The Majlis Ep. 33: The Campus Front: A Field Report from Students and Faculty for Justice in Palestine
In this special episode of both "the Majlis podcast" of the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives project at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON and "Guerrilla Radio", an activist companion podcast to "Guerrilla History podcast", Adnan Husain and Matt Deitsch, part of the "Guerrilla Radio activist network", discuss campus organizing, the repression of Palestinian solidarity at universities, and how faculty and students have responded. A diverse group of students and faculty from Syracuse University joined the program to discuss the range of issues about academic freedom, the denial of expertise, the persecution of racialized communities, and repression of pro-Palestinian solidarity. They issued a call and petition making concrete demands that has articulated the shape of the intersectional struggle for freedom and justice in the neoliberal university and for Palestine.
USACBI, BDS call for Faculty of Palestine chapters: https://usacbi.org/faculty-for-justice-in-palestine/
Co-Host:
Matt Deitsch is a filmmaker, writer, educator and organizer w/NNOC (National Network on Cuba), Friends of Swazi Freedom, Progressive International and in Democratic Socialists of America’s International Committee. He has a political economy background through work at the IDEAs Institute, a development economics institute located in India.
Guests:
Sophie Clinton is from Syracuse, NY, and is currently studying to get their MPA at Syracuse University. Their research focuses on the study of global atrocities, historical memory, and genocidal patterns with a focus on contemporary Latin America. Their current project is on the ways in which family planning policies under the authoritarian regime of Augusto Pinochet played a role in queer erasure and heightened violence against the queer community. Their other research interests include historical atrocities in the Middle East and South Asia.
MoAde M. J. is a recent alum of Syracuse University and the University of Illinois at Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. They are a poet, essayist, and creative nonfiction writer who pays special attention to the fields of regenerative agriculture and afrofuturism. They founded the @blackatcuse Instagram account to provide a platform for radical honesty about the experiences that Black and Indigenous students have at Syracuse University.
Biko Mandela Gray is a writer and ethicist concerned about life, liberation, and freedom. He is also an associate professor of religion at Syracuse university, where he teaches on politics, ethics, and race. He is the author/co-author/co-editor of three books, all of which interrogate the religious and/or philosophical dimensions of antiblackness in the west.
Carol Fadda grew up in Beirut, Lebanon and is currently faculty member at Syracuse University. Her teaching and scholarship lie at the intersections of American Studies, transnational SWANA studies, and women’s and gender studies. She focuses in her work on critical engagements with race, gender, war trauma, carcerality, cross-racial solidarities, and transnational belonging across the US and the SWANA region.
Dana Olwan teaches in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Syracuse University. She is a core member of Faculty for Palestine-Syracuse University chapter.