even (perhaps especially) when these scholars speak against its hegemonies. Hire them for permanent positions. Help them find housing, get their electricity turned on, arrange insurance, and figure out how to negotiate the ticket-taking machines lurking in every government office, pharmacy, and hardware store. Show them how to buy vegetables in Finnish grocery stores. If you have the means and the capacity to cultivate new friendships, invite these scholars to your summer cottage and teach them about löyly. And remember, doing this work is not a gift, and it is not a one-way flow of knowledge and expertise. It is an exercise in recognizing shared humanity. It is not exceptional, and it does not deserve special recognition; it is the bare minimum of academic justice.
- Resist Narratives of Nordic Exceptionalism
That thing that you are certain can never happen here, can happen here. And it will, if you ignore the rumblings of its emergence when it is still early enough to contain it.
Learn from the failures of the United States. Eight years ago, a common refrain was, “There will be checks and balances on him. Congress will never let these things happen.” Five years ago, a common refrain was, “Well, the courts will protect us.” One year ago, a common refrain was, “No one will actually vote for him a second time.” And while I acknowledge that the problems in the US government are much deeper, with much longer histories, than one man’s narcissistic fantasies, we have seen repeatedly since January 20 how so many of his fantasies have become global realities by tweet-style, rage-filled, untempered decree.
In the words of Gwendolyn Brooks, “My last defense / is the present tense”, and in the words of bell hooks, “The heart of justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be.”
May we continue to defend the role, promise, and ephemeral praxis of knowledge in pursuit of world-building justice.
***
References:
Brooks, G. (2006). Selected Poems. Harper Perennial.
hooks, b. (2000). All About Love: New Visions. Harper Perennial.
Author Bio:
Melinda studies decoloniality and change agency in global education at the University of Oulu. Her work encompasses the intersections and entanglements of discursive, affective, ethical, and juridical spaces in justice-oriented institutions and educational initiatives. Melinda’s background as a professional musician and interdisciplinary arts and humanities teacher supports her commitment to traversing the borderlands of theory/method, art /science, and research/praxis. Melinda’s research and teaching is informed by currents in feminist, critical, and “post” theories and methodologies, with an interest in practical applications of contingent and relational knowledge.
