Can we reimagine new ways living and being? Our guest this week certainly did so. After suffering tremendous loss during the pandemic, including the loss of her son, Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez gave up her tenured faculty position as a full professor at UC Davis to become land steward of Remagination Farms.

Located two and a half hours north of San Francisco, Remagination Farms takes up Asian American activist Grace Lee Boggs invitation to "re-imagine everything."

In our conversation, we talk about how devastating loss and heartache can push us to radically change the way we live, and about what it means to take education away from the corporate university to the people.

"The time has come for us to reimagine everything. We have to reimagine work and go away from labor. We have to reimagine revolution and get beyond protest. We have to think not only about change in our institutions, but changes in ourselves.”

- Grace Lee Boggs

Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at [email protected].

As I record this episode, it's been about six hours after the major news networks have declared that Donald Trump will once again be the President of the United States. I've got a lot of feelings. I'm unsurprised, but also disheartened.

I'm still processing all of this and I know you are too. So today I want to bring you an impromptu chat that I have with my dear friend Petra Molnar. Petra is a migration and human rights lawyer, a colleague at York University, where she is the Associate Director of the Refugee Law Lab, and the author of The Walls Have Eyes, Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

Petra was with me back in 2016, the day after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. I was teaching a class on migration and the diaspora, and I had invited Petra to speak. Instead, we went off script in that class and just held space for students who were horrified by Trump's victory. So when I saw the election results last night showing that Trump will have a second term, I immediately thought of Petra, And the experience we shared that day in 2016.

We chatted today, the day after the elections, and discussed what we might expect in terms of the impacts of Trump's election on border policies, on research, on higher education, and on critical thought. We also talked about how to fight back, and on hope as a critical practice.

We take a deep dive into the world of academic book publishing. If you're in academia, you probably have, or want to work with a university press to publish your work. And at the heart of the book publishing process are university press editors. But many scholars don't know what it is that editors do, what the norms and expectations are when working with editors, and what the larger world of academic publishing looks like.

To demystify the role of editors and how academic book publishing works, we have the amazing Dawn Durante, the Wyndham Robertson Editorial Director of the University of North Carolina Press. Dawn was my editor when I released my first solo authored book, last year, Care Activism, Migrant Domestic Workers, Movement Building, and Communities of Care and who was awesome really in helping me think through my project in a really generative way.

Related Links

• Ask UP: Authors Seeking Knowledge from University Presses
• University of North Carolina Press
• Care Activism, by Dr. Ethel Tungohan

Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Instagram at @AcademicAunties, on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at [email protected].

Over the months, we have felt compelled to focus episodes on the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as on the implications here via the repression of solidarity work.

While the brutality of the Israeli state extends back decades and decades to the Nakba, by the time this episode is released, it would be a little bit more than one year since the Israeli state began one of the most brutal campaigns of genocidal terror and violence against Palestinians.

Last week such brutality extended towards attacks in Beirut, Lebanon, with the Israeli government conducting airstrikes in the city, all the while continuing its attacks in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. The scale of human atrocity perpetrated by the Israeli state is difficult for many of us to fathom. And yet this is a reality that many of our friends and colleagues are facing.

With us today to discuss the situation on the ground in Gaza is Dr. Ghada Ageel. She talks about what it has been like to bear witness to this occupation that has affected countless family members and friends. Dr. Ageel is a visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta and has written extensively about Palestine for outlets such as The Guardian and Middle East Eye.

Related Links

• Apartheid in Palestine: Hard Laws and Harder Experiences, edited by Dr. Ghada Ageel
• A White Lie, by Madeeha Hafez Albatta, Edited by Barbara Bill and Ghada Ageel

Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at [email protected].

The OG academic aunties are back! On the season 5 premiere, we have Dr. Nisha Nath and Dr. Mariam Georgis, who appeared on the very first episode of the pod, to talk about what how the world of academic assholes have changed since we started Academic Aunties. We talk new types of assholes we've discovered, including the "stealth asshole", whether we're in a position yet to say no, and how time is collective.

Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Instagram at @AcademicAunties, on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at [email protected].

This is normally a time when we’re readying ourselves for the term, often with optimism, energy, and hope for what the new year will bring. But I know I speak for many when I say that this year feels different.

