International students have long been seen as cash cows by Canadian universities, a revenue stream of high tuition fees for the same education received by lower-paying domestic students. While in the past their inclusion has been lauded as “recruiting global talent” to Canada, more recently these students have been blamed for social issues from housing shortages to spreading disease — various reductive framings that instrumentalize student migrants for political purposes. Meanwhile, studen...

bell hooks—feminist scholar, teacher, activist—implored instructors to see the classroom as a “radical space of possibility” where students and teachers work as partners in the pursuit of education as “collective liberation” from structures of domination. hooks’ call takes on more urgency today, as oppressive and dominant ideologies continue to perpetuate racial, economic, gender, and other social inequities both within the classroom and society at large. Through critical commentary reflec...