Shows
Speaking Out of PlaceFrom Indefensible Spaces, Police, and the Struggle for Housing, to the Case of Abolitionist Housing: A Conversation with Rahim KurwaToday I talk with Rahim Kurwa about a powerful study of housing rights and police repression in Southern California. Tapping into a vast historical archive as well as oral histories with residents of Antelope Valley, California, Rahim traces the complex relationship between this region and the City of Los Angeles. Using David Harvey’s famous notion of a “spatial fix,” Kurwa argues that for decades Antelope Valley acted both as a safety value for LA’s over-accumulation of capital, and Black labor. Anti-black racism took the form of powerful collaborations between local police departments, politicians, the courts, the media, and citiz...
2025-08-0443 min
Speaking Out of PlaceAbolishing Silicon Valley, Building the Commons--A Different Way to Spend Your Life: A Conversation with Wendy LiuEver since its publication, Abolish Silicon Valley—How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism has proven to be more urgent and insightful. Today I talk with author Wendy Liu about how developments like AI and LLM, further erosions of intellectual property, and increased invasions of privacy make the case for abolishing Silicon Valley even more important. We talk about how abolition is critical at a time when more and more the private sector has come to eviscerate the public good. Turning to the genocide in Gaza, we discuss the ways Capital has enlisted technology in deadly and horrific manners. We en...
2025-07-2348 min
Speaking Out of PlaceConstitutional Collapse and the Possibilities of a New Democracy: A Conversation with Aziz RanaIn one of the most timely and urgent shows we have ever done, today I speak with law scholar Aziz Rana about his brilliant and bracing article recently published in New Left Review, “Constitutional Collapse.” We talk about how the Trump administration and its enablers are shredding a liberal “compact” which was established in in the 1930s through the Sixties and extending an imperial presidency abroad to an authoritarian one domestically. We talk about the current constitutional crisis, but also about the need for, and manifestations of, a politics which is at once a genuine membership organization and social communit...
2025-05-0842 min
Speaking Out of Place“Truth is Never Finished”: The Time of Palestine in Arabic--A Conversation with Fady JoudahToday I have the honor and the pleasure to speak once again with celebrated poet and physician, Fady Joudah. The last time Fady was on the podcast was in November, 2023, shortly after the outbreak of war in Gaza. At that point we spoke about the impossibility of, even then, quantifying the genocide. Today we focus on the politics of language—in particular, the distinction Fady Joudah makes between Palestine in English, and Palestine in Arabic. We speak too of the need for and limitations of solidarity, and finish with a reading and discussion of one of Fady Joudah’s most...
2025-04-1559 min
Speaking Out of PlaceThe 2025 National Day of Action: Talking with the Coalition for Action in Higher Education about "the World We Live in and the World We Want."Today we talk with members of the organizing collective of the Coalition for Action in Higher Education, or CAHE, about their second National Day of Action, taking place on Thursday, April 17. The Day of Action is a call for free higher education in every meaning of that term. CAHE calls for “the elimination of all existing student debt, making all public colleges and universities tuition-free, and ensuring that our colleges and universities remain sites of robust free thinking about the world we live in and the world we want.”We talk about the genesis of this group, and...
2025-04-1046 min
Speaking Out of PlaceA Conversation with Nasser Abourahme on The Time Beneath the Concrete: Palestine between Camp and Colony: The Struggle Over Historical TimeToday I speak with Nasser Abourahme about his new book, The Time Beneath the Concrete: Palestine between Camp and Colony. Drawing on a wealth of diverse materials including, but not limited to, state documents, political philosophy, literature, and historical archives, The Time Beneath the Concrete focuses on the “struggle over historical time itself.” This is a struggle that is predicated on a constitutional inertia or “stuckness” of the colonial project. We end by talking about the notion of “inhabitation,” which Abourahme describes as “the life-making practice of the dispossessed everywhere.” He suggests this as a way to imagine a life that can be l...
2025-03-3146 min
Speaking Out of PlaceThe Radical Healing of Organized Remembering: Jesse Hagopian on Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist EducationToday I have the great honor of speaking with activist and educator Jesse Hagopian about his new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. We talk about the assault on public education that takes the form of criminalizing the truth itself. We note both the powerful corporate forces behind this movement and what they are afraid of, and also discuss the many instances of people fighting back to name, amplify, and mobilize the truth together.Jesse Hagopian’s African ancestors survived the middle passage and enslavement on plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana. Jesse is a Seattle ed...
2025-03-2453 min
Speaking Out of PlaceThinking Through the Archipelago of Resettlement and the New Southern Question with Evyn Le Espiritu GandhiIn today’s show, I speak with Evyn Le Espiritu Gandhi about two pathbreaking studies which create new ways of thinking about populations bound by complex and contradictory notions of loyalty and psychological investment. Based on meticulous archival research and oral histories amongst disparate populations in South Vietnam, Guam, and Israel-Palestine, in Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine Gandhi is able to probe deeply into fascinating personal stories of refugees that have moved between these spaces, disclosing complex and often contradictory notions of belonging and loyalty. We also talk about her current book pr...
2025-03-1642 min
Speaking Out of PlaceThe Hidden Humans Behind Artificial Intelligence, and the Sociopathology of Elon Musk: A Conversation with Sarah T. RobertsToday on Speaking Out of Place I talk with Sarah T Roberts about the hidden humans behind Artificial Intelligence, which is reliant on executives and business managers to direct AI to promote their brand and low-level, out-sourced, and poorly paid content managers to slog through masses of images, words, and data before they get fed into the machine. We talk about the cultural, sociological, financial, and political aspects of AI. We end by taking on Elon Musk and the DOGE project, as an emblem of how Silicon Valley executives have embraced a brand of tech rapture that...