This Fall marks almost a year of relentless conflict in Gaza. And rather than a restful summer, students and community members have been actively organizing in solidarity with Palestinians, setting up encampments on university campuses.

These encampments have faced harsh crackdowns from university administrations and police. Many have been dismantled. But as we enter the Fall, with a new academic year ahead of us, an American electoral season that is rapidly evolving how people talk about the rights of Palestinians and our own personal stresses and pressures, it’s easy to lose sight of the purpose of these encampments and why the attacks on them were so abhorrent.

On this special bonus episode of Academic Aunties, we bring you a conversation we head earlier this summer with to talk about the student encampments and protests in support of Palestine at the University Alberta, and hopefully make sense of all of this.

Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at [email protected].

On the Season 4 finale, we revisit Sara Ahmed's new book, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way, with our very own feminist killjoy book club!

We're joined by Rita Dhamoon, Tka Pinnock, and our very own producer, Nisha Nath. We talk about why the book resonates so much in this present moment, and why being a feminist killjoy is more important than ever.

And remember to check out our interview with Sara Ahmed (Episode 40)!

Related Links

• The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way

We've talked a lot this season about the accelerating attacks on academic freedom, including the campaigns of repression against expressions of Palestine solidarity. Student groups, faculty and staff are increasingly surveilled, policed and targeted with spurious charges of antisemitism if they dare to voice support for Palestine.

We often focus on faculty and students, but it's easy to forget how vulnerable staff are with few protections. This was the case at the University of Alberta, where after a post was shared by staff and volunteers at the U of A Sexual Assault Centre about a student-organized Palestine solidarity event, they were subjected to harrasment online, in person and via phone calls. And on January 23, they were fired from their jobs.

On this episode, we talk to three core staff members of the Centre about the conflicting messages they received from university administration leading up to their firing, the harrasment they faced, and the toll all of this has taken.

Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at [email protected].

A few days ago, we recognized International Women’s Day. Every year we shine a spotlight on the continuing realities of gender-based discrimination and gender-based violence worldwide. So on this episode, we are so glad to have Dr. Mandi Gray. She has just released a new book “Suing for Silence: Sexual Violence and Defamation Law,” which unpacks the ways that systems of power - specifically the criminal legal system that is “composed of patriarchal and colonial laws” – protect the privileged. In our conversation, we explore the ways that abusive men and abusive institutions punish women for speaking up about their experiences of abuse, and how they they also punish women for providing support to women who have experienced sexual abuse. This includes campus sexual violence, and the repercussions faced by students and faculty members who break the silence. 

Win a free copy of Suing for Silence!

If you want a chance to win a free copy of “Suing for Silence,” retweet or repost this episode using hashtag #SuingforSilence, and tag Mandi at @gotmysassypants and Acadmic Aunties at @AcademicAuntie on Twitter or @AcademicAunties on Bluesky and Instagram

Related Links

• Suing for Silence: Sexual Violence and Defamation Law by Mandi Gray, UBC Press
• Mandi Gray's Website
• Can't Buy My Silence

Without community, a I wouldn’t have lasted through grad school and the years since. 

For me, in grad school, a special community that I was with were the group of critical Filipinx scholars who I’ve since grown with over the years. We called ourselves the “Kritikal Kolektibo,” and we were grad students and junior faculty at the University of Toronto who met regularly, to hang out of course, but also to share our work, and dream about what Filipinx Studies in Canada could look like.

We shared stories of what was going on with our lives. We talked about the gendered and racial microaggressions - and outright aggressions - that we experienced, our strategies for subversion, and our moments of triumph. 

One member of this group, and our guest this week is Dr. John Paul Catungal. 

JP and I started our PhDs at the same time, in different departments with very different research projects. And yet, we were oftentimes pitted against each other. We knew this too: we knew, for example, that if one of us got shortlisted for a position, the other cannot be, because there can be “only one of us,” – there can only be one Filipino, no matter the differences in our research and our approaches. This is how the neoliberal academy operated, and how it still operates. 

On today's episode, we talk about friendship, our parallel paths through academia and our attempts to do and be otherwise.

Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at [email protected].