History, Democracy, and the vocation of the black intellectual: challenges for our times

A Black Students Union leader addresses a crowd of demonstrators in December 1968.

Education Must Be Defended 
Keynote Lecture by Anthony Bogues

Friday, March 3, 2023
4-6:30 p.m. 

Rittenberg Lounge, Mather Hall, Trinity College and online

Watch the video here

Hosted by the Trinity Social Justice Initiative and the Smart Cities Lab, Trinity College, and the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University 

In the 1960s and 70s global anticolonial revolutionary thinkers were in open revolt against nationalist-driven racist attacks. Adjoining the major political campaigns of their day, they formed critical collaborative spaces of research, writing, and thinking. Participants included radical thinkers working outside the academy as well as those who considered themselves “in but not of” it. These included Cedric Robinson and Ambalavaner Sivanandan at the Institute of Race Relations in London, Sylvia Wynter at Atlanta’s Institute of the Black World, and Walter Rodney at Tanzania’s University of Dar es Salaam. The legacy of this generation informs this event, “Education Must Be Defended.”

This one-day conference, organized by the Social Justice Initiative and the Smart Cities Lab at Trinity College and the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University, considers the spatial, institutional, and pedagogical provocations posed by this tradition for the present day. Inspired by an earlier generation of radical intellectuals we will think together about how we might hold critical space for research and pedagogy amidst multiple colliding crises at present. 

Image: A Black Students Union leader addresses a crowd of demonstrators in December 1968. Credit: Associated Press.

Episode 5 (Season 2)

THE CARCERAL CONJUNCTURE IN CENTRAL APPALACHIA

Christina Heatherton speaks with Judah Schept about his new book, Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia (NYU Press, 2022).

Conjuncture is a web series and podcast curated and co-produced by Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton for the Trinity Social Justice Initiative. It features interviews with activists, artists, scholars, and public intellectuals. Taking its title from Antonio Gramsci and Stuart Hall’s conceptualization, it highlights the struggles over the meaning and memory of particular historical moments.

Judah Schept is Professor of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University.

Christina Heatherton is the Elting Associate Professor of American Studies and Human Rights and Co-Director of the Social Justice Initiative at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.


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Episode 4 (Season 2)

THE EMANCIPATION CIRCUIT

Jordan T. Camp speaks with Thulani Davis about her new book, The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom (Duke, 2022), Black political thought, and the unfinished business of freedom struggles.

Thulani Davis is a professor and a Nellie Y. McKay Fellow in the African American Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.


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Dismantling Racial Capitalism

Convening at NYU Law School
December 1, 2022

The inaugural Dismantling Racial Capitalism convening at NYU, hosted by Urban Democracy Lab, Center for Race, Inequality and the Law, the Action Lab, and the Initiative for Community Power at NYU Law, aspired to create space to develop and sharpen our understanding of racial capitalism, how it functions, its horrific consequences, and, most importantly, how we can challenge and dismantle it. Academics, organizers, policy-makers, students and change-makers came together for a deeply-rooted examination of how racial capitalism drives inequality, exploitation, and destruction, and how we can catalyze change. Details here.

Opening plenary with DaMareo Cooper (Center for Popular Democracy), Christina Heatherton (Trinity Social Justice Initiative), and Lester Spence (Johns Hopkins), moderated by Joo-Hyun Kang (The Action Lab).
Closing plenary with Jordan Camp (Trinity Social Justice Initiative), Ntanya Lee (LeftRoots), and Nara Roberta Silva (Brooklyn Institute for Research), moderated by John Whitlow (Initiative for Community Power).

Episode 3 (Season 2)

MANUFACTURING A CAMPUS CULTURE WAR

Christina Heatherton speaks with Isaac Kamola about manufactured campus culture wars, the resurgence of the right, and the politics of intellectual work in the current conjuncture.

Isaac A. Kamola is Associate Professor of Political Science at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.


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Episode 2 (season 2)

MAKING INTERNATIONALISM

Jordan T. Camp interviews Christina Heatherton about the relationship between the internationalization of capital and the making of internationalism in the era of the Mexican Revolution.

Christina Heatherton is Elting Associate Professor of American Studies and Human Rights and Co-Director of the Social Justice Initiative at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.


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Episode 1 (Season 2)

AGAINST PESSIMISM

Jordan T. Camp speaks with historian Robin D. G. Kelley about the history of racial capitalism, the roots of fascism, and the freedom dreams of social movements to open season 2 of Conjuncture.

Robin D. G. Kelley is the Gary B. Nash Professor of History at UCLA.


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Episode 6

THE TYRANNY OF THE PRESENT

In this sixth episode of Conjuncture, Jordan T. Camp’s guest is Leniqueca A. Welcome. They discuss her ethnographic research in Trinidad, what she calls the “tyranny of the present,” and the possibilities of abolitionist politics today. Conjuncture is a monthly web series and podcast curated and co-produced by Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton for the Trinity Social Justice Initiative. It features interviews with activists, artists, scholars, and public intellectuals.

Leniqueca A. Welcome is an assistant professor of International and Urban Studies at Trinity College. Her work appears in influential venues such as Small Axe, American Anthropologist, Multimodality and Society, Inquiry, City and Society, as well as edited volumes including Sovereignty Unhinged (Duke, forthcoming). She is currently working on her first book, Come Out of This World: Beyond Terrains of Criminalization to Where Life is Precious.

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On Making (Art) Work

Latinx Art Production and Curatorial Practice

A Conversation with Claudia Zapata

EVENT HELD ON FRIDAY, MAY 6, 2022, IN AUSTIN ARTS CENTER AND VIA ZOOM.

This conversation is also available to view on the Trinity website here.


Flyer for On Making (Art) Work Conversation