Speaking Out of Place

Today I talk with Tao Leigh Goffe about her new, magisterial Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis.  Spanning many fields and disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities and the arts, Professor Goffe weaves together an historically rich and geographically complex picture of how capitalism and racism undergird the climate crisis in ways made invisible or benign via the work of the west’s “dark laboratory.”  Writing back through accounts of indigenous bird watching and Black provisional grounds, we talk about things as seemingly different as the massive guano industry built on Chinese and Indian labor in the 19th century to Malcolm-X’s boyhood vegetable garden in Michigan.  We talk in particular about one of the key passages of Dark Laboratory, where Tao writes:“Still, we manage to create a poetics out of that which wishes to destroy us and the planet.  How else will we be able to live in ‘the after’? We must reassess what a problem is.  Living is not a problem, as Audrey Lorde reminds us. I would add that dying is not a problem either. Decomposing is essential to the natural order and cycle of life. Living at the expense of others is a problem.”Tao Leigh Goffe is a writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York City. For the past fifteen years she has specialized in colonial histories of race, geology, climate, and media technologies. Dr. Goffe lives and works in Manhattan where she is an Associate Professor at CUNY in Black Studies. She teaches classes on literary theory and cultural history. Dr. Goffe’s book on how the climate crisis is a racial crisis is called DARK LABORATORY (Doubleday and Hamish Hamilton (Penguin UK, 2025)). Her second book BLACK CAPITAL, CHINESE DEBT, under contract with Duke University Press, presents a long history of racialization, modern finance, and indebtedness. It brings together subjects of the Atlantic and Pacific markets from 1806 to the present under European colonialism. Dr. Goffe is a fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School in racial justice. Her research explores Black diasporic intellectual histories, political, and ecological life. She studied English literature at Princeton University before earning her PhD at Yale University. Dr. Goffe’s research and curatorial work is rooted in literatures and theories of labor that center Black feminist engagements with Indigeneity and Asian diasporic racial formations. Committed to building intellectual communities beyond institutions, she is the founder of the Dark Laboratory, an engine for the study of race, technology, and ecology through digital storytelling. Dr. Goffe is also the Executive Director of the Afro-Asia Group, an organization that centers the intersections of African and Asian diasporas, futurity, and radical coalition towards sovereignty.   

In a thought-provoking discussion, Maya Schenwar, a seasoned writer and editor, and Kim Wilson, an inspiring artist and educator, explore the intertwining of parenting and abolition. They address the challenges of merging activism with caregiving and advocate for the vital role of care work in justice movements. The guests emphasize creating nurturing environments for children, community support, and the importance of interdependence. Their insights highlight the transformative power of radical parenting and nurturing relationships in fostering societal change.

Peter Beinart, a professor and political commentator, explores his thought-provoking new book on Jewish identity post-Gaza destruction. He argues that Jews need to reimagine their narratives, moving away from a sense of innocence toward a nuanced understanding of their ethical responsibilities. The conversation delves into the complexities of privilege, the dynamics of the ceasefire, and the need for compassionate dialogue with Palestinian experiences. Beinart also highlights the transformative role of universities in fostering deep engagement with difficult topics surrounding Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Join Azucena Castro, an expert in climate and energy justice, and Malcom Ferdinand, a researcher delving into colonial history's impact on ecology, as they unravel the concept of 'double fracture.' They discuss the harmful disconnection from nature caused by colonial legacies and environmental crises. Art, poetry, and film emerge as crucial tools for resistance, shedding light on marginalized voices. Together, they explore how love and interconnectedness can inspire collective responsibility in environmental activism, sharing powerful insights and poetic reflections along the way.

Today on Speaking Out of Place we talk with Professor Persis Karim, co-producer and co-director of a new documentary film, The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life. She is joined by Roya Ahmadi, a student at Stanford who interned at the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University and was part of the production team for the film. The film captures the lives of young Iranian-Americans who come to the San Francisco Bay Area around the time of the Iranian Revolution, and find themselves involved with, and helping to shape, a vibrant, international culture of politics and art. We talk about both the similarities and differences between those days and today—especially with regard to diasporic identity formation in different historical times, and the persistent need to resist racism and bigotry and act in solidarity with others. Persis Karim is the director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University, where she also teaches in the Department of Humanities and Comparative and World Literature. Since 1999, she has been actively working to expand the field of Iranian Diaspora Studies, beginning with the first anthology of Iranian writing she co-edited, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans. She is the editor of two other anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, and Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers. Before coming to San Francisco State, she was a professor of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State where she was the founder and director of the Persian Studies program, and coordinator of the Middle East Studies Minor. She has published numerous articles about Iranian diaspora literature and culture for academic publications including Iranian Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asian, African and Middle East Studies (CSSAMES), and MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States. “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life,” is her first film project (co-directed and co-produced with Soumyaa Behrens). She received her Master’s in Middle East Studies and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UT Austin. She is also a poet.Roya Ahmadi is a senior at Stanford University studying Human Biology with a self-designed concentration in Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) Women's Health and a minor in Interdisciplinary Arts. She is interested in Muslim and SWANA women's sexual and reproductive health and culturally/religiously sensitive pregnancy care. Roya is a co-chair for the Stanford Institute for Diversity in the Arts Undergraduate Fellowship and a video and sound installation artist who has presented work in group shows across the US. Roya interned for the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at SFSU for two summers when she was in high school; the Center has had a deep impact on her artwork and her identity as an Iranian-American.Trailer:https://vimeo.com/1002914645

Today on Speaking Out of Place I have the honor of talking with Professor Christen A Smith on a new book she has co-edited entitled, The Dialectic is in the Sea: The Black Radical Thought of Beatriz Nascimento. Smith explains that “Beatriz Nascimento was a critical figure in Brazil’s Black Movement until her untimely death in 1995. Although she published only a handful of articles before she died and left only a few other recorded thoughts, her ideas about the symbolic relationship between quilombos (Afro-Brazilian maroon societies) and black subjectivity encourage us to re-imagine the meaning of Black liberation from a transnational, Black feminist perspective.”  Our conversation delves into Nascimento’s rich and complex cultural and intellectual productions, and talk about everything from her films and essays to her student papers, which Smith and her co-editors include in their volume. Nascimento was also a poet, and we are grateful that Christen graces us with reading two poems in Portuguese and then in English translation. Christen A. Smith is Associate Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies at Yale University. She is the author of the book, Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence and Performance in Brazil  (University of Illinois Press, 2016), co-author of the book The Dialectic is in the Sea: The Black Radical Thought of Beatriz Nascimento (Princeton University Press, 2023) and co-editor of Black Feminist Constellations: Black Women in Dialogue and Translation (University of Texas Press, 2023). In 2017, she started Cite Black Women—a transnational initiative that she began in 2017 that draws attention to Black women’s intellectual contributions as well as the race and gender inequalities of citational politics.

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.