Today on Speaking Out of Place I talk with Lindsay Weinberg and Robert Ovetz about the use of Artificial Intelligence in higher education. Under the guise of “personalizing” education and increasing efficiency, universities are increasingly sold on AI as a cure to their financial ills as public funds dry up and college applications drop.  Rather than maintain  that education is an essential public good that needs broad support, universities are looking to technology in ways that are changing the nature of education in dangerous and destructive ways.  As Lindsay writes in the book, Smart University,“Higher education is becoming increasingly synonymous with digital surveillance in the United States. Advanced network infrastructure, internet-­ connected devices and sensors, radio frequency identification (RFID), data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) are being celebrated as a means of ushering in the age of “smart universities,” one where institutions can run their ­ services more efficiently and strengthen the quality of higher education using digital tools. However, as this book demonstrates, ­ these tools have a darker side. They allow public universities to respond to and perpetuate corporate logics of austerity, use student data to reduce risk of financial investment in the face of dwindling public resources, and track student be­hav­ior to encourage compliance with institutional metrics of success. Surveillance of student be­hav­ior forms the foundation ofthe smart university, often in ways that prove harmful to students—­ particularly ­ those who are already marginalized within the acad­emy."We talk about these issues, and attach them to critical issues of labor—everything from the outsourcing of the most dangerous work to laborers in the Global South, to the way university workers at all levels are subordinated to the logic that drives AI.  We end with a discussion of what we can and should do about it.Dr. Lindsay Weinberg is a clinical associate professor in the Honors College at Purdue University, and the Director of the Tech Justice Lab. Her research and teaching are at the intersection of science and technology studies, media studies, and feminist studies, with an emphasis on the social and ethical impacts of digital technology. She is interested in the constitutive role that history and unequal power relations play in shaping the design, application, and reception of technological innovations. Her work has appeared in Lateral, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, Impost: A Journal of Critical and Creative Work, the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, and Frontiers: International Journal of Study Abroad. Her book, Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age (John Hopkins UP, 2024) examines the proliferation of digital tools for higher education governance, and their impacts on marginalized people within and beyond the university’s walls. She has been the recipient of internal and external grants to support research, seminars, and workshops concerning the justice-related implications of digital technology, including from the National Science Foundation, the Indiana Humanities, and the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence.Robert Ovetz, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science and teaches non-profit management and labor relations in the Master of Public Administration program at San José State University. He is the author and editor of four books, including We the Elites (Pluto, 2022), and the forthcoming Rebels for the System: NGOs and Capitalism to be published in 2025 by Haymarket Press. Robert writes regularly for Dollars & Sense magazine. 

Today on Speaking Out of Place I am honored to welcome Huda Fakhreddine and Anthony Alessandrini to talk about the unique manners in which literature can disclose the human significance of the historical and ongoing genocide in Palestine. Such revelation has to fight at least two things—the sheer brutality and inhumanity of this violence, and the active silencing of Palestinian voices by institutions that, ironically, profess to champion the humanities. Here, once again, we find a pernicious instantiation of the Palestine Exception.  Despite these efforts to censor and silence, Huda and Tony delve deeply into the power of Palestinian poetry, through  translations and readings of some of the most remarkable literature in the world. Anthony Alessandrini teaches English at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn and Middle Eastern Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he is also a member of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change. He is the author of Decolonize Multiculturalism and of Frantz Fanon and the Future of Cultural Politics; the editor of Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives; and the co-editor of “Resistance Everywhere”: The Gezi Protests and Dissident Visions of Turkey. He has also published a poetry chapbook, Children Imitating Cormorants. He is a Co-Editor of Jadaliyya, is on the Board of Directors of the Middle East Studies Association, is on the faculty of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, is a co-convener of the International Solidarity Action Research Network, serves as chair of his union’s Academic Freedom Committee, and is a proud member of CUNY Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.   Huda J. Fakhreddine is a writer, translator, and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill, 2015) and The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), as well as the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry (Routledge, 2023). Her creative writings include a work of creative nonfiction, Zaman Ṣaghīr Taḥt Shams Thāniya (A Brief Time Under a Different Sun), published by Dar al-Nahda, Beirut, in 2019, and a forthcoming collection Wa Min Thammata al-‘Ālam… (And Then, the World…), to be published by Manshurat Marfa’, Beirut, in 2025. She serves as co-editor of Middle Eastern Literatures and as an editor for the Library of Arabic Literature. 

