CoP Engagement Activity #1: Book Club Meeting

On February 23, 2026, our Community of Practice transitioned from introductory reflections to rigorous critical inquiry during our first Book Club session. Together, we sat with the unsettling yet essential work of Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang: “Decolonization is not a metaphor.”

Chaired by our Chief of Impact and Programs, Beatriz Carvalho, and moderated by Mayssa Aissaoui (YPS Team Co-Lead) alongside our YPS team members, the session pushed us to move beyond the surface-level tokenism that often characterizes institutional “inclusion.”

Our discussion was anchored in the vital distinction between colonialism and settler colonialism, forcing us to grapple with the “settler moves to innocence” – those maneuvers that serve to reconcile settler guilt while maintaining settler power. We explored several driving questions:

How do these “moves to innocence” manifest in our daily lives and professional spaces?

What does it mean for decolonial work to be incommensurable with settler projects?

In our history and our present, what does a commitment to the repatriation of land and life actually look like?

The session sparked a profound shift in perspective for our Community members. It challenged all of us to critically review our own approaches as researchers and practitioners in the field of International Peace and Security, ensuring that our work and advocacy don’t unintentionally reproduce the very systems we aim to transform.

We left the session with a sharpened, shared understanding: decolonization is a demand for material and structural change – not simply a symbolic gesture. And while these conversations may be unsettling, they remind us that decolonization isn't radical – injustice is.