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by Idowu Odeyemi

Briana Toole is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, where she teaches a variety of courses related to epistemology, feminism, philosophy of race, social and political philosophy, and their intersections. Toole holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Texas, Austin, where she focused on epistemology (and in particular, on standpoint theory). Though she is primarily an epistemologist, her newer work explores the overlap between political philosophy and epistemology. She is currently working on a book that explores the epistemic dimensions of political and social resistance. 

Toole is also the executive director of Corrupt the Youth, a philosophy outreach program that she founded while a graduate student. Corrupt the Youth establishes partnerships, or ‘chapters’, between universities and local, Title 1 schools. Through this partnership, students are able to take a philosophy class at their high school that is taught by PhD students. Each chapter is unique in that the issues discussed are relevant to the issues those students will face - in New York, for instance, students might talk about the ethics of gentrification, while in the Bay Area, they are discussing issues of climate change. Toole’s work with Corrupt the Youth is driven by the notion that philosophy can empower students to become active and engaged citizens.

Your community-engaged scholarship, where and how does it all begin?

When I started taking philosophy classes as an undergraduate, it was like a veil being lifted from my eyes. And I thought, why doesn’t everyone get to do this? That philosophy, which I found empowering, is inaccessible to people who I thought might benefit from it most – people like me, from a small town, or working-class background, people in the margins of society – drove me nuts. Then I discovered, when I went off to grad school, that many of my peers had access to philosophy as early as high school, and that gave me an idea. (I mean, it made me jealous, too, but it also gave me an idea!) What if I could bring philosophy to high school students in schools where they were unlikely to receive it. And Corrupt the Youth was born!

You believe that “philosophy has become more and more removed from the public sphere”. How does your work in public philosophy aim to change this?

I do work in ‘public philosophy’ on two fronts – first, with Corrupt the Youth, the philosophy outreach program I founded while I was a graduate student at UT-Austin; second, I try to make my work accessible via podcasts (Examining Ethics, Overthink, UnMute, ManyMinds, etc.) and in public-facing work, like the piece I wrote for The Philosopher, a public philosophy journal. Essentially, this work aims to bring philosophy outside of the ivory tower and back into the ‘agora’. That means situating the concepts and issues in philosophy in a context that will be meaningful and interesting to the public, so that they can then take those concepts and skills and make use of them in their own lives. To my mind, to do public work just is to engage the public in the conversation that we’re having in the academy, especially because there are insights the public has that we, in the academy, can benefit from. 

One of your major goals in using philosophy to engage the community is to bring philosophy closer to people who lack access to it. This is why you founded the Corrupt the Youth outreach program. What is Corrupt the Youth about and what do you seek to achieve with the outreach program?

Corrupt the Youth is an outreach program that brings philosophy to high school students in Title 1 schools (schools with a high percentage of students on free/reduced lunch). It does so by creating partnerships between a university philosophy department and a local high school. We bring philosophy Ph.D. students into the high school classroom, where they teach philosophy one or two days a week. CtY is unique in that we are not an after-school program; through partnering with a school, we offer classes during the school day as part of the curriculum. Modestly, we want to create a space where students can talk about the issues that matter to them, to reflect on what they think and believe and value, and why. More ambitiously, we do this because we want to cultivate engaged and empathetic citizens. But, we also hope to begin creating a pipeline from these schools to the academy, and in this way to diversify the discipline of philosophy.

Creating community-engaged research, teaching, and/or outreach might be hard, especially in philosophy where the terms are complicated for people who are not specialists in the discipline. How do you navigate this challenge in your community-engaged work?

I think this is why it’s especially important for people to get outside of their epistemic bubble and remain involved with communities outside of academia. Philosophy can tend towards navel-gazing. It’s fun to think about whether holes exist, sure, but philosophy is about how to live a good and meaningful life. If we forget what life looks like outside the walls of the academy, then we probably aren’t doing a very good job of figuring out what it means for a person in this world to live well. I say that because you can’t know what the public does and doesn’t know unless you interact with them! And, you can’t contextualize information without knowing what that public cares about or is interested in. So the first thing I do is try to figure out “where” people are – what do they listen to? What do they watch? So often, philosophy can be related back to TV shows (think how great Black Mirror is, for instance), podcasts, or even music (“No Church in the Wild” has a line that refers to Euthyphro’s dilemma)! I think we forget that philosophy can be fun, and it can be accessible!

