This podcast is a dual release between Nothing Never Happens and The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism’s “Unpacking Zionism” podcast.

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How have the norms of mainstream educational institutions shaped how teachers and students can study and talk about Zionism? What does it mean to study Zionism critically? What does the current moment -- fourteen months into an ongoing genocide of Palestinians, when global solidarity movements persist in the face of extreme repression -- require of radical pedagogues? What knowledge, tools, and legacies of struggle should we turn to for guidance?

In this dual-release episode, Tina and Lucia interview two founding collective members of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (ICSZ), Dr. Emmaia Gelman and Dr. Yulia Gilich. The Institute examines the political and ideological work of Zionist institutions within and beyond their direct advocacy for Israel. Our conversation includes the genesis of ICSZ and its interventions into institutional norms around the study of Zionism, the creation of their No IHRA Toolkit (in response to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism), the weaponization of antisemitism through definitions and other repressive means, and examples of creative and critical pedagogies investigating Zionism in higher education classes. 

More about our guests:

Emmaia Gelman has taught at NYU and Sarah Lawrence College. She researches the history of ideas about race, queerness, safety, and rights, and their production as political levers in the realm of hate crimes policy, surveillance, anti-terror measures, and war. Emmaia is at work on a critical history of the Anti-Defamation League (1913-1990). She is the co-chair of the American Studies Association Caucus on Academic and Community Activism, and a longtime activist in New York City on Palestine, policing, antiracism, and queer issues.

Yulia Gilich is a media artist, theorist, and community organizer. They are a founding collective member of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. They received their PhD in Film & Digital Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz where they are currently a lecturer teaching courses at the intersection of critical race and media studies.

CREDITS

Co-produced with the "Unpacking Zionism" podcast team -- thanks especially to Emmaia and Yulia for your back-end editing work!

Co-hosts: Tina Pippin and Lucia Hulsether

Editor and audio engineer: Aliyah Harris

Summer 2024 Intern: Ella Stuccio

Theme music by Lance Haugen and Aviva and the Flying Penguins

Outro music is "Unnervous" by Akrasis

Support Nothing Never Happens on Patreon!

How has the intersection between religious and racial politics shaped the landscape of public education in the United States? How have communities, both past and present, historically resisted covert and overt white Christian supremacy in public education? What lessons can radical pedagogues draw from these movements today?

Our September 2024 episode features Dr. Leslie Ribovich, a scholar of American religion, religion, and education. Her book, Without a Prayer: Religion and Race in New York City Public Schools (NYU Press, 2024), is illuminating reading for anyone seeking to understand the entangled histories — and surprising consequences and reverberations — of the simultaneous legal desegregation and legal secularization of public school classrooms. From the moral codes underwriting racist school discipline policies, to presumptive Protestant norms governing moral education programs, to grassroots community movements to build more equitable and just public education systems, Without a Prayer offers key context to understanding contemporary battles over the future of public education policy. Read an excerpt here.

Leslie Ribovich is currently the Director of the Greenberg Center for Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, where she is also an Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Law and Public Policy. She is working on a second project about forms of moral and character education in modern U.S. history.

CREDITS

Co-hosts: Tina Pippin and Lucia Hulsether

Editor, Audio Engineer, and composer of outro music: Aliyah Harris

Summer 2024 Intern: Ella Stuccio

Theme music by Lance Haugen and Aviva and the Flying Penguins

Support us on Patreon!

Sometimes theories of critical pedagogy can be quite abstract. What does it look like to front concrete practices in our approaches to this tradition? How do those practices change in the context of community colleges? What can radical community college educators teach us about radical teaching and learning broadly?

Our July 2024 episode features three community college educators who co-edited the recent edited collection Humanizing Collectivist Critical Pedagogy: Teaching the Humanities in Community College and Beyond (Peter Lang 2024). This book is a must-read for teachers curious about the practical applications of critical pedagogy for crafting syllabi, building more democratic classroom structures, creating socially engaged classrooms, and fighting for more just and equitable educational systems. 