2025-03-1059 min
Speaking Out of PlaceA Conversation with Laila Lalami on The Dream Hotel: dreaming beyond the algorithmic stateToday on Speaking Out of Place I talk with award-winning novelist Laila Lalami about her new novel, The Dream Hotel. What happens when the state, with the pretext of protecting public safety, can detain indefinitely certain individuals whose dreams seem to indicate they may be capable of committing a crime? Set in a precarious world where sleep-enhancing devices and algorithms provide the tools and formulae for making one’s unconscious a witness to one’s possible waking life, this novel touches on a myriad of political, philosophical, and moral concerns as they particularly connect to issues of gender, race, ethni...
2025-03-0441 min
Speaking Out of PlaceRushing to the Right: A Conversation with Adrian Daub on the Significance of the Recent Elections in GermanyToday I have the pleasure of talking with Professor Adrian Daub about the recent elections in Germany, where we saw a surge in votes for the Far Right AfD party, which is now the second-most powerful party in the country. We discuss the significance of this rise in popularity, and the ways the elections reveal a number of shifts in German politics, as the various parties stake out positions which align with not just a center-right orientation, but, more dangerously, a far right one. We speak of the parallels to the recent election of Donald Trump to the US pr...
2025-03-0239 min
Speaking Out of Place“One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This”: The Deadly Consequences of the Liberal Conscience. A Conversation with Omar El AkkadToday on Speaking Out of Place I talk with Omar El Akkad about his new book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. The title of the book comes from a tweet he posted three weeks after the bombardment of Gaza began. Since then, the tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times. Horrified at what has transpired since that moment, Omar El Akkad wrote this full-throated indictment of the “principal concern” of the modern American liberal. It is “not what one does or believes or supports or opposes, but what one is seen to be.” M...
2025-02-2435 min
Speaking Out of PlaceThe Enduring Power of Palestinian Transnational Identity and Activism: A Discussion with Maha Nasser and Karam DanaToday on Speaking Out of Place I am delighted to have Professors Maha Nasser and Karam Dana in conversation. Dr. Nasser is author of Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World; Professor Dana’s new book is entitled, To Stand with Palestine: Transnational Resistance and Political Evolution in the United States. Together, these two studies offer a fascinating account of the historical and present-day formation of transnational Palestinian identities, and the way that these complex histories inform today’s struggles for Palestinian liberation and rights, by both Palestinians and non-Palestinians. We talk about the impor...
2025-02-171h 05
Speaking Out of PlaceTao Leigh Goffe on Poetics, Poeisis, and Un-making the Climate CrisisToday 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 mass...
2025-02-1037 min
Speaking Out of PlaceWe Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition—A Conversation with Maya Schenwar and Kim WilsonToday I am delighted to have Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson on Speaking Out of Place to discuss their new book, We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. We talk about what inspired them to commission a wide range of amazing activists, artists, scholars and organizers to write whatever came to their minds about the topic of parenting and abolition. The result is a rich mosaic of unique insights expressed in diverse forms, but each one touching deeply on the interdependency of living beings and the importance of caregiving in all its forms. It is this commitment that l...
2025-02-031h 03
Speaking Out of PlaceAgainst “Jewish Innocence”: A Conversation with Peter Beinart on his new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.Today on Speaking Out of Place we sit down with Peter Beinart to discuss his new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. We ask what led him to write this intense, and intensely provocative book, which declares that Jews “need a new story” other than the current one, in which, Beinart argues, Jews see themselves as innocent with regard to the genocide in Gaza. I ask Peter to fully unpack this claim, among others: “Many Jews treat a Jewish state the way the Bible feared Jewish monarchs would treat themselv...
2025-01-2838 min
Speaking Out of PlaceBuilding Worlds Beyond Modernity’s Double Fracture: A Discussion with Azucena Castro and Malcom FerdinandToday on Speaking Out of Place I am delighted to be in conversation with Azucena Castro and Malcom Ferdinand. We start with a discussion of what Ferdinand calls the “double fracture”—the environmental division of humans from their connection to the biosphere, and the colonial division instantiated by white supremacism and patriarchy. He insists that we not see these two phenomena as separate, rather as intimately connected. This double fracture makes any attempts to solve either environmental violence or colonial violence ineffective. In her foreword to Ferdinand’s Decolonial Ecologies, Angela Y. Davis writes that as she read the book, she...
2025-01-2757 min
Speaking Out of PlaceShaping Iranian Diasporic Identities in Times of Crisis and Change: A Conversation with Persis Karim and Roya AhmadiToday 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...
2025-01-2036 min
Speaking Out of PlaceThe Dialectic is in the Sea: A Conversation with Christen A. Smith on the Work of Black Feminist Beatriz NascimentoToday 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...
2025-01-131h 05
Speaking Out of PlaceA.I., Surveillance, and the "Smart University": A Conversation with Lindsay Weinberg and Robert OvetzToday 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 becomi...
2024-12-2650 min
Speaking Out of PlaceSolidarity and Resistance in a Time of Genocide: Palestinian Poetry Reveals the Truth Institutions SilenceToday 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 pow...
2024-12-2359 min
Speaking Out of PlaceLiza Featherstone and Doug Henwood: What Led to Trump II, and What to Do About ItOn 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 im...
2024-11-1644 min
Speaking Out of PlaceEnvironmental Warfare in Gaza: A Conversation with Shourideh MolaviToday 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...
