Talk: Anti-Racist Paradoxes

In this talk, Dr. Luis Martín Valdiviezo Arista will analyze some current discourses in the political and educational spheres that confront inequalities and injustices derived from racism that despite their best intentions, are nevertheless still based on racist assumptions.

Dr. Valdiviezo Arista earned his EdD in Social Justice Education and his MEd in International Education at UMass-Amherst. Previously, he received his License in Philosophy and Bachelor in Humanities at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Peru (PUCP) in Lima city. Based on intercultural, decolonial and critical education approaches, his research focuses on ethnicity, gender, social class, and formal education in Perú and Latin American societies. He is in charge of courses in Ethics and Philosophy of Education at PUCP. He is a member of the International Network of Intercultural Studies-PUCP, which promotes, together with the Peruvian Network of Universities, the adoption of intercultural policies and programs in Peruvian universities. Recently, he was a consultant for the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture, and trained and advised a group of PUCP graduate students who implemented a literacy course for minors in a detention center in Lima, Peru. He is as well a member of the Latin American Network of Intercultural Studies and Experiences (recognized by UNESCO) that integrates researchers and activists from Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, Chile, Nicaragua, Argentina and Peru. Likewise, he is a member of the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of African Diaspora Teachers Training, promoted by the Afro-Peruvian NGO Center for Ethnic Development (CEDET) located in Lima, Peru. Currently, he is Visiting Scholar in the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies at Brown University. He is offering the undergraduate course Andean-Caribbean Dialogues of Negritude and doing research on the representations of women, indigenous people, and Afro-descendants in textbooks for primary education in Peru. His most recent book is Educación, Negritud e Interculturalidad. Ensayos en tiempos de neoliberalismo, pandemia y bicentenario en el Perú (2021). He has also published articles and book chapters on the educational situation of Afrodescendants and Indigenous Peruvians in academic journals and publishers of Latin America and Europe. In 2020-2021, he was the Custer Visiting Scholar of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University. He has written three novels and numerous short stories, some of which have obtained recognition in national and international contests. He comes from a Peruvian family with Afro-descendant, Amazonian, Andean, and Hispanic roots.

Sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, Latin American and Iberian Studies Program, Department of Black Studies, Department of History, and Silvia Bermudez.