From the Preface As educators, we have yet to collectively address a very difficult truth. Despite our best efforts to support and care for one another and to cultivate safe spaces and communities, violence plays a significant role in the culture of instruction. Of course, this truth does not necessarily mean that all students and faculty face threats of physical harm on a regular basis, although many in America live in fear of school shootings (Graf) or death threats made by far-right adversaries who keep "watch lists" of targeted professors (Abrams). While such instances certainly define the current state of education in America, our focus is on a manifestation of violence that is often less visible: systemic, structural, and symbolic violence that disproportionately affects marginalized students. We are not the first to write about the creep of violence in education. Paul Gorski, for instance, argues that educators' good intentions do not excuse the continued use of instructional practices that maintain dominant hegemonies. Gorski critiques the "propagation of deficit theory--an approach for justifying inequality" and for giving educators permission to believe that some students are simply meant to fail (518). Often, deficit-based assumptions subjugate particular students for no other fault than their identities or, as Anthony Abraham Jack illustrates in The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students, their economic and cultural backgrounds.

Even when low-income students are admitted into elite institutions, they often lack the financial and social resources to navigate these spaces effectively.