On today’s show we talk with journalists, activists, and political commentators, Liza Featherstone and Doug Henwood about the recent Presidential elections. We try to make sense of the fact that a convicted felon, proud misogynist, outright racist, authoritarian figure, and known liar whose first term put nearly all those characteristics on display for four years, will be the most powerful person in the world again. Much of our discussion takes the Democratic party, and Kamala Harris in particular, to task, for proving once again that it is entirely beholden to the donor class, and incapable of recognizing the immense suffering, alienation, and cynicism of much of the United States.  We pay particular attention to exactly those things Harris chose not to emphasize—the economy, Gaza, and climate change.  We end by trying to see what kinds of progressive possibilities might be nurtured, and how we can lean on each other in the next several years.Liza Featherstone is the author of Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation, published by O/R Books in 2018, as well as Selling Women Short: the Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Walmart (Basic Books, 2004).  She co-authored Students Against Sweatshops (Verso, 2002) and is editor of False Choices: the Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Verso, 2016). She's currently editing a collection of Alexandra Kollontai 's work for O/R Books and International Publishers and writing the introduction to that volume.Featherstone's work has been published in Lux, TV Guide, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Ms., the American Prospect, Columbia Journalism Review, Glamour, Teen Vogue, Dissent, the Guardian, In These Times, and many other publications. Liza teachers at NYU 's Literary Reportage Program as well as at Columbia University School for International and Public Affairs. She is proud to be an active member of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America and of UAW local 7902. Doug Henwood is a Brooklyn-based journalist and broadcaster specializing in economics and politics. He edited Left Business Observer, a newsletter, from 1986–2013, and has been host of Behind the News, a weekly radio show/podcast that originates on KPFA, Berkeley, since 1995. He is the author of Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom (Verso, 1997), After the New Economy (New Press, 2004), and My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency (OR Books, 2016). He’s written for numerous periodicals including Harper’s, The New Republic, The Nation, The Baffler, and Jacobin. He’s been working on a book about the rot of the US ruling class for way too long and needs to acquire the self-discipline to finish it.  

Today on Speaking Out of Place we are joined by Shourideh Molavi, who talks about the ways in which Israel has waged a protracted war on both the people and environment of Gaza. Linking this war to its colonial precedents, Molavi explains who she, as a researcher for the Forensic Architecture project, combines technologies like satellite imaging with on-the-ground stories from Palestinian farmers to produce a powerful form witnessing, and testimony to Israel’s war.  She connects the trauma felt by the environment and the trauma felt by the people. She also tells of the new and powerful forms of resistance and resilience that take place at the nexus of nature, landscape, and the Palestinian people.Shourideh Molavi is the lead Israel/Palestine researcher for Forensic Architecture, linking their investigations to the work and research of civil society, grassroots groups and human rights defenders in the country. She is a scholar in political science and human rights and trained with a background in International Humanitarian Law. She is also Senior Lecturer in the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University in NYC.

Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, an anthropologist and filmmaker, teams up with Jess Ghannam, a Clinical Professor at UCSF, to discuss the devastating impact of war on Gaza and the West Bank. They reveal shocking statistics about U.S. military aid and the tragic death toll, highlighting the long-term health consequences, especially for children. The conversation also addresses the disconnect in American policy towards Palestine, the normalization of violence, and the emerging global solidarity for Palestinian rights as a response to recent crises.