2024-11-1239 min
Speaking Out of PlaceOne Year Later—The True Cost of Israel’s War on Gaza and the West Bank: A Conversation with Prof. Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins and Dr. Jess GhannamToday we are joined by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins and Jess Ghannam, who comment on a devastating new report authored by Stamatopoulou-Robbins. This report, “Costs of War,” reviews data gathered in Palestine since October 7, 2023. In that year alone, the report finds that the US has spent at least $22.76 billion on military aid to Israel and related US operations in the region. The number of direct deaths, but also so-called “indirect deaths” (and such a term forces us to project such deaths well into the future due to Israel’s massive destruction of the infrastructure and environment necessary to sustain even the barest for...
2024-11-0251 min
Speaking Out of PlaceA. Naomi Paik and Ashley Dawson on the Close Connection between Abolition Sanctuary and Environmental Activism from BelowToday 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 f...
2024-10-271h 04
Speaking Out of PlaceVolunteers to Stop the Destruction of Palestinian Villages and Homes: An Interview with Members of the International Solidarity MovementToday on Speaking Out of Place we are honored to speak with three international volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement. They are all involved in the effort to save the Masafer Yatta region in the Occupied West Bank.While it has been a common practice of psychological warfare for the IOF to place military firing ranges near villages, neighborhoods, outside Palestinian hospitals, and prisons as a persistent reminder of its power and the possibility of lethal force in every space, the case of Masafer Yatta is exceptional--people’s actual homes are bulldozed, land confiscated, livestock stolen, and pe...
2024-10-2347 min
Speaking Out of PlaceOn the Significance of the New Indonesian Regime and the Need to Revitalize Decolonial Critique: A Conversation with Intan Paramaditha and Michael VannToday, 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...
2024-10-201h 09
Speaking Out of PlaceUniversity of California Faculty Groups File Landmark Unfair Labor Practices Complaint Against UC Over UC’s Repression of Activism for PalestineToday 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 facu...
2024-10-1647 min
Speaking Out of PlaceAn Urgent Episode on Lebanon with Munira Khayyat: A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South LebanonToday, 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...
2024-10-1257 min
Speaking Out of PlaceIndispensable to Efforts to Boycott and Divest from Israel—Maya Wind Documents How Israeli Universities Attack Palestinian Freedom and Maintain the OccupationToday on Speaking Out of Place, we talk with Maya Wind about her book, Towers of Ivory and Steel, How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom, published by Verso. Through meticulous research into the archives of Israeli universities and hundreds of other documents, Wind furnishes proof of just how deeply and completely Israeli universities are essential actors in Israel’s efforts to suppress Palestinian freedom. We originally taped this show in June 2023, as Maya came off a long book tour in Europe. We decided to wait into the beginning of this new academic year to release this episode. Since...
2024-09-2848 min
Speaking Out of PlaceUsing Satellite Remote Sensing for Environmental Justice: Deploying Data Against the Carceral SystemToday we speak with two scholar-activists who are using satellite technologies and other tools to work for environmental justice, with specific attention to prisons and prison populations. They monitor air quality, water quality, extreme weather and other quantities relevant to EJ. Ufuoma Ovienmhada and Nick Shapiro show how people of color and other socio-economically marginalized groups in the United States experience a disproportionate burden of environmental challenges such as exposure to air pollution, contaminated water, habitat loss, and disrupted livelihood due to natural hazards and climate change. They challenge the idea of scientific neutrality and objectivity, uncover multiple ways...
2024-09-161h 09
Speaking Out of PlaceSolidarity Is the Political Version of Love: Lessons from Jewish Anti-Zionist Organizing. Conversation with Rebecca Vilkomerson and Rabbi Alissa WiseToday we speak with Rebecca Vilkomerson and Rabbi Alissa Wise about their foundational work in starting and growing Jewish Voice for Peace. It’s a story captured in their new book, Solidarity Is the Political Version of Love: Lessons from Jewish Anti-Zionist Organizing. We learn about the different phases in the organization’s life—its growing pains, its key transitions and expansions, and the lessons it has learned on the way about organizing and activism for Palestine. As the title indicates, the book is fundamentally about discovering and growing an expansive notion of solidarity, and the love necessary to sustai...
2024-09-0955 min
Speaking Out of PlaceWas Stanford Firing 23 Lecturers in Creative Writing Really Necessary? A Conversation with Lecturers and StudentsRecently, twenty-three lecturers in the highly successful Creative Writing program at Stanford were summoned to a Zoom meeting where they were first praised, and then summarily fired. One of the most surprising aspects of this purge is the fact that it was carried out not by top-tier university administrators, but by tenure-track faculty in the program. It was they who decided to brutally terminate their colleagues. On today’s show we speak with two of the lecturers who have been told they will leave Stanford in nine months, and one of their students, a published novelist. They explain the de...
2024-09-0345 min
Speaking Out of PlaceDocumenting the Fight Against the Palestine Exception: A Conversation with Filmmakers Jan Haaken and Jennifer RuthThe Palestine Exception opens as campus encampments increase across the US in protest against Israel’s war in Gaza. In the largest anti-war movement since the 1970s, students, faculty and staff make demands on their institutions to divest from companies that do business with Israel. The film unfolds as a character-driven story featuring academics whose lives and scholarship bring into sharp relief historical dynamics behind the censoring of criticisms of Israel and Zionism. To support this critically important project, please use this link.Jan Haaken is professor emeritus of ps...
2024-09-0346 min
Speaking Out of PlaceLiza Featherstone and Doug Henwood: What to Make of the Democratic Convention?Today we speak with journalists and political commentators Liza Featherstone and Doug Henwood about the state of the US Presidential elections. Recorded just after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, we muse about Kamala Harris’s ascension, her choice of running mate, the strangely abiding popularity of Donald Trump, and the Democratic political calculation to downplay and even ignore our country’s complicity in Israel’s genocidal attacks on Palestine, and to likewise table any serious discussion of our environmental crisis.Liza Featherstone is the author of Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consul...
