Shifting orientation to bring people together

When School of Education Dean Vajra Watson takes the stage this Friday at the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) annual conference, she’ll be doing what she’s done since graduate school — community building, learning, and pushing the work of educational justice forward.

This year, Watson will serve as a panelist in the AERA Presidential Session organized by the People’s Think Tank for Education Justice. One of the largest and most influential professional organizations in education, AERA draws approximately 25,000 members worldwide and serves as a vital space for advancing research, shaping policy, and strengthening the collective pursuit of educational justice. The session, “Re-Remembering the Past and Envisioning the Future to Mobilize the Present,” brings together scholar-activists, national education leaders, and philanthropic funders to draw on histories of resilience and respond to the current, contested state of education.

“Our collaboration is not just a moment; it’s about a relational practice rooted in intersectional organizing, a framework that refuses silos and brings people together across roles, institutions, and communities,” she said. “At a time marked by defunding, book bans, and broader attacks on truth and learning, participating feels both urgent and necessary.”

Having attended her share of AERA conventions, Watson recalled listening to influential voices in higher education over the years.

“It was illuminating — both intellectually and personally — and I have been attending ever since,” she said. “Over the years, AERA has been a space where I have presented, learned, and built community.”

As discussant, Watson said she will listen intently to her fellow panelists — among them Bettina Love, Mark Warren, and Letha Muhammad — before offering her own reflections on what is currently unfolding in higher education.

“Through this panel, I hope it’s less about presenting findings and more about shifting orientation,” she said. “To invite people to see scholarship not as extraction, but as an act of relationship-building in real time with real people. If we do that well, the session becomes a space of re-membering and a space of possibility, where new alignments for educational justice can join together.”

Watson and other education justice leaders will take the stage at the People’s Think Tanks session at 11:45 a.m. on Friday, April 10, at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

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