Image Credit: Héctor J. Rivas

The challenges that non-white academics especially those who challenge Eurocentric philosophies, epistemologies and ontologies,  face when attempting to publish in high ranking Euro-American  journals, are neither recent nor uncommon across western Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). 

Non-white academics have long endured multiple challenges on the front of knowledge production. On the macro level, institutional Eurocentric cultures often fail to adequately support their progression in publications, central to academic career progression. These include the scarce academic nurturing of non-white academics on how to navigate the publication terrain and how to master the nuanced aspects of the English language necessary to produce clear and concise outputs. These are nearly always accentuated in the case of non-native English speakers. These are compounded by challenges that are not squarely related to the writing process, but to the conditions that might make writing altogether inconducive. For example, daily racism and regular microaggressions, alongside heavier teaching and service loads than their white colleagues, affect their mental well-being, resulting in strained or compromised research and writing productivity. On the micro level, there are the exclusive structures of publication processes, that have been critiqued for gatekeeping Western epistemological and ontological superiority and universality. These include mechanisms that are entangled with bias, such as: single blind peer reviews, the underrepresentation of non-white academics on editorial boards, and the lack of transparency regarding ‘publishing standards’ and claims to ‘objectivity’ in the  reviewing processes.

In this post, I will reflect on my personal experience publishing in a single blinded peer-review journal in the field of race and education. I comment on the challenges I encountered during the process to underscore the existing potential for shifting Western paradigms, not only for readers but for potential reviewers. I will do this drawing on excerpts from the reviewers’ feedback corrections that stood out for me and my responses to them.

It should be conceded that the decolonisation movement has enhanced the publication opportunities available to non-white academics, allowing for more non-mainstream paradigms, and thereby fostering more diversity within academic discourse, e.g. the UKRI review.  The editor of a journal invited me to submit a manuscript.  It took over a year to receive a response from the Editor, which is not unusual to the publication experiences of non-white academics .  The reviewers agreed that it was an ‘important manuscript’; yet, they asked for ‘major revisions’ to be considered for publication.

One of the reviewers pointed out that I should ‘avoid referencing Critical Race Theory (CRT)’ in my manuscript and ‘instead find alternative language’ to convey the relevance of its principles to my article. This remark prompts several pertinent questions that warrant further investigation. The targeting of UK government against CRT , and its labelling as a ‘divisive’, ‘ideological’ framework, a few years back, has had a dripping effect on academia. This stance is primarily an attempt to disparage the underpinning stance of CRT that situates racism as structural and systemic rather than an individual issue, which challenges the meritocracy discourse central to the government’s mainstream narrative.  I have noticed that some academics, including those who have previously adopted CRT in their research, have discontinued referencing it. I have also been frequently advised by well-meaning colleagues to refrain from explicitly citing CRT. It occurred to me that the broader political pushback can be partially blamed for the reviewer’s stance. Yet, this remark equally raises the question as to the extent to which this phenomenon can be conceptualized as epistemicide.

Epistemicide can be defined as a deliberate attempt to silence an epistemic lens, i.e. CRT, in a journal that has ‘Whiteness’ in its title. The intertwining between Whiteness and CRT is well-established in that both of them draw from history and social reality to explain how racial hierarchies are created, operationalised and maintained in various contexts and across various disciplines. This remark made me wonder about the genuine value of inviting ‘critical contributions’ from non-white academics who draw from diverse perspectives.

Key to the colonial gaze is another observation made by one of the reviewers requesting a definition of Islam. This made me wonder if ‘Islam’ was replaced by ‘Christianity’, ‘Judaism’ or ‘Atheism’ would the author be asked to define what that term means? Furthermore, the reviewer suggested a definition of Islam that draws from Anthony Nutting’s work, which claims that Islam was revealed by Prophet Muhammed who incorporated animistic traditions into Islam, which I dismissed as both academically unsubstantiated and theologically inaccurate. This perspective is emblematic of a broader pattern of Western misrepresentation of Islam, that ignores Islamic sources and scholarly interpretations of Islam.

I was also asked to remove any comparison I proposed regarding the commonality of struggle between Muslims and other minoritised academics.  I defend my analytical lenses by drawing their attention to the significance of situating the epistemic struggles of Muslim academics within broader struggle of non-White academics in decentring Eurocentrism, for two reasons: first, I situate epistemic racism as central to Whiteness. Second, Muslims in the West hail from predominantly non-white backgrounds. I explained that Muslim struggles are tarnished by the ‘War on Terror’ discourses and underpinned by deeply-rooted historical Islamophobia.

On the level of minor corrections, despite citing a non-white thinker in discussing my theoretical lens, one of the reviewers instructed I should cite a certain White philosopher. I politely declined, remarking that I have already cited a non-white thinker. I did not decline that correction because I felt it was influenced by an unethical coercive citational politics that is captured in the experiences on non-white academics, but because I wanted to make the point that non-white thinkers have always contributed to producing valid knowledge that may converge, in this particular instance, or diverge from the knowledge produced by white thinkers. Of course, if manuscripts of none-white academics are circumscribed by the citation of white academics, then we are reproducing the domination of Eurocentrism.

The above paragraphs include quite challenging experiences regarding the practice of decolonising Western centric paradigms, but on a brighter note, I have received an email from the Chief Editor that my resubmitted manuscript was accepted subject to optional minor corrections. I was asked to include a few of my conversation with the reviewers, on the aspects that I decided not to change, as discussed above as footnotes, suggesting that this will make my points stronger, and not to worry about word count.  This ‘optional’ choice for me was evidence that the reviewers were persuaded by my response.  I was happier to receive this ‘optional’ correction than the fact that the paper was accepted upon resubmission. For me, this was evidence that perseverance can shift Eurocentric discourse. If I was able to impact the decision of reviewers, then impact is possible for readers. I have decided not to make any corrections, as I do not believe non-white academics should over justify worldviews that have always been marginalised in the West.