2024-08-2743 min
Speaking Out of PlaceUS Immigration and Abolitionist Sanctuary: A Conversation with A. Naomi Paik and Arianna SalgadoNaomi 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...
2024-08-111h 29
The MachinistBehind the News: J. D. Vance's Tech Ties w/ David Palumbo-Liu Podcast: Jacobin Radio (LS 60 · TOP 0.1% what is this?)Episode: Behind the News: J. D. Vance's Tech Ties w/ David Palumbo-LiuPub date: 2024-08-01Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationCole Stangler talks about the monumentally inconclusive French elections. David Palumbo-Liu explores the Silicon Valley world that launched J. D. Vance as a politician. Plus: a brief bit from the late Jane McAlevey on power.Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex int...
2024-08-1153 min
Jacobin RadioBehind the News: J. D. Vance's Tech Ties w/ David Palumbo-LiuCole Stangler talks about the monumentally inconclusive French elections. David Palumbo-Liu explores the Silicon Valley world that launched J. D. Vance as a politician. Plus: a brief bit from the late Jane McAlevey on power.Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
2024-08-0153 min
Speaking Out of PlaceHow Are Settler Colonialism, Imperialism, and Elitism Baked into the US Constitution? Aziz Rana on The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails ThemToday we speak with legal scholar and historian Aziz Rana about his deep study into the ways the Constitution has been critiqued, reimagined, and adapted from liberal, conservative, radical, progressive, decolonial, and other groups since its inception. What emerges from his book is a demystification of a document that is both durable and malleable, conservative at its core but open to both radical challenges and appropriation—a true site of contestation.Aziz Rana is a professor of law at Boston College Law School, where his research and teaching center on American constitutional law and political de...
2024-07-311h 16
Speaking Out of PlacePriyamvada Gopal and Françoise Vergès on the Recent Elections in Britain and FranceFor our snap episode on the snap elections in the UK and France, we're joined by eminent decolonial scholar activists, Françoise Vergès in France and Priyamvada Gopal in the UK. Following the defeat of right wing parties in both countries in the polls, we discuss what's changed with the elections, what hasn't changed, and what should movements, activists, and organizers be focusing on.Priyamvada Gopal is Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge and Professorial Fellow, Churchill College. Her present interests are in the literatures, politics, and cultures of...
2024-07-251h 06
Speaking Out of PlaceDiana Buttu and Richard Falk on the Broad Significance of the ICJ’s Ruling on the Israeli OccupationCharged by the United Nations General Assembly to ascertain the legality of the continued presence of Israel, as an occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, on July 19th, 2024, the International Court of the Justice, the highest court in the world on matters of international law, determined that “The Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the regime associated with them have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law.” It called for the end of the Occupation, the dismantling of the apartheid structure that supports and maintains it, and the removal of Isra...
2024-07-2146 min
Speaking Out of PlaceWhat is Behind the Devastating War and Famine in Sudan?: A Conversation with Dr. Osman Hamdan and Umniya NajaerFar too few people know about the terrible war and the massive famine taking place in Sudan. Today learn about the long history behind these events, the people and groups involved, and the roles that foreign governments and international organizations like the IMF have played. Importantly, we learn how civil society groups are bringing a form of mutual aid and support to the people of Sudan where the national government, warring factions, and international humanitarian organizations have utterly failed.Dr. Osman Hamdan is a graduate of the University of Khartoum, Sudan, and holds a PhD in forestry e...
2024-07-081h 15
Speaking Out of PlaceWhat Do the June 2024 Elections in India Mean? A Conversation with Angana Chatterji & Siddhartha DebFor decades, the works of scholar Angana Chatterji and author and journalist Siddhartha Deb have exposed the violence and fascism lying behind the mythology of India as the world's largest democracy. In the wake of India's most recent elections, in which the far right Hindutva BJP was surprisingly reduced from its former majority to a ruling minority government.Siddhartha and Angana join us to discuss the election results, the deep roots of fascism, the enduring structures of colonialism, and possible futures of resistance.Angana P. Chatterji is Founding Chair, Initiative on Political Conflict, G...
2024-06-3056 min
Speaking Out of PlaceRadical World-Making: A Conversation with Legendary Writer-Organizer-Activist Chris CarlssonToday we speak with acclaimed author and activist, and San Francisco legend, Chris Carlsson about his new novel, When Shells Crumble. It begins in December 2024, when the US Supreme Court nullifies the popular vote in the Presidential election and awards the presidency to an authoritarian Republican, who proceeds to demolish democracy and install a fascistic state that hastens ecological havoc. The novel is much more than your usual dystopian tale—it focuses on how to resist political cynicism and defeatism, and rebuild on planetary wreckage. It is a world-building project filled with wisdom, sadness, and joy. We put this fi...
2024-06-201h 06
Speaking Out of PlaceMy Brother, My Land: A Story from Palestine--A Conversation with Sami Hermez and Sireen SawalhaToday we speak with co-authors Sami Hermez and Sireen Sawalha about their book, My Brother, My Land: A Story from Palestine. The eminent Palestinian author Hala Alyan calls it “A breathtaking display of literary prowess that tells the story of an entire homeland through the frame of one woman’s life.”In our conversation Hermez and Sawalha explain the intricate back and forth that took place as the two collaborated to weave together Sireen’s many stories about her extended family on Palestine through many generations. At the heart of the book is the story of her brother...
