What is the impact of a doctoral program that specifically seeks to decenter whiteness and specifically interrogate white supremacy? The critical storytelling perspectives in this project illuminate themes centered on Whiteness and the academy. They provide honest narratives about the processes and benefits of unhooking from Whiteness (Hayes & Hartlep, 2013). This book shares the stories of scholars from the first several cohorts of one Urban Education focused doctoral program and contextualizes the very real and very different experiences individuals face in the academy. Each author contributes their perspectives about a single program, how it has shaped them, how it has moved them forward, and how it has enabled their own work toward dismantling white supremacy. When read together these stories offer insight into the intentionally of the program itself and the commonalities that unite the student experience. This is important because efforts to create just and decolonized spaces, inside and outside of the academy requires that each space, each particular program, turn examination efforts inward and seek to understand as many individual experiences as possible and provide space to center and elevate the counternarratives of individual doctoral experiences.
