4/6/25 5pm CT

How do we move forward in a moment of heightened repression, as we sit on the cusp of authoritarianism, and when speaking, protesting, writing have become potentially dangerous acts? How does this upsurge of organizing fit into a broader trajectory of student organizing? What models from the Black radical tradition can we draw on to chart a new path?

4/23/25 5pm CT

How does U.S. higher education make sense of Black faculty activism, advocacy and education about Palestine? In what ways is this continuous with and distinctive from the forms of generalized dishonor that Black faculty regularly face in higher education? How do the politics of the Palestine Exception seek to render Black faculty as “faces of (whatever neoliberal schemes) universities” find themselves entrenched in? How are Black faculty members navigating being truth tellers in an era of organized attacks on higher education? In this webinar, Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard compares the use of their image in the public sphere before and after being arrested on campus on May 15, 2024. Dr. Willoughby-Herard offers their observations of nearly two decades of enforcement of the so-called “Palestine Exception” on their own campus, examining how several cases of suspension, firing, physical violence, and vigilante terror against Black faculty vocal about Israeli state’s role in genocide, apartheid, and human rights abuses shed light on critical questions about the role of Black scholar-activists in the University.

5/6/25 at 5pm CT

On college and university campuses across the US, talk of “academic freedom” and “student safety” has become all-consuming. But what is academic freedom? And whose safety are we really concerned with? As hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israel’s genocidal attacks, faculty, students, and staff across American colleges and universities are being charged with creating an “unsafe atmosphere” by speaking up for Palestinian liberation. What does it mean to create an “unsafe atmosphere” in the context of talking about genocide? How has safety been weaponized to silent dissent? What are our rights and what are our responsibilities? And what can we do now?