2024-06-1253 min
Speaking Out of PlaceThe Black Antifascist Tradition--a Conversation with Janelle Hope and Bill MullenToday on Speaking Out of Place we talk with Jeanelle Hope and Bill Mullen about their new book, The Black Antifascist Tradition, which uses a vast set of archival materials to show how Black intellectuals and activists regarded anti-Black racism as inseparable from fascism. This is brought out vividly in the ways the law was constructed, labor was extracted, culture oppressed, and lives curtailed. Struggles for Black liberation are therefore connected across national boundaries, just as fascist and racist laws and practices are shared by oppressive regimes globally. Hope and Mullen show how these cross currents work i...
2024-06-0352 min
Speaking Out of PlaceThe Ongoing Struggle of the Rohingya—Will the World Address this Genocide, Finally?As the long burning genocide against the Rohingya continues to unfold with recent conflagrations of violence in Rakhine State, we are joined on Speaking Out of Place today with prominent Rohingya advocate and writer Nay San Lwin and veteran journalist Chris Gunness, now with the Myanmar Accountability Project.They take us through recent disturbing developments in the area and the present perils facing the Rohingya. They discuss the pervasive failings of international institutions and the relationship between the Gaza and Rohingya genocides, and also, together, envision what a just future might look like and require.
2024-05-271h 07
Speaking Out of PlaceWar Regimes: A Conversation with Michael Hardt and Sandro MezzadraToday, on Speaking Out of Place, we are joined by eminent political theorists Michael Hardt and Sandro Mezzadra to talk about their thesis of a global war regime and its relationship with capitalist governments, a significant challenge to dominant conceptualizations of war, and its relationship with the international order.We discuss colonial continuities, historical transformations, and global Palestine movements against the Gaza genocide as an inspiration for non-nationalist, internationalist resistance futures. Michael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is co-author of several books with Antonio Negri, including Emp...
2024-05-171h 09
Speaking Out of PlaceThe Student Intifada Spreads--A Conversation with Activists from Columbia U, LSE, and Queen's University, BelfastAs protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing on the West Bank, and apartheid repression within ’48 harden into a proliferation of encampments on US university campuses, still more have popped up across the globe—in Asia, Europe, Mexico, and elsewhere. These encampments have been met with brutal repression as many universities have called in riot police and even the military. Today we are joined by activists from the US, the UK, and Northern Ireland to discuss this historic formation. On the program is a faculty member from Columbia University; a lecturer, organizer, and PhD student from t...
2024-05-121h 01
Speaking Out of PlaceThe Long Tradition of American Jewish Critiques of Israel and Their SuppressionAs protests against Israel’s geocidal attack on Gaza and increased dispossession and violence on the West Bank grow into encampments that have sprung up across the globe, they have been suppressed by college administrators and national political leaders alike as being anti-Semitic and harmful to Jewish students. The US House of Representatives has just passed a bill endorsing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism as including criticism of the State of Israel.In this context, there could be no better time to discuss a new book by Professor Geoffrey Levin, Our Palestine Question. In t...
2024-05-0555 min
Speaking Out of PlaceIran and Israel: A Discussion of the Recent Attacks with Scholars Narges Bajoghli and John QuigleyRecent weeks have seen a series of strikes between Israel and Iran. Israel's attack on an Iranian embassy building in Damascus, killing seven, followed by Iranian barrage of missile and drone strikes on Israel, killing no one, and then followed by Israeli strikes on Iran in Isfahan all of this occurring, of course, with the continuing unfolding genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and intensifying violence in the West Bank. As these strikes between Israel and Iran ignited fears of a regional conflagration, we are joined on the show by prominent Iran scholar and anthropologist Narges Bajoghli, whose most recent...
2024-04-2855 min
Speaking Out of PlaceColumbia and Beyond: The Surge in Activism for Palestine, the Instrumentalizing of “Safety,” and the Attack on Education by the Far RightIn the wake of Congressional investigations into a wave of so-called “anti-Semitism” on university campuses, college administrators are bending over backwards to appease Right Wing politicians and wealthy donors at the expense of civil liberties, and free speech and academic freedom protections. They particularly operationalize notions of public safety and feelings of safety to mute protests over the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people, a genocide enabled by these same universities and the United States as a whole. Thus we see a warped set of values and priorities wherein the most principled people are being disciplined, suspended, and expelled from...
2024-04-2152 min
Speaking Out of PlaceHow US, UK, and Israeli Universities are Punishing Speech on Palestine: A Conversation with Neve Gordon, Laurie Brand, Adi MansourToday on Speaking Out of Place, we have a special extended conversation on the suppression of Palestine solidarity at universities from the U. S. to the U. K. to within Israel itself. We are grateful to be joined by Adi Mansour, a lawyer with Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Neve Gordon, Professor of Human Rights Law at Queen Mary University of London and Vice President of the British Society for Middle East Studies, and Laurie Brandt, former president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and current chair of its Committee on...
2024-04-181h 22
Speaking Out of PlaceNoura Erakat and Jeffrey Sachs on Possible Futures for PalestineToday on Speaking Out of Place we are joined by Noura Erakat and Jeffrey Sachs in a discussion of possible futures for Palestine. Our conversation includes different stances toward a two-state solution, a discussion of international humanitarian law and the laws of warfare, and a deliberation on the practical steps necessary to stop Israel’s devastating genocide of the Palestinian people and the complicity of the United States . We end with a discussion about the need to go beyond state-centric notions of justice and the recommendation that a people’s parliament might be a better way to approach the cris...
2024-04-1452 min
Speaking Out of PlaceRace, Violence, and For-Profit Prison: A Conversation with Robin BernsteinToday we speak with Harvard professor Robin Bernstein about her new book, Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder that Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit. While researching a book to develop her earlier interests in race and childhood, Bernstein came across the case of Afro-Indigenous teenager William Freeman, who in the late 19th century was convicted of stealing a horse and sentenced to five years in the federal prison in his home town, Auburn, New York. Forced to work for only nominal pay, beaten so much he lost the hearing in one ear, when released Freeman had the audacity to s...