Today on Speaking Out of Place we talk with scholar-activists Naomi Paik and Ashley Dawson about the close connection between abolition and environmental activism from below. How are the twin projects raising profound questions about borders, carcerality, enclosures, and the separation of humans from each other and all other forms of life, including supposedly “inanimate” objects?  How can we create “sanctuary for all” in a radical rethinking of notions like “the commons”? Ashley Dawson is Professor of English at the Graduate Center / City University of New York and the College of Staten Island. Recently published books of his focus on key topics in the Environmental Humanities, and include People’s Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons (O/R, 2020), Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (Verso, 2017), and Extinction: A Radical History (O/R, 2016). Dawson is the author of a forthcoming book entitled Environmentalism from Below (Haymarket) and the co-editor of Decolonize Conservation! (Common Notions, 2023). For the past 20 years Ashley has been engaged in public higher education as our nation's largest urban university CUNY helps transform the lives of huge numbers of students from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds.  Ashley believes deeply in the mission of public institutions such as CUNY to provide a quality education to such students and his teaching and pedagogy philosophy has been shaped by this commitmentNaomi Paik is the author of Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the 21st Century (2020, University of California Press) and Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II (2016, UNC Press; winner, Best Book in History, AAAS 2018; runner-up, John Hope Franklin prize for best book in American Studies, ASA, 2017), as well as articles, opinion pieces, and interviews in a range of academic and public-facing venues. Her next book-length project, "Sanctuary for All," calls for the most capacious conception of sanctuary that brings together migrant and environmental justice. A member of the Radical History Review editorial collective, she has co-edited four special issues of the journal—“Militarism and Capitalism (Winter 2019), “Radical Histories of Sanctuary” (Fall 2019), “Policing, Justice, and the Radical Imagination” (Spring 2020), and “Alternatives to the Anthropocene” with Ashley Dawson (Winter 2023). She coedits the “Borderlands” section of Public Books alongside Cat Ramirez, as well as “The Politics of Sanctuary” blog of the Smithsonian Institution with Sam Vong. She is an associate professor of Criminology, Law, and Justice and Global Asian Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, and a member of the Migration Scholars Collaborative and Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, UIC. Her research and teaching interests include comparative ethnic studies; U.S. imperialism; U.S. militarism; social and cultural approaches to legal studies; transnational and women of color feminisms; carceral spaces; and labor, race, and migration.

Three international volunteers share their personal journeys and motivations for joining the International Solidarity Movement in support of Palestinians. They discuss the devastating land grabs and psychological warfare in the Masafer Yatta region, where homes are demolished and families face violence. The conversation sheds light on media distortions surrounding Palestinian narratives and the importance of grassroots activism. The volunteers emphasize the power of nonviolent resistance and the resilience of Palestinians in their fight for justice.

Today, Sunday morning, October 20, former general Prabowo Subianto is being sworn in as Indonesia’s new president. We release a conversation we had earlier this month with Intan Paramaditha and Michael Vann about the road leading up to this inauguration, beginning in the 1960s with the Suharto regime.  Prabowo is a strong-arm authoritarian figure with a bloody record of human rights violations, yet he has remade his image as a cuddly, elder populist figure.  We spend some time talking about how his regime is likely to continue, if not accelerate, aggressive and brutal economic development policies that have wrecked the environment and displaced Indigenous peoples.  We talk a lot about how both the Indonesian media and some of its art world has been enlisted to promote this regime, and how decolonial feminists and others have taken on the task to both resist and present, and embody, other ways of being through listening to and engaging with voices from outside Jakarta and the liberal elites.Intan Paramaditha is an Indonesian writer and an academic based in Sydney. She received her Ph.D from New York University and is now a Senior Lecturer in Media and Film Studies at Macquarie University. Her fiction, academic, and activist works focus on decolonial feminism and the politics of travel and mobility. She is the author of Apple and Knife and The Wandering (Harvill Secker/ Penguin Random House UK, translated by Stephen J. Epstein). Her fiction has been translated into English, Polish, Turkish, German, and Thai. Intan’s latest books are the novel Malam Seribu Jahanam (GPU 2023) and the co-edited volume The Routledge Companion to Asian Cinemas (Routledge 2024). She is the co-founder of the feminist collective Sekolah Pemikiran Perempuan (SPP/ The School of Women’s Thought).Michael Vann has a Ph.D. from UC Santa Cruz and is a professor of world history at Sacramento State Univesity who specializes in the history of imperialism and the Cold War, with special attention to Southeast Asia. Mike’s hometown is Honolulu, Hawai’i, and he has taught at universities in Indonesia, Cambodia, and the People's Republic of China. Among his publications are The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam and articles on race, film, empire, genocide, pandemics, the politics of Korean zombies, and the political economy of surfing in publications ranging from the Journal of World History and Historical Reflections to Jacobin and The Diplomat. He is currently writing an analysis of depictions of Cold War era mass violence in Indonesia, Vietnamese, and Cambodian museums. Since 1990 Mike has been trying to spend as much time as he can in Indonesia.Please check out the Blog for this episode.  

