Jeremy Horne

Jeremy Horne is a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Education Policy and Planning. His research examines the intersection of (anti-)blackness and the racial politics of education. Jeremy particularly situates his education research within the liminal space of black studies, from which he explores how the politics of being (i.e., onto-politics) maintain racially stratified notions of humanity in schools. Placing this human antagonism at the center of his inquiry insists that the U.S. education system initiates us all into ways of knowing who is and what it means to be wholly human that exclude Black peoples (see Dumas, 2016; Wynter, 2006). As such, Jeremy works from this perspective of alterity to envisage Black liberation from schooling, which is distinct from freedom in schools (see Woodson, 2020).

For example, in Jeremy’s dissertation, No Man’s Land: Conquest and Black Education in Gentrifying Metro Areas, he explores the affective dimensions of gentrification and their effect on Black students’ educational experiences. While previous education research tends to describe gentrification as a purely economic process, Jeremy connects urban redevelopment in historically Black neighborhoods to colonial histories of racial slavery. He particularly utilizes Sylvia Wynter’s (2003) discourse on humanism to frame how the social construction of blackness as other-than-humanness through European conquest justifies the appropriation of historically Black neighborhood space. This reinterpretation of gentrification creates a conceptual opening to more explicitly consider how the racialized reorganization of school-community space affects Black students’ well-being in schools. Findings from Jeremy’s dissertation will make significant contributions to education researchers’ and practitioners’ understanding of gentrification, its racial power dynamics, and its positive and negative effects on Black students’ experiences.

To build on his dissertation, Jeremy’s future research agenda considers how education policies and the problems they attempt to address appear differently when researchers center (anti-)blackness and Black peoples’ educational experiences. He particularly wants to understand the transformative power of community-led policymaking, and how Black school-communities pursue an emancipated human conception through political advocacy. One iteration of this research will examine how Black school-communities leverage policy to resist gentrification in racially contested contexts.

Notably, Jeremy has co-published articles in peer-reviewed research journals, such as Urban Education, Educational Policy, and the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, amongst others. Moreover, the University Council of Educational Administration recognized him as a 2020-2022 Barbara L. Jackson Scholar. Jeremy also had the privilege of participating in the University of Texas Center for the Study of Race and Democracy Graduate Fellowship program.