2024-03-311h 02
Speaking Out of PlaceImagining a New Left Internationalism Outside the Legacies of the Settler StateToday on Speaking Out of Place, we have a conversation with critical political theorists Adom Getachew and Ayça Çubukçu on the colonial construction of the international system and its organization around the institution of the nation state. Our conversation covers and uncovers so many aspects of the hidden colonial history behind the constitution of this system, but also the resistance and creative appropriations by Black, Indigenous, and colonized peoples, allowing us to imagine possible liberatory futures beyond the forms and strictures of the colonial present.Ayça Çubukçu is associate professor in human r...
2024-03-251h 11
Speaking Out of PlaceBlack Geographics with Camilla Hawthorne--histories, futures, and affiliationsToday we talk with Camilla Hawthorne about her recent edited collection, The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity, and its relation to her prior monograph, Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean. She explains and elaborates on how Blackness is not singular, but involved in “taking place” in imaginative, resistant, and across many different political terrains, whether it be citizenship, the right to the city, the imagining of futures after environmental collapse, and diverse linguistic, cultural, and musical affiliations across diasporic communities.Camilla Hawthorne is Associate Professor of Sociology and Critical Race & Ethnic Stud...
2024-03-2556 min
Speaking Out of PlaceOrganizing Against A Genocide: Sherene Seikaly & Andrew Ross on National Faculty for Justice in PalestineSince October the 7th we have seen an eruption of support for Palestinian liberation. On university campuses we find both the tremendous growth of activism for Palestine, and repressive and punitive measures that seek to discourage and curtail these activities. One of the most important tasks for activists is to organize broad networks of support. Today we speak with two people who have helped organize a network called National Faculty for Justice in Palestine, which now has close to 100 chapters in the US. Our conversation ranges from the genesis of this group and its goals, to an appreciation of...
2024-03-2235 min
Speaking Out of PlaceFragmentation and Unity: Palestinian Political ExpressionToday we speak with Professor Amahl Bishara about her book, Crossing a Line: Laws, Violence, and Roadblocks to Palestinian Political Expression. She is joined by Professor Nayrouz Abu Hatoum to discuss the ways that notions of national identity, cultural commitments, and political expression are all complicated when juxtaposing two groups of Palestinians—those living under occupation, and those who are citizens of Israel. How does the boundary line fragment Palestinians into unequal camps, and yet how do Palestinians invent new forms of unity through art, media, public demonstrations, photography, and other means? Our conversation ranges from microscopic attention to de...
2024-03-161h 02
Speaking Out of PlaceUniversity of Michigan Faculty Pass Resolution Divesting from Firms Complicit in Gaza GenocideIn January, the University of Michigan Faculty Senate passed a resolution calling for “the University’s leadership, including the Board of Regents, to divest from its financial holdings in companies that invest in Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.” The statement highlighted the unprecedented rate of civilian deaths in Gaza, and that American financial sources are central to Israel’s ongoing genocide. Working with Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), the TAHRIR Coalition, and Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, and others, the resolution drew on the tradition of activism against South Africa’s apartheid regime, and ongoing a...
2024-03-0849 min
Speaking Out of PlaceA Palestinian Prisoner's Devastating Memoir: A Conversation with Its Publisher and TranslatorToday we speak with publisher Judith Gurewich and translator Luke Leafgren about a remarkable first-person narrative by Nasser Abu Srour, a Palestinian political prisoner who in 1993 was given a life sentence. His memoir, The Tale of a Wall, tells of the author’s decades-long life in multiple prisons, moving through many historical periods and shifting personal and political lives. The one thing that is always present is the figure of the wall, that becomes his one constant companion. Gurewich and Leafgren tell how they came to acquire the text, and how they came to know this remarkable man through it...
2024-03-0445 min
Speaking Out of PlaceStudent Activism for Palestinian Liberation Achieves Landmarks and EducatesEver since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza, global protests have grown exponentially. This is most evident on the streets, and also, very importantly, on college campuses, where activism for Palestinian liberation have often been met with brutal repression. Chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace have been shut down, students placed under surveillance and disciplined, and protesters physically attacked. Today on Speaking Out of Place we talk with student activists from two campuses who have achieved remarkable victories—student activists at the University of California, Davis, passed a measur...
2024-02-201h 06
Speaking Out of PlaceDefund Genocide, Not UNRWA: Global Statements of Support for PalestineAfter the International Court of Justice's finding that Israel's war on Gaza was a "plausible case of genocide," Israel smeared the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, claiming that four or five UNRWA employees were affiliated with Hamas. These employees were fired without any proof of wrongdoing, and several countries stopping funding UNRWA, also without seeing any concrete evidence. Many of these countries are signatories of the Genocide Convention, which means they should be doing everything possible to stop Israel's acts of genocide. Instead, they are aiding and abetting genocide by cutting off desperately needed humanitarian aid.
2024-02-111h 55
Speaking Out of PlaceThe Palestinian Prisoners Movement: Resistance and DisobedienceToday we speak with scholar Julie Norman about her book, The Palestinian Prisoners Movement: Resistance and Disobedience. She is joined in conversation by her colleague and collaborator Amahl Bishara. Based on extensive interviews with Palestinian prisoners, Norman’s study delineates in detail and depth the centrality of the movement in the broader Palestinian national struggle. Palestinian prisoners took back the prison space for organizing and resistance, developing an internal "counterorder" to challenge authorities. We talk about how the Palestinian prisoners movement was both intertwined with the Palestinian national movement, and yet also prefigured modes of liberation beyond it.
