Combining her love of history and her passion for education, Dr. Dalia Antonia Caraballo Muller takes inspiration for a radical new approach to grande challenge education from Afro-Diasporic struggles for freedom and dignity in post emancipation Cuba.
In today’s world we are faced with seemingly insurmountable global challenges which can inspire in us numbness, depression, anger and frustration. As an educator, I believe that we can and we must find ways to empower our students to face the impossible in the interest of social and planetary good. Luckily, history provides many examples of individuals and communities who not only survived the hardest of circumstances, but also generated new ideas under extreme duress. The Impossible Project is a learning experience that helps university students build the foundational skills needed to take on global challenges in our 21st-century world: radical collaboration, collective resilience and bold and border-defying creativity.
About the speaker
Dr. Dalia Antonia Caraballo Muller is a bilingual, multi-cultural, multi-racial researcher and educator. Her twin passions are the study of the African Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the study of transformative learning models in higher education. The through line that connects her historical work and her work in education is the concept of “impossibility.” She researches Black intellectuals in early 20th century Cuba who thought at the limits of the possible as they staked claims to rights, dignity and equality. In the classroom, Dr. Caraballo Muller invites her students to stretch their minds and think at the limits of the possible in order to dream up new futures for our ailing world and planet. While she is committed to opening minds and opportunities for all her students equally, supporting black and brown student success is core to her personal and professional mission.
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I believe that to open space for radical creativity, we must be able to bend in ways that allow us to think at the limits of the possible.
If we are to generate new responses to the global challenges we are facing, we have to be able to open and hold space for collective, creative, and radical dreaming.
Engage for the love of learning rather than for the love of the grade.
Stepping outside of the constraints and conventions of thought imposed upon us allows us to return with a fresh perspective and generate radically new ideas for new futures while reflecting critically and differently on our own past and present.
