In keeping with the spirit of the epigraphs offered here, this essay raises more questions than it provides answers. Raising questions without answers may be one peculiar provenance of academic inquiry, as Ruth Wilson Gilmore points out. Here answers are primarily the vehicle for further questioning, one temporary constellation of meaning in the broader field of “research.” For activists as well, answers are temporary and situational. But here Gilmore suggests that answers are the vehicle for tactical intervention, one temporary constellation of meaning in the broader field of “politics.” Yet what happens in situations where scholarly research and tactical action overlap? What happens when the roles of “academic” and “activist” are blurred in institutional settings where traditional systems of higher education meet their limit? Kirk Branch’s scholarly research on teaching literacy across educational institutions and systems helps us puzzle out how educators find themselves asking such questions when they work to create broader access to higher education.[3] Branch’s research raises additional questions for this essay: how do we imagine and institute the aims of higher education in systems that reveal the historical tensions or even contradictions between “scholarly inquiry” and “political practice”? What happens when providing education is perceived as a political practice, not merely by teaching scholarly research but also by instituting new systems of educational access? And how can we improve our tactics for providing educational access so that it leads more broadly to education justice?