Haley Stewart, a graduate of the Masters in Criminal Justice program at NMSU, painted "Sanctioned Knowledge" as her final creative project in the Foundations in Borderlands and Ethnic Studies seminar in Fall 2019.
Haley is brilliant and shy and described the painting only once: she chose to illustrate on the left side, a bronzed hand reaching out to a book whose pages are blank while the live hand on the right side reaches up toward falling pages that are full of vibrancy and color. Other hands, in the shadows, similarly reach toward the pages that hold color, or the potential of inclusive knowledge.
The blank book represents dead knowledge while the colorful pages represent new, living knowledge. Haley chose the word "sanctioned" for her piece because the word holds paradoxical meaning, both "to give official permission" and to "impose a penalty." Haley graduated from NMSU and went on to law school at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Her painting became the official logo of the Borderlands and Ethnic Studies Department in 2022.