2024-02-0453 min
Speaking Out of PlaceWhat Does the Recent ICJ Finding with Regard to Israel's War in Gaza Mean? A Discussion with Noura Erakat, Michael Lynk, and Maung ZarniToday, on Speaking Out of Place, we discuss the recent International Court of Justice ruling on the Gaza genocide case, which found that Israel is plausibly engaging in genocide in Gaza.We discuss the case and its implications, as well as the colonial backdrop of the international law behind it, with former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Michael Link, Palestinian human rights attorney, scholar, activist, and teacher Noura Erakat, and Burmese scholar and dissident in exile, Maung Zarni. We also address the recent decision of a number of countries to defund the UN Relief Works A...
2024-01-311h 10
Speaking Out of PlaceListening to & Being with the Earth: A Conversation with John Borrows & Paco CalvoPlants show signs of communication and of learning. They produce and respond to many of the same neurochemicals as humans, including anesthetics. They share resources with one another, and when under threat, emit signals of warning and of pain. Today on Speaking Out of Place, we are joined in conversation with eminent Anishinaabe legal theorist John Borrows and philosopher Paco Calvo to discuss how we might learn about, learn with, and learn from our plant companions on this earth. While Borrows and Calvo both urge us to listen to the Earth, during our conversation we discover that th...
2024-01-271h 28
Speaking Out of PlaceFighting the Fossil Fuel Companies' Pseudo-Economics: A Conversation with Ben FrantaToday I speak with noted researcher and scholar Ben Franta about two new articles he has written that add to his growing archive of seminal work on climate change. Ben tells us now the fossil fuel industry paid economists to join scientists in denying the true nature of the fossil fuel industry’s destruction of the environment. Economists argued that even if some science were correct, implementing change would be too costly. This became a powerful tool to stall and kill climate change legislation. Franta also talks about how communities have tried to sue fossil fuel companies for damages incu...
2024-01-2235 min
Speaking Out of PlaceArtists, Activists, and Anarchists Seize Wetlands from the French Republic: We Learn HowToday on Speaking Out of Place, we talk with artists and activists Isabelle Frémeaux and Jay Jordan about their book, We are ‘Nature’ Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones Vagabonds/Pluto/Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, 2021. They tell the story of a 40-year struggle to preserve 4,000 acres of wetlands from being destroyed to make way for an airport, but the book is also a profound and beautiful meditation on what it means to live together and struggle together outside the logic of capitalist extraction and violence.Jay (formerly John) Jordan (they/them) is label...
2024-01-1347 min
Speaking Out of PlaceKohei Saito Talks About Degrowth Communism, and the Need for Radical DemocracyToday we speak with Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito, whose book, Marx in the Anthropocene , sold over half a million copies. In it, Saito shows how late in life Marx came to a richer sense of production when he realized that there was a law above the economic as he had conceived it—it was the law of Nature. Marx saw how disturbing Nature’s metabolism could bring about a “rift” that sent destructive ripples across human life. Today we make the connection between that scholarly book and Kohei’s new book, Slow Down!!, which has just come out in English tra...
2024-01-0946 min
Speaking Out of PlaceGenocide and Beyond: A Conversation with Omer Bartov & Penny GreenFor weeks, hundreds of international law and genocide experts have been warning that the situation in Gaza is approaching or has become an active genocide, a conclusion very vociferously rejected by Israel and its allies. Today on Speaking Out of Place, we are joined by state crime expert Penny Green and Holocaust historian Omar Bartov to discuss the applicability of the term genocide, the history of its framing, and ways of moving beyond genocidal dynamics. We also talk about how the term has circulated far beyond legal circles and taken on a particular affective power in the p...
2024-01-061h 28
Speaking Out of PlaceInternational Law and Mass Violence: Colonial Roots and PracticesToday on Speaking Out of Place, we are joined by Frédéric Mégret, Neve Gordon, and Nicola Perugini. As the devastation of Gaza is permitted to continue to unfold, and colonial violence also intensifies in the West Bank, we discuss the role and responsibility of international law in enabling and structuring mass violence, the enduring importance of colonial histories in shaping the colonial present of international law.In the face of the refusal or failure of domestic state law regimes and governments to confront even extreme instances of violence we often turn to international law as...
2024-01-031h 05
Speaking Out of PlaceLinking Antifascist Solidarity & Solidarity with Palestine--Guernica and GazaToday’s conversation is perhaps one of the most unusually important ones we have had on the podcast. Len and Hwei-ru Tsou are two Taiwanese activists whose main commitment, over a period of decades, has been to discover and disclose the involvement of Asian and South Asian anti-fascists in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. Not only do we discover their longstanding friendship with one of their first interviewees--Kenneth Graeber, father of celebrated anarchist David Graeber--but we also hear them linking their anti-fascist work to their pro-Palestine activism, which included their courageous participation in the flotillas protesting Isra...
2023-12-2932 min
Speaking Out of Place21 Voices from South Africa and Israel-Palestine Working for Palestinian LiberationToday I talk with Marthie Momberg, whose book 21 Voices from Israel and South Africa: Why the Palestine Struggle Matters, compiles interviews Momberg conducted over many years. Her interviewees are Israelis and South Africans who have followed different paths to become activists for Palestine. The 21 voices speak about this connection, but about many other things as well, including gender, generational difference, race, human rights, and Zionism. Taped in December during Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza, which have brought millions onto the streets in protest across the globe, Marthie’s book serves as a vibrant reminder of the spirit of soli...
2023-12-2529 min
Speaking Out of PlaceThe Moral Imperative to Divest: Conversation with Bill McKibben and Caroline LevineToday we speak with legendary climate activist Bill McKibben and scholar Caroline Levine. McKibben relates his long struggle to get companies to divest from fossil fuels and for the world in general to act immediately to seriously and substantially address this existential crisis. Levine tells of her efforts to get the giant pension fund, TIAA-CREF, to divest. She also talks about her new book, The Activist Humanist, and its relation to both her teaching and her activism.Caroline Levine has spent her career asking how and why the humanities and the arts matter, especially in...
