The NAB Project Podcast

Is Fred Hampton-style coalition building a useful praxis for contesting anti-Blackness today, or are efforts at building a “Rainbow Coalition” inappropriate or ineffective in the current historical conjuncture? Does emphasis on emancipatory efforts for black persons, and especially men, in social-political theory, sometimes undercut the need to come to terms with deeper, perhaps insurmountable anti-black structures that have created modernity, as scholars such as Frank B. Wilderson III in the afro-pessimism tradition seem to suggest? Does BMS have a reformist (or maybe even fundamentally transformative) role in higher education, especially in the United States, or is it rather a site of resistance, one that is content in the ruins of an unredeemable model of higher learning?

Today we continue our discussion on the role of BMS in the academy and in society at large with Tommy Curry, a leader and founder of the field. Curry has co-launched the first book series on BMS with Temple University Press. He is also the author of The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press 2017), which won the 2018 American Book Award, and of Another white Man’s Burden: Josiah Royce’s Quest for a Philosophy of Racial Empire (SUNY Press 2018).

What is distinctive about higher education journalism? What can we learn from people driven narratives in journalism , including telling the stories of "departmental drama" in higher education? What are some of the challenges in covering higher education – especially with respect to the faculty beat? Are there any blind spots in what higher education reporters focus on?

On today's episode we explore these and other questions with Emma Pettit, a Staff Reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education who focuses on faculty issues. She did her undergraduate at Villanova, and has pursued a career in higher education journalism since then. She is the 2017 Outstanding New Journalist, as presented by the Arkansas Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

What do the results of the US election mean for the future of US higher education? Even beyond electoral politics, what does it suggest about the current status of "little d" democracy, as well as about our national institutions? In light of this situation, can US higher education survive in its current form?

On this special post-election episode, we have an open discussion with friend of the show Leonard Waks on these questions and more. Waks is an internationally renowned historian and philosopher of higher education, philosopher of technology, pragmatist, process philosopher, and Dewey scholar. He is also a member of the NAB Advisory Council. 

*Click here for the interview with Noam Chomsky that James referenced on the show.

*Click here for the article by Glenn Greenwald that James mentioned.

*Click here for the David Graeber interview about anti-Semitism on Double Down News.

*Click here for the Inside Higher Ed article about the different responses fromJewish faculty at the University of Illinois to complaints of anti-Semitism on campus.

*Click here for the article by Sarah Lazare about ending the US-backed war on Yemen, which James drew from on the show.

*Click here for the article featuring the quote from the later singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen about democracy that James shared during the discussion.

*Click here for Angela Davis's book on abolition democracy.                                                                                                                                               

*Click here to follow a collection of PIC abolitionists at Northwestern University on Twitter, and click here to follow #nucommunitynotcops, the movement demanding NU divest from policing and invest in Black communities.

If and how does understanding our workplaces as "private governments", especially how many of them are run on deeply undemocratic models of organization and decision making, apply to US colleges and universities in their function as employers? Should higher education in the US function on any market principles, or are other institutions and arrangements more conducive to sustaining quality higher ed? Does the the perverse marriage between libertarianism (of the right-wing variety) and authoritarianism effect formal education at the K-12 or post-secondary levels?

We explore these and other questions today with Elizabeth Anderson, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. She is a political philosopher, ethicist, and feminist philosopher, whose 2017 work Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It), which she received a Progress Medel Laureate for by the Society for Progress, plays a central role in our discussion. She also was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008, has received a Guggenheim Fellowship to support her work, and in 2019, she received a "Genius Grant" from the MacArthur Fellows Program.

How do we best support graduate students in media studies? Do universities and graduate programs have a responsibility to readjust their model of grad education in the field? What is the value of a humanities-based approach to media studies? How can media be a site of convergence for the disciplines?

In today's episode we investigate these questions with Walter Metz, Professor of Film Studies, and Dean and Director of Graduate Studies for the college of Mass Communication and Media Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He received his S.B. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Materials Science and Engineering, and Film and Literature (in the Humanities Department) in 1989; an MA in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa in 1991; and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996. He is the author of three books: Engaging Film Criticism: Film History and Contemporary American Cinema (Peter Lang, 2004), Bewitched (Wayne State University Press, 2007), and Gilligan’s Island, (Wayne State University Press, 2012). He is currently writing a manuscript about Dr. Seuss and the animated films made at Pixar Studios.

