Lana Alnajm
We, the University. We cultivate minds that question, sharpen intellects against the whetstone of theory, and illuminate the architecture of power. We will teach the student how to deconstruct the master’s house—but only within the bounds of critique, where the foundations remain untouched, not dismantled.
The University beckons with open gates and syllabi polished to a scholarly sheen, ready to imprint ambition on eager minds. Names like Fanon, Said, and Spivak rise from the pages, their words crackling with urgency—sharp, untamed, and poised to leap into the mind. A promise lingers in the margins: the tools to dismantle, to resist, to unlearn.
The student grips their pen, tracing the contours of an education that feels like revelation. Outside their window, the weight of the world’s silence hangs heavier than the night settling over the University lake. The campus hums with quiet reverence. Buildings stand like monuments to an intellectual heritage that is not their own.
Lectures unravel intricate theories while scholarly writings dissect intersectionality. Data maps the machinery of systemic institutions, analyzing what are the unseen forces at play. Marxist literature lays bare the fractures of labor, exposing the hands that build and the few who reap.
Coloniality of power.
Structures of oppression.
Radical imagination.
Liberation.
Uprising.
Class Struggle.
Decolonization.
The student’s mind buzzes with the weight of knowing. But knowing does not shield. Theories do not break chains. Sentences and tools extracted from their texts will not protect the student when they embody what these writers have taught them.
Edward Said observed that every empire crafts its own myth, insisting it is unlike the rest—not a conqueror, but a guide, not a plunderer, but a teacher. The story is always the same, only the voices change.
We, the University, hold illusions. Our knowledge is never neutral. It serves our interests, advances our positions, shapes the world to fit the image of those who fund us, who endow us, who build our towers with glass extracted from stolen land.
Petitions circulate. A donor’s name, a building’s history, the question of who is remembered and who is silenced. The student signs their name, ink blooming on the page like a wound. A protest follows—bodies moving as one, voices thick with conviction. Security lingers at the periphery, unmoving, watching. The University watches too, and when it finally speaks, it does so in carefully measured statements, in reassurances of dialogue, in promises that change takes time. That on campus grounds, it shall not be disruptive. But is change not, by its very nature, disruptive?
We preach liberation but align with power. We teach resistance but reward obedience. We celebrate radical thought so long as it stays on paper. The language of resistance? We package it in syllabi, frame it in citations, sanitize it, strip it, and sell it back to the student in hardcover.
Coloniality of power.
Structures of oppression.
Radical imagination.
Liberation.
Uprising.
Class Struggle.
Decolonization.
Say the words. Analyze them. Preach them in the classroom.
But do not, under any circumstances, act on them.
The email arrives the next morning. A reminder, clinical in tone, that “open dialogue” is encouraged, but “disruptive behavior” will not be tolerated. The student stares at the screen, their reflection caught in the glass. The words are a quiet warning, a tightening of the invisible leash. In the classroom, we learn to articulate our thoughts—eloquent, expansive. But even after we leave, the lessons quietly follow us. We step into offices behind closed doors, where silence seems to settle more easily, where the words we once spoke freely are now measured. The subtle pressure of expectation whispers that some things are best left unsaid, in this institution and once we hang up our degrees.
Outside, the campus moves as if nothing has changed.
A professor lingers after class, voice low, unreadable. “You are making an impression.” The student exhales, their breath unsteady. The moment settles heavy in their chest, pressing against their ribs like an unspoken truth. “Isn’t that the point, professor?”
The professor only looks past them, towards the window where the world stretches beyond the University’s reach. The message is unspoken, but clear like an unwelcome draft slipping through the cracks, persistent no matter how tightly the student wanted to shut the reality out.
We, the University, are a vessel, a gatekeeper, a machine that consumes radical thought and spits it out neatly bound, safe for consumption. We preach resistance but reward obedience. We teach revolution as long as it stays hypothetical—scribbled on paper, spoken in classrooms with grandiose words, and backed by a steep tuition.
Every empire insists it is unlike the rest. Not a conqueror, but a guide. Not a plunderer, but a teacher. The student knows better. The University does not yet know what to do with them.
But the student is different. The essence and soul of a student is not built for obedience. It does not yield to warning emails, carefully placed glances, or training videos masked with neutrality. It is not meant to be filed away in footnotes or buried beneath the weight of institutional decorum. It moves, restless, like the sea before a storm.
The student is a wave that rears its head like a wild beast, frothing before crashing down with thunderous force. They carry their knowledge into the world, let it seep into whispered conversations, into stories passed hand to hand like contraband, typed into the digital age with unbridled restraint.
They understand now—true learning does not remain contained. It spreads, it rises, it pushes against the walls of the master’s house, until, one day, the whole structure trembles.
Lana is a student studying Social Policy and Data Science with a minor in Arabic. Her work often explores memory, identity, and displacement, shaped by a deep connection to family, culture, and the broader MENA region. She is passionate about cultural advocacy, storytelling, and building bridges between communities through creative means. She loves videogames, cats, Hunter X Hunter, and Kikis Delivery Service.
