This professorship—the first of its kind at the University of Ottawa—was established through a generous gift from Air Canada in honour of Calin Rovinescu, who served as the University’s chancellor from 2015 to 2022. Professor Ibrahim has a broad perspective on what the collective work of anti-racism entails, which will prove vital in leading the position’s academic and community partnership activities over the next five years, building on the Faculty’s expertise and vision for equity, diversity, and inclusion in education.
For Professor Ibrahim, the initial steps must be an exercise in reflexivity. In his view, “the work of anti-racism is to enable people to critically situate themselves in time and space and at the same time, question the adequacy of that location, to fully humanize themselves and others, to open cracks so that a better, environmentally friendly, peaceful, wide-awake and fully conscious future is brought into existence.”
“The work of anti-racism is to enable people to critically situate themselves in time and space and at the same time, question the adequacy of that location, to fully humanize themselves and others...”
Professor Awad Ibrahim
— Holder of the Air Canada Professorship on Anti-racism
“Awad Ibrahim brings over two decades of academic excellence, intellectual passion and community-based activism to this role,” says Richard Barwell, dean of the Faculty of Education. “His leadership will make a significant contribution to our work of preparing future teachers and researchers to advance anti-racism in their respective spheres of influence."
The official inauguration of the Air Canada Professorship on Anti-Racism will be celebrated during a launch event on campus in the Alex Trebek Alumni Hall (157 Séraphin Marion Private) on November 2 at 5:30 p.m. The Faculty of Education invites alumni, friends, and members of the University community to join us, in person or virtually, for Professor Ibrahim’s presentation, “Thinking through the work of anti-racism: A poetic conversation expanding from arts to politics.” Reserve your seat today.
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Professor Ibrahim is a curriculum theorist with special interest in the economy of hospitality (Derrida), cultural studies, Hip-Hop, youth and Black popular culture, social foundations (i.e., philosophy, history and sociology of education), social justice and community service learning, diasporic and continental African identities, ethnography and applied linguistics. He earned his PhD at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto and has been a professor in the Faculty of Education since 2007. He has authored over 100 books and journal articles, and his most recent publications include Nuances of Blackness in the Canadian academy: Teaching, learning, and researching while Black (University of Toronto Press, 2022), Disruptive learning narrative framework: Analyzing race, power and privilege in post-secondary international service learning (Bloomsbury, 2022), and Black Immigrants in North America: Essays on Race, Immigration, Identity, Language, Hip-Hop, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Becoming Black (Meyers Education Press, 2020).