His film criticism website is located at: waltermetz.com

What is the current landscape of higher education in the United States, and in particular Illinois? How pervasive is the corporatization of higher education? How should public universities transform in the coming years? Given the scale of issues that face public higher education, how much change can come from attempts at the state and federal level of governance? What kind of advocacy, organizing, and reform ought people in and concerned for higher education in the US be focusing on today?

Today we explore these questions with Randall Auxier, a specialist in the history, philosophy, policy and practice of higher education. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Communication at SIUC, and a long time union organizer at that institution. Currently he is running as the Green Party Candidate for Illinois House of Representatives to represent District 115. We also discuss particular reforms and projects he plans for higher education as part of his candidacy.

What can today's higher education student and scholar activists learn from the critical theory tradition? What role can higher education and social movements play in constituting or readying people to participate in the public sphere?  How did the critical theory tradition try to balance the need to take a critical distance from the world and the need for revolutionary/transformative movements and struggles? What is the relationship between critical theory and other philosophical traditions within the academy such as pragmatism and anarchism, and other fields such as cultural studies?

In today's podcast we have the honor of exploring these questions with the eminent intellectual historian of critical theory Martin Jay. He is the Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation was revised into the seminar work on the history of critical theory,  The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950. It is now a classic in the field. This work drew on the many personal relationships he developed with key figures in the movement, such as  Leo Löwenthal.  His research traverses Marxism, socialism, historiography, cultural criticism, visual culture, and post-structuralism/postmodernism. He  was the recipient of the 2010/2011 Berlin Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin.

What's the status of the labor movement and of labor unions in higher education today? Have academic labor unions been trapped in the two-tier structure of higher education (between tenured and non-tenured faculty), and can they sufficiently transform the arrangements within higher education so as to bring about an end to that system?

In today's Labor Day podcast we explore these questions with Mia McIver, President of UC-AFT, which represents non-Senate faculty and librarians working throughout the University of California system. She is a lecturer at UCLA, and received a Ph.D. in English literature from UC Irvine. During her graduate studies she held the Krieger Fellowship in Critical Theory.

*Eli mentioned in this episode Michael McHugh's proposal for restructuring The New School in New York as a worker cooperative, i.e. a new model of "cooperative university". He wrote a dissertation on the subject which can be found here.

**The foreword, co-authored by David Graeber and Andrej Grubačić, to the forthcoming re-release of Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: An Illuminated Factor of Evolution — which James mentioned toward the end of the podcast — along with Grubačić's thoughts on the sudden death of his friend and collaborator, can be read here. PM Press first published the foreword to the forthcoming book, along with Grubačić's thoughts on Graeber's sudden passing, here.

Why are those with humanities PhDs mostly confined to careers within the academy? In what ways can humanities PhDs thrive and serve others with vocations outside of the academy? What would a more holistic humanities graduate education for broader careers and relationships with the local community look like? Who benefits from the dominant culture of humanities graduate education, and who is responsible for improving or reconfiguring that culture? What role should equity and social justice advocacy play in humanities PhD work outside of the classroom and beyond traditional research? How should humanities graduate education look in the times of Covid-19?

We explore these questions and more with Katina Rogers through her most recent book Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and beyond the Classroom (Duke University Press, July 2020). Her work traverses higher education reform, scholarly communication practices, humanities professionalization and career development, public scholarship, and scholarly fair labor advocacy. Rogers is co-director of the Futures Initiative at the CUNY Graduate Center, which Roger's describes as an  "an incubator that advances equity and innovation in higher education through student-centered teaching and learning, and promotes reinvestment in higher education as a public good." She is also the co-director of the CUNY Humanities Alliance, Director of Programs and Administration of HASTAC, and is an adjunct faculty member in the GC’s Master’s Program in Digital Humanities.

How should we in higher education address the growing crises in our culture of a pervading loss of meaning, and sense of purpose and value in life? What role can revisiting wisdom traditions and current research on their practices play in helping us all live more authentic and less self-deceptive lives? These questions are all the more pertinent during the pandemic where isolation is all the more potent.

On this episode we explore this crises of meaning with John Vervaeke, an award-winning lecturer at the University of Toronto in the departments of psychology, cognitive science and Buddhist psychology. Vervaeke explores the meaning crises and the value of wisdom traditions and practices through public facing work, including an active Youtube channel, magazine and online articles, and through other venues. His work and teaching is at the intersections of psychology, philosophy as a way of life, and dynamic public facing pedagogy.

*If you are interesting in learning more you can check out his YouTube channel,  his Facebook , or follow his Twitter handle (@vervaeke_john).