By Victoria Copeland, The Imprint, October 20, 2020
Academia is a space for immense learning and knowledge building. It is a place where ideas are crafted into resolutions for some of the world’s greatest concerns. Yet, because of its potential to do good, we often overlook academia’s complicity and collaboration in harmful research projects and practices.
The “Ivory Tower” has notably harmed Black and Indigenous folks historically and in the present context. This is exemplified in its past complicity and collaboration with violent theft, slavery, racism, murder and its current perpetuation of policing and the carceral state. Policing not only refers to the prison industrial complex but includes the violent separation of families within the foster care industrial complex and the so-called child welfare system. To this, academia is no stranger.
In the 1960s, Dr. Henry Kempe’s research on the “Battered-Child Syndrome” was highly publicized and utilized in the media, academia and practice. This academic paper contributed to the pathologizing of youth who experienced physical abuse and sparked an era of increased fear over child safety. This contributed to the ideology of “Child Protection,” a system through which millions of children and their families are surveilled today. In subsequent years, amendments were made to the Social Security Act, mandatory reporting laws were enacted, and the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act were passed.
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