PDA Event: Centering Inclusion in Open Access Content Creation

Join us as MIT Professor Michel DeGraff discusses Platfòm MIT-Ayiti, a collaborative open-access platform for the co-creation and dissemination of educational materials in Haitian Creole (Kreyòl) in all subjects and at all levels of the school system in Haiti. We will also discuss open education responsive practices towards awareness and outreach to BIPOC faculty, staff, and students. This conversation will be moderated by Tiffeni Fontno, co-chair of the BLC EDI Community of Interest and Head Librarian, Educational Resource Center, Boston College. 

Bring your questions, thoughts, and experiences to share in the conversation in creating more collaborative experiences in the OER movement.

Speaker

Michel DeGraff is Professor of linguistics at MIT, co-founder and co-director of the MIT-Haiti Initiative and founding member of Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen. His research contributes to an egalitarian approach to Creole languages and their speakers, as in his native Haiti. His writings also engage intellectual history and critical race theory, especially the links between power-knowledge hierarchies and (mis)representations/(mis-)uses of Creole languages, Indigenous languages and other non-colonial languages in the Global South and beyond. His work is anchored in a broader agenda for human rights and social justice, with Haiti as one spectacular case of a post-colony where the national language spoken by all (Haitian Creole) is systematically disenfranchised while the (former) colonial language (French) spoken by few is enlisted for élite closure and for political and geo-political domination. This devalorization of Kreyòl in Haiti and other non-colonial languages worldwide, especially in the Global South, is embedded in systematic patterns of white supremacy where language and education are enlisted as tools for empire. Michel DeGraff tackles these political challenges heads-on as he unveils age-old myths about Creole languages in linguistics and as he engages MIT-Haiti in a broad campaign for democratizing access to quality education and for the universal respect of human rights. Through the strategic use of Open Education Resources in Haitian Creole (Kreyòl), MIT-Haiti effectively sets up a model for other communities where language is often used as a pernicious tool for hegemony and exploitation, especially in the context of education and other spheres where knowledge and power are created and transmitted. More details at: http://mit.edu/degraff, http://facebook.com/mithaiti, http://twitter.com/mithaiti, http://instagram.com/mithaiti 

Resources

Here are two suggested readings to review prior to the program:

• The politics of education in post-colonies: Kreyòl in Haiti as a case study of language as technology for power and liberation by Michel DeGraff
• What Does Justice Sound Like? by Michel DeGraff

Register for this event.

Sponsored by BLC.