POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN
The following press statement was issued by a group of graduate students at Columbia University, announcing Academic Freedom Week, a series of panel discussions to be held at Columbia April 9-11.
Your silence will not protect you.
― Audre Lorde,
The battle for academic freedom at our nation’s universities has been going on for decades, reaching its most repressive stage during the McCarthy era. Due to the rise of the so-called Alt-Right, progressive academics are once again under attack. Professors teaching about Standing Rock have had proposed courses rejected. Others have had their contracts cancelled in response to tweets in support of the Palestinian struggle or after making statements against white supremacy. Black Lives Matter experts have had to endure threats from Alt-Right trolls, and whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning have had invitations revoked at prestigious universities.
We cannot allow university administrators to continue to collude with Alt-Right bigots to silence our voices. We cannot allow them to undermine the education of our youth who depend on our commitment to critical thinking in the classroom. It is necessary, then, to gather up the courage — despite threats to our well-being and jobs — and refuse to be silenced. We must stand up and fight back.
Academic Freedom Week embraces a politics of resistance. We recognize that the university is simultaneously a place of colonialism and anti-colonial struggle, of white supremacy and anti-racist action, of misogyny and resistance against patriarchy and heteronormativity. Just like our lives in general, the university is a battlefield where we are pitted against those who seek to lull us into narrow-minded bigotry, against those who seek to police the way we think and act, and against those who seek to put us where they claim we belong.
It is for this reason that we bring together a range of academics and activists who have been, because of their ideas and activism, assailed and silenced by universities across the country. In giving them a platform, we hope to call attention to the ongoing attempts to destroy academic freedom and help chart out new ways to defend an outspoken, progressive politics.
Day 1 – April 9: On The Palestine Exception (with some thoughts concerning anti-Semitism,
Islamophobia and Zionism in the academy)
Jasbir Puar (Rutgers), Joseph Massad (Columbia), and Gil Hochberg (UCLA/Columbia)
Monday, 9 April 2018 @ 7pm, Northwest Corner Building 501, Columbia University
Day 2 – April 10: White Supremacy in Academia (Teaching and learning in a racist country)
Johnny Eric Williams (Trinity College), Dorothy Kim (Vassar College), Jessie Daniels (CUNY) and
Ted Thornhill (Florida Gulf Coast University)
Tuesday, April 10, 2018 @6pm, Lehman Auditorium, 202 Altschul Hall at Barnard College
Day 3 – April 11: Academic Antifascism (Self-defense strategies in response to the Alt-Right)
George Ciccariello-Maher (Hemispheric Institute), Dana Cloud (Syracuse), Kayum Ahmed
(Columbia) and Ozzie Monge (San Diego State)
Wednesday, 11 April 2018 @7pm, Location: 301 Pupin Hall, Columbia University
For more information, contact us at columbia.academicfreedom@gmail.com
Or please visit our website or our Facebook page.