Sujung Kim is an interdisciplinary scholar of critical pedagogy of higher education who is currently a research associate with the Futures Initiative and Humanities Alliance at CUNY Graduate Center. Leigh Garrison-Fetcher is a linguistics professor in the Education and Language Acquisition Department at LaGuardia Community College. Kaysi Holman is the Director of People and Culture at the California-based educational equity nonprofit 10,000 Degrees. Sujung, Leigh, and Kaysi met in the context of their shared work with the Mellon-funded CUNY Humanities Alliance—of which Kaysi was a key creator and leader—where they worked graduate teachers and faculty on creating social justice oriented classrooms.

CREDITS

Co-hosts: Tina Pippin and Lucia Hulsether

Editor and Audio Engineer: Aliyah Harris

Summer 2024 Intern: Ella Stuccio

Theme music by Lance Haugen and Aviva and the Flying Penguins

Outro Music: “hemlock hed” by Akrasis

Support us on Patreon!

Feminist Theater of the Oppressed: What is it? How can its philosophies and methods transform our approaches to critical pedagogy? How does Feminist Theater of the Oppressed help us reflect on improvisation, experimentation, and power in our teaching and organizing contexts?

Our June 2024 guest, Bárbara Santos, takes up these questions as a portal into discussion of how power shapes (and can be transformed in) our pedagogies. Barbára is an actress, performer, writer, and organizer. She is the artistic director and co-founder of KURINGA - Space for Theater of the Oppressed in Berlin, Germany. She is Founder of the Ma(g)dalena International Network, a collaborative of practitioners of Feminist Theater of the Oppressed based in Europe, Latin America, and Africa. 

Bárbara’s work as a director, performer, organizer, and writer has been instrumental in disseminating Theater of the Oppressed globally, and elevating feminist critiques and methods within its praxis. Her books include Roots and Wings of Theater of the Oppressed (Portuguese 2016, Spanish 2017, Italian 2018, English 2019); Aesthetic Paths: Original Approaches on Theater of the Oppressed (Portuguese, 2018; English and Spanish forthcoming); and Theater of the Oppressed: Feminist Aesthetics for Political Poetics (Portuguese, 2019; English, 2023).

The tree of Theater of the Oppressed—images, movement, sounds, words, play—comes to life throughout Barbára’s work and, in the process, honors women’s lives through dialogue and political action.

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CREDITS:

Co-hosts: Lucia Hulsether and Tina Pippin

Audio Production and Music: Aliyah Harris

Intro Music: Lance Haugen and Aviva and the Flying Penguins

What is anarchist pedagogy? What does it have to do with so-called “alternative” schools, where mainstream educational systems often send students they have expelled, suspended, or otherwise excluded? How can working at the intersection of anarchist pedagogical philosophy and marginalized educational spaces open up new layers for how we rearrange power and accountability in learning spaces? 

This episode—which features teacher, educational reform leader, and principal Rodney Powell—dives into all of these questions and more.

The term “anarchist pedagogies” is not the first thing that comes to mind when we hear that someone is a high school principal. And yet this is exactly the combination at the center of this episode. Rodney Powell exposes preconceptions not only about this administrative role, but also about what “anarchy” can mean in theory and practice. Powell is the founder of EdArchy.org, described as “a youth development program committed to providing young people with the resources to imagine and create their own community-focused, authentic learning experiences.” He has his feet in two worlds: the traditional school where he pushes, when possible, for more democratic relations with his teaching staff through resistance and revolution (not reform), and the EdArchy program. Given the strictures of traditional educational systems, Powell has imagined this other space to subvert the dominant educational paradigms, where students can practice the student-centered and consented, co-designed, mutually-empowering, dream-incubating, and community-connected learning possibilities of education.

