Strategic Disruptions Toward a More Liberatory Engineering Education

Abstract

This works-in-progress paper explores the link between systems of domination and engineering education.Engineering education's rigid methodologies and the inflexible "gauntlet" of engineering curricula are highly structured-but is conformist, highly structured thinking necessarily a gateway to complacency in the face of injustice?Could aspects of engineering education make one more comfortable within systems of domination?Or, might the rigid conformist nature of engineering education make it more attractive to those with such tendencies?Technological development has historically accelerated under authoritarian regimes, including the design and implementation of some of the most violent technologies in history.While some academics have provided full-throated critiques of authoritarianism, academia itself has also long stood to protect white supremacy, systemic bias and patterns of exclusion.This paper builds on analyses of engineering education's rigidity, conformity and exclusivity, depoliticization, and decontextualization.As extremist ideologies gain footholds around the globe, and are used to perpetuate systemic injustices, what responsibility does engineering education have to provide students with ways of thinking that resist and oppose them?We construct curricular interventions to help students repoliticize and recontextualize their engineering knowledge, and encourage more free, critical, and creative thought within the engineering culture, in order to weaken the link between engineering and systems of dominationcontributing to a more liberatory engineering education.

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