Beyond Safe and Unsafe: Queerness, Power, and Truth in Global Education

Conversations about queerness in global education often stop at risk. This session does not.

Instead, it examines what global education gains when queerness is treated as knowledge rather than something to manage. Using Respectful Disruption Leadership, presenters explore how queer realities surface hard truths about power, mobility, belonging, and decision-making across borders.

This session centers clarity over comfort and responsibility over silence. It invites leaders to reflect on how integrity shows up when systems are designed for complexity rather than avoidance.

Session Goals
Participants will:
Stop treating queerness as a liability and recognize it as a powerful source of global and cultural knowledge that exposes how systems really work.
Name the power dynamics we avoid, examining how identity, borders, and belonging decide who gets to move freely, who must explain themselves, and who is rendered invisible.
Engage in respectful disruption with integrity, grappling with what leadership demands when global education refuses simple answers or safe neutrality.