CEP Newsletter: April 2026
A Note from Your Chair
Hello CEP members,
I recognize that our communities continue to face countless targets and challenges within and beyond our institutions. During such times when federal, state, and local actors progressively question our knowledges and existences, I am hopeful that CEP can be a space where we turn to each other for community and to learn how to practice resistance politics using the strengths inherent to our communities.
The CEP Leadership Team has already been hard at work thinking about new ways to engage you all as members—and we have some exciting developments to share with you below. In the meantime, if you have any ideas of how CEP can better serve you or how you can contribute to our council, please do not hesitate to reach out. I am always available to contact and to support you as individuals/as a larger council.
With much love and solidarity,
Antonio
Update to CEP Bylaws
Over the past few years, CEP, along with other ASHE entities, has been continuing to reflect on crucial aspects of our mission, vision, and practice. CEP has long been doing the work of advancing racial justice and other intersecting forms of equity within the association. And yet, the imperatives to do this work, and the approaches we take, have evolved. For this reason, we chose to revisit our bylaws.
In the past couple of months, CEP membership voted to approve the update bylaws, which included:
- Change our name—while keeping our CEP initialism—to better reflect the work that we do within the association;
- Add our recently developed Caroline Turner and Darin Stewart Graduate Student and Early Career Scholars Professional Development Grant
- Clarify our position structures and their descriptions;
- Align our bylaws to be consistent with the association’s standards
At the most recent ASHE Board Meeting, these changes were approved and became effective April 1, 2026.
This means we are officially the Council for Racial Equity, Praxis, and Presence, but still CEP for short!
You can find the updated bylaws here: https://www.ashe.ws/cep
CEP Pre-Conference Travel Scholarship Fund: Consider Donating!
As noted above, one of the changes we made was to endow a travel scholarship fund for graduate students and early career scholars to be able to attend the CEP pre-conference. Please consider supporting this fund with a donation.
CEP Pre-Conference Call for Proposals and Volunteers!
(Re)membering a Place Called Home: Ontoepistemic Commitments Toward Liberation
Historically, CEP has been deliberating a counterspace, third space, a mundo zurdo, to think, consider, and prioritize ontologies and epistemologies that disrupt westernized ways of knowledge production. Through our contributions within and beyond the academy, we have collectively created impactful and culturally sustaining approaches to address the harm and needs of our communities. In relation to the broader conference theme, the CEP Pre-Conference seeks to create an intentional space to (re)member who we are as minoritized scholars, educators, and peoples. We invite participants to revisit the Boriken Syllabus as part of our ongoing conversation. We invite engagement with research and scholarship as embodied, linguistic, and political acts. Through dialogue and collective reflection, the CEP Pre-Conference seeks to nurture solidarity in Boriken, reclaiming research and scholarship as sites of healing, accountability, and transformative change.
How You Can Get Involved with the Pre-Conference: Please consider volunteering for the pre-conference in these ways:
- Proposal Reviewers
- Session Chairs
- Session Discussant
Learn more about the CEP Pre-Con
Reviving Social Media
A goal of our committee this year is to revive our social media platforms and use it to share information and highlight your work. If you have had a recent publication, award, recognition, or celebration of some sort, please let us know using this link! And, if you’re interested in getting involved in reviving social media, you can also reach out to Dr. Sarah Hurtado, CEP Secretary.