Today on Speaking Out of Place we are joined by three members of the University of California faculty who are part of groups that have filed a landmark compliant against the UC system.This September, faculty associations from seven University of California campuses along with the systemwide Council of UC Faculty Associations filed an unfair labor practice, or ULP charge against their employer, the University of California.  A nearly 600-page complaint was presented to the California Public Employment Relations Board. What is especially noteworthy about this complaint is that it claims UC’s repression of faculty and student protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza cuts to the heart of the educational process, and denies faculty, staff, and students the ability to carry on their work of learning and teaching about critical issues in the world today. Most notably, perhaps, is the fact that the faculty groups say that the university system’s restrictions on activism for Palestine amount to violations of the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act (HEEERA), which protects employees from retaliation around advocating for changes in the workplace. This raises the issue of just how far universities can go, and the methods they employ, to maintain their complicity with genocide and ethnic cleansing.Anna Markowitz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education at UCLA. Her work is at the intersection of child development and policy for children and families. She is a member of the UCLA Faculty Association Executive Committee. Wendy Matsumura is Associate Professor in the Dept of History at UCSD. Her work is on the history of Japanese empire and Okinawan anti-colonialism. She is part of the UCSD Faculty Association Executive Committee. She is also part of the Workshops4Gaza (https://www.workshops4gaza.com) collective.Annie McClanahan is an Associate Professor of English at UCI. She works on American culture and economic history and theory. She is the chair of the Irvine Faculty Association board.Please see the Blog linked to this Episode for news and resources about this issue.

Today, on Speaking Out of Place, we are honored to talk with Munira Khayyat, a Lebanese anthropologist whose book, A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon examines what she calls “resistant ecologies in a world of perennial warfare.”  Drawing on long-term fieldwork in frontline villages along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, she examines war not only as a place of death and destruction, but also necessarily, as an environment of living.We appreciate greatly that she was able to join us now, during the massive and deadly new war Israel is waging on Lebanon. Munira shows how this devastation is a continuation of wars Israel has waged against Lebanon for decades, but also how both the Lebanese people and the Lebanese landscape are resisting death and persisting in life.  This episode is especially useful to those wanting to know more about Lebanon, as Professor Khayyat gives us an informative account of the intertwined histories of Lebanon, Palestine, and the State of Israel.Munira Khayyat is an anthropologist whose research revolves around life in war, intimate genealogies of empire, and theory from the South. Her first book, A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon (University of California Press 2022) examines resistant ecologies in a world of perennial warfare. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in frontline villages along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, she examines war not only as a place of death and destruction, but also necessarily, as an environment of living.Khayyat is currently working on a second book that fleshes out the complex heart of empire in Saudi Arabia. Heart of Black Gold draws on a personal archive meticulously created by her maternal grandfather, who was among the first Arabian employees of ARAMCO, the Arab American Oil Company. How has oil — its extractive, shiny infrastructures, camps, big men, politics and corporations, its global ecologies — shaped lived environments? Insisting on a feminist and multidisciplinary rearranging of the archive, the book inhabits history-in-the-making as it unfolds in domestic scenes, lived quarters, the affective terrains of oil.Khayyat’s research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, the Rachel Carson Center. Her writing has appeared in American Ethnologist, Public Culture, JMEWS, Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology News, HAU, and a number of edited volumes. Khayyat was a Member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2018-2019). Before joining NYUAD, she taught at the American University in Cairo (2013-2023) and the American University of Beirut (2011-2013). She holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University (2013), an MPhil in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University (1998) and a BA in history (1997) from the American University of Beirut.