As humans, we have biases. How do you avoid imposing an overarching narrative that stems from your own personal biases and viewpoints at the expense of honoring social dynamism in your community-engaged work?

I think it can be very hard to do this because so often we are unaware of the very biases we need to control! Since it can be hard to control our own biases, I think the important thing to do is to allow people space to express disagreement and to take that dissent seriously. I also try to offer lots of opportunities for anonymous feedback, so that if people don’t feel comfortable expressing disagreement verbally, they can communicate that in a way that is low-stakes. But I do think the worry of imposing a narrative can largely be avoided if you develop your approach/curriculum/program with the community you’re working with, rather than imposing it on that community.

Collaboration is important for any community-engaged scholarship. How do you create an equitable learning and collaborative environment in which everyone involved can feel empowered and inspired to participate and contribute as their authentic selves?

I think it’s essential, in building a community, to do a few things. First, you can get community buy-in by allowing that community to set the norms for the environment. What do they want in a classroom discussion, and what norms will ensure we can achieve that? If people feel like they have a voice in setting the terms of the discussion, I think they are more likely to actually contribute to that discussion. Second, I think it’s important to communicate that you, as an instructor or facilitator are also a co-learner. This means I won’t know everything! And, sometimes I’ll make mistakes. I think it helps for everyone to feel like equals, roughly, especially in a new learning environment, because it can be scary to admit you don’t know something or to be wrong! By acknowledging that I’m still a learner, I think it makes clear to people that learning is an on-going process, it’s okay to make mistakes, and that there’s always room to learn and grow. Finally, I make it clear that the space we’re in, together, needs to be one where we’re allowed to say what we are really thinking and feeling, even if those thoughts and feelings are offensive or harmful. It’s by speaking something aloud that we can begin to process with others – sometimes I don’t know that I think something until I have a chance to see it out loud. And then that gives me the opportunity to engage in reflection. All people deserve that same opportunity. We need to be able to hold space and extend grace for one another – none of us is free of bad or embarrassing beliefs/values. But by working through those together, we can begin to critically interrogate why we think and believe and feel the way we do.

Any specific advice you might share for up-and-coming philosophers hoping to do community-engaged works?

Don’t wait for permission to do the work that matters to you. Your advisors will probably tell you that all your time should be spent on philosophy – read, write, sleep, drink, eat philosophy. Rinse, wash, repeat. But you need to do what renews you – if that’s community-work, don’t let anyone stand in your way. 

What values do you try to uphold within your work?

In my work, I try to uphold values of grace/forgiveness, vulnerability, and empathy. I want to know the people I work with as people, not just as students. I believe that being open and vulnerably myself, I’m more likely to elicit that in return. An environment where people feel safe to speak freely and openly radically changes the dynamic – we can get so much farther, and faster! Why? Because when we finally let our walls down, we can begin to really dig into the issues that we care about and that matter for our community.

I also try to model grace/forgiveness. I tell people I work with that I, like them, am a human being! That means I’m going to fail, and make mistakes, and sometimes I might even hurt people, no matter how hard I try not to or how desperately I want to avoid that. A safe environment is one where people know they can err and be forgiven – the idea really is to communicate that one mistake does not make a bad person, because we are more than the sum of our errors. 

This means I also try to cultivate a sense of empathy – we should try to be forgiving of others, because we will at some point need to be forgiven ourselves. I think when these values are present, it leaves space for the open connection that people are hungry for and that philosophy is especially well-suited to provide. 

How do you gather community feedback on how your initiative or programs impact social change?

Corrupt the Youth has multiple stakeholders involved in our projects – volunteers, students, and teachers. We actively work to make sure those various stakeholders feel involved in how our program is structured. We meet with our teachers twice each year to assess how the program went and what we can do better. And we also invite teachers to attend at least one meeting of the Board of Directors so they can work directly with the people who oversee the operations of the program. In this way, we ensure they are a vital part in contributing to how our program operates. We also assess, via surveys, our volunteers and students, and actively work to incorporate their feedback into the structure of the program. It’s also important to me that the people who ‘do the work’ – our volunteers – have a pathway to leadership opportunities – serving on the board of directors, or acting as leadership for the chapter, or heading up internal committees. We do the same for our students – we sometimes ask former participants to attend Board meetings to give us their insights about what works and what doesn’t. And, our students act as ‘coaches’ during volunteer training, offering feedback to volunteers as they work to develop lesson plans that these students will see in their classes.