Over his twenty-four years in education, Rodney Powell has led school systems in Baltimore, Hartford, and in his current role as a principal in Danbury Public Schools in Connecticut. A 2023-24 member of the Nelle Mae Foundation Speakers Bureau on racial equity in public education, he is also pursuing his doctorate at Northeastern University. There, as in all his other work, his research focuses on partnering with youth toward greater agency, consent, and justice in learning.

What does critical pedagogy offer when it comes to texts entangled with histories of oppression and disenfranchisement? How might we approach these texts so as to ask new questions and bring out different stories?

In this episode, we discuss these questions with three scholars from the Institute for Signifying Scriptures. These scholars discuss how the normative ways of studying "sacred texts" -- from "religious" texts like the Bible to "secular" texts like the US Constitution -- as historical artifacts with defined origins tends to reproduce colonial logics and exclude the voices of those on the margins of class and social power. They also share methods for engaging sacred texts in ways that challenge those power dynamics and foster critical imagination.

Dr. Vincent Wimbush is Director of the ISS and past president of of the Society for Biblical Literature. He is a prolific writer, whose works include White Men's Magic: Scripturalization as Slavery (2012) and Black Flesh Matters: Essays on Ranagate Interpretation (2022). He was on the filmmaking team that produced the award-winning documentary Finding God in the City of Angels (2021).

Dr. Jacqueline Hidalgo is a Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego. She is the author of Revelation in Aztlán: Scriptures, Utopias, and the Chicano Movement (2016).

Dr. Richard Newton is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Alabama. He is the author of Identifying Roots: Alex Haley and the Anthropology of Scriptures (2020).

The next meeting of the Institute for Sacred Scriptures will be held in Atlanta, GA, April 11-13, 2024. The theme for the 2024 Meeting is Marronage: A Special Meeting in Celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the ISS and the 25th Anniversary of African Americans and the Bible.

How can we align our pedagogies with the Palestinian freedom struggle and other anti-colonial movements? How do we tune our minds and imaginations toward just futures--even and especially when facing retaliation for liberationist stances?

In light of the reinvigorated global struggle for a free Palestine, and as we witness the state of Israel's ongoing genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, we are re-releasing our January 2021 interview with poet, scholar, teacher, and organizer Dina Omar.

Dina, received her PhD in Anthropology from Yale University and who was one of the founders of the national network of Students for Justice in Palestine, speaks to us about the intersection of Palestine liberation and our pedagogical frameworks -- from our decisions about language and representation, to the exhaustion of social suffering paradigms, to the psychological effects of occupation and eliminatory violence.

A thesis of this episode is that, whether or not our teaching is “about” Palestine, it cannot be separated from its struggle. This of course in part because of the alignment of many of our institutions of higher education with the Israeli state. But, as Dina explains, it is also because of how a colonial project mediates the language we use to think about, much less talk about, what is happening in Palestine and Israel. This means that, whether or not the history and politics of Palestine comes up explicitly in a lesson plan, the practice of learning to read and learning to identify narrative obfuscation, takes on higher stakes.

A list of resources for further learning + organizing:

-Palestine and Praxis Statement, referenced in the episode, written in 2021 and co-authored by Dina Omar.

-The Palestinian Feminist Collective, a collective of Palestinian/Arab feminists working toward Palestinian liberation. See their site for resources + action toolkits.

-Writers Against the War on Gaza, a coalition of culture workers organizing against the war and compiling resources for resistance.

-The Dig, a podcast of Jacobin, has published a number of illuminating episodes on the Palestine, Zionism and anti-Zionism, and the larger contexts around the current catastrophe.

-The Electronic Intifada is an independent news organization focusing primarily on Palestine.

-Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands by Sonia Nimr, recommended by Dina Omar

Show Credits:

Outro music is "Hemlock" by Akrasis. Find their amazing catalog here. Episode photo by Corleone Brown on Unsplash. Editing and audio production by Aliyah Harris. Production by Lucia Hulsether and Tina Pippin.

What does it mean to “teach in and for freedom”?

