White Ignorance in Global Education

Today we focus on a hugely important issue but one that is generally absent within the organizations and structures that make up the global education architecture. The issue is race. My guests today, Francine Menashy and Zeena Zakharia, have spent years speaking with staff members at various global education organizations – you know, places like UNESCO, UNCIEF, the World Bank, and the Gates Foundation. They also scrutinized hundreds of publications these organizations have published. Francine and Zeena come to the conclusion that few if any of these organization deal with race and racial power relations between the global north and south in any meaningful way.

Francine Menashy is an associate professor at the University of Toronto and Zeena Zakharia is an assistant professor at the university of Maryland, College Park. Their new article in Harvard Educational Review is entitled White Ignorance in Global Education.