Shehla Arif

I would like to raise the pragmatic question of how to build alliances across disciplines in advancing the vision of Engineering for social justice and peace. This is in the backdrop where a liberal education and critical thinking is shrinking, as a consequence of, and in order to serve, the neo-liberal project of austerity and reduction of public services. Engineering as a field serves the interests of power including war, domination, and annihilation of life that comes in the way of profit. Resisting involvement in destruction requires understanding structures of oppression. This is where the interplay of knowledge and power becomes critical. The class interests and the ensuing mindsets of most engineers prevent them from seeing oppression let alone understanding their own location within those structures. I shall provide two concrete examples that illustrate how our relationship to power orients the knowledge that we produce and the knowledge that we are willing to receive. First example comes from the experiences of configuring physical learning space and how engineering faculty and students relate to it. The second example comes from student responses to a course on sustainable energy practices that includes discussion of climate change. Both scenarios call for imagining a reality outside of lived experience in order to liberate and live. I shall present the difficulties encountered by this call. I shall also present the use of “entrepreneurial thinking” as a tool for overcoming for those difficulties. As a matter of making progress, I am interested in further brainstorming effective strategies for supporting the call, and widening its range, for imagining a future towards liberation.