What does it look like to create liberatory spaces centered around the lives and needs of faculty and students of color?

How do we sustain and defend such feminist and anti-racist teaching against threats of institutional cooptation, censure, and exploitation?

To ring out 2023, we welcome Professor Lorgia García-Peña to discuss these topics and so much more. Dr. García-Peña is currently a Professor of Latinx Studies at the Efron Center for the Study of America and the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. She has authored three books, all of which have won multiple awards. These include: The Borders of Dominicanidad: Race, Nation, and Archives of Contradiction (Duke 2016), Translating Blacknesss: Latinx Colonialities in Global Perspective (Duke 2022), and Community as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color (Haymarket 2022).  

A co-founder of Freedom University and a leader of the movement to create an Ethnic Studies concentration at Harvard, Dr. García-Peña's labors to create more equitable, empowering institutional spaces for students and faculty of color is well-known. Community as Rebellion, which reflects on many of these projects, has been praised by Angela Davis as a “life-saving and life-affirming text” that charts a “fearless strategy” for “how our institutions might be reimagined beyond the strongholds of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy.” These strategies—and the stories, experiences, and analyses that have fueled them—are at the heart of our conversation in this episode.

Credits:

Co-hosted and co-produced by Tina Pippin + Lucia Hulsether

Audio editing + outro music by Aliyah Harris

Intro music by Lance Hogan, performed by Aviva and the Flying Penguins.

Many of us think of public libraries primarily as places to read and check out books—but this is only the beginning of their role in our communities. What else do libraries do? What roles do libraries and librarians play in broader movements for social democracy and educational access? How can we collectively defend our libraries from right-wing attacks on their vital work?

Our November 2023 episode features one activist librarian, Oscar Gittemeier, about his journey into library work, his vision of the social justice focus of libraries, and the challenges in these politically-polarized times. Oscar is the Program Manager of Innovation and Engagement at the City of San Diego Public Library. Before turning to his vocation of Library and Information Studies (with a certificate in Leadership and Management), his background was in Sociology and Women’s Studies.

Oscar brings an intersectional sensitivity to his outreach work to bring libraries to the community: for example, through surveying people in detention centers and providing them with library cards upon release, creating a fundraiser calendar in Fulton County, GA libraries (“Libraries Are Such A Drag”) for a scholarship fund, and in general rethinking the space and function of libraries to meet community needs. He takes us through complex issues of providing access to all, along with other challenges and opportunities that public libraries are facing today. Oscar sends us out with encouragement to plug into a local “Friends of the Public Library” chapter, so that we can ensure the important work libraries do to create a more just world.

Credits:

Co-hosted and co-produced by Tina Pippin and Lucia Hulsether

Audio editing + outro music by Aliyah Harris

Intro music by Lance Hogan, performed by Aviva and the Flying Penguins

What might educators learn from practitioners of conflict mediation and transformative justice? What does it look like to enact “beloved community” in our classrooms, organizations, and movements? What should teachers and learners do to better align our ideals of justice and equity with our day-to-day practices?

Peace educator and nonviolence practitioner Kazu Haga joins us to reflect on these questions and more. The author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm (2020), Kazu has spent 20+ training communities in practices of conflict reconciliation, harm reduction, and nonviolent action. As the founder of the East Point Peace Academy, and now as a core member of the Ahimsa Collective and the Embodiment Project, he has taught restorative practices to high schools and youth groups, prisons and jails, and numerous activist and social movement organizations around the world. He is the recipient of several awards, including a Martin Luther King, Jr. Award from the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Gil Lopez Award for Peacemaking. His next book, Fierce Vulnerability: Direct Action that Heals and Transforms, will be published in August 2024.

Credits:

Co-hosted and co-produced by Tina Pippin and Lucia Hulsether

Audio editor: Aliyah Harris

Intro music by Lance Hogan, performed by Aviva and the Flying Penguins

Outro music by Akrasis