2023-11-2235 min
Speaking Out of PlaceOn International Children's Day 2023, A Discussion of Childhood in Gaza: Law, History, and PoliticsWe recorded this episode of Speaking Out of Place on Saturday the 18th of November, 2023, as Israel’s massive attack on Gaza passed the 40-day mark. Almost immediately after the deadly October 7 Hamas attack, the image of the child, both Israeli and Palestinian, began to dominate the media’s coverage, and appeals to international humanitarian law were made to “save the children.” Azeezah Kanji and I decided to create this podcast to coincide with November 20, International Children’s Day, in order to take a deeper look at why such appeals to the law must be contextualized both historically and politicall...
2023-11-201h 06
Speaking Out of PlaceWriters' & Artists' Statements & Readings in Solidarity with PalestineThis is a special project of Speaking Out of Place, meant to collect and amplify the voices of artists, musicians, and publishers from around the world raising their voices in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We will add to this episode as statements come in. Here you will hear James Schamus, Ben Ehrenreich, Judith Gurevich, Raja Shehadeh, Ariel Dorfman, Bora Chung, Intan Paramaditha, Nancy Kricorian, Hala Alyan, Anton Shammas, Suzanne Gardinier, and others (please see the blog entry on the Speaking Out of Place website for full list--we update as often as possible).
2023-11-1236 min
Speaking Out of PlaceStatements Read at "Warning to Humanity" Global Event: David Palumbo-Liu, Neferti Tadiar, Chloe DSOn Saturday 4th November, 2023, leading scholar activists, anti-genocide campaigners, human rights defenders, and musicians from 20 countries, as well as Rohingya refugees joined Palestinians from the West Bank as a global online show of support for the 2.3 million residents of Gaza, who are currently under Israel’s genocidal onslaught perpetrated with the unconditional backing of the United States and historically colonizing, genocidal Europe, including Germany, France and United Kingdom. This mini-podcast segment features the statements of Speaking Out of Place co-host David Palumbo-Liu, Neferti Tadiar, and Chloe DS.Neferti X. M. Tadiar is a feminist scholar of...
2023-11-0515 min
Speaking Out of Place"In This Moment": Noura Erakat's Speech at the Palestine Literature FestivalOn Wednesday, 1 November, the Palestine Festival of Literature held an event in New York titled, "But We Must Speak: On Palestine and the Mandates of Conscience." On that occasion, Noura Erakat delivered a powerful and stunning speech entitled “In This Moment,” in which she spoke on the genocide in Gaza from her perspective as a teacher, a legal expert, a Palestinian, as a mother, and as an activist. We are grateful to Noura Erakat, to PalFest, and to Jadaliyya for permission to feature this speech on Speaking Out of Place.Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney and a...
2023-11-0418 min
Speaking Out of PlaceA Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation: A Conversation with Fady JoudahToday we speak with Palestinian American poet and physician Fady Joudah. We are recording this interview on Thursday, November 2, 2023, as the State of Israel expands its brutal and illegal collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza—an act of genocidal ethnic cleansing. Health authorities in Gaza report more than nine thousand deaths in a population where 60 percent are under the age of 18. The United Nations General Assembly has just overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding the “protection of civilians and [the] upholding [of] legal and humanitarian obligations.” The Assembly, also demanded that all parties “immediately and fully comply” with obligations under internatio...
2023-11-0344 min
Speaking Out of PlaceBlack Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism with Charisse Burden-StellyToday we talk with the prolific and wide-ranging scholar Charisse Burden-Stelly about her new book, Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States, just out from the University of Chicago Press. The book shows the emergence and conjuncture of two strands of discourse and practice that were used to suppress Blacks in the United States, beginning in the early twentieth century and still present today. The Black Scare created and nurtured a phobic psychic disposition towards Blacks on the basis of race, the Red Scare was based on anti-Bolshevik and anti-Communist fears rampant at the time...
2023-10-2840 min
Speaking Out of PlaceHow Uber et al. is Redefining Work in the Worst Way Possible: Veena Dubal Explains Algorithmic ViolenceHow have companies like Uber and Lyft, Instacart and DoorDash and others, changed the nature of work from bad to horrific? Veena Dubal joins me to explain how such companies have exported globally a technique of algorithmic wage discrimination that pays workers based on data to which they have no access. Owners dangle bonuses before workers but take away work from them as they draw close to achieving their targets; they use psychological tricks derived from video games to create a casino-like environment where the house always wins. Dubal urges us not to fall into the trap of competing...
2023-10-2833 min
Speaking Out of PlaceStatements of Solidarity with the Palestinian PeopleIn response to the attacks launched against the Palestinian people in Gaza by the State of Israel, on Oct 12 Speaking Out of Place created a special episode on Gaza with legal experts Diana Buttu and Richard Falk. We did so with the aim to address and correct the proliferation of misinformation that the mainstream press was spewing out.We also solicited and received many statements of solidarity with the Palestinian people. So many have come in, and continue to come in, that we decided to create a separate podcast episode consisting entirely of these statements. We will up...
2023-10-241h 14
Speaking Out of PlaceWhen “Natives” Aren’t: Liza Black and Joseph Pierce Discuss the Epistemic and Communal Violence, and Re-storyingToday we talk with Joseph Pierce and Liza Black about the vast number of questions that are opened up when people pretend to be Native when they in fact are not. These cases take on a specific significance when such false identifications allow these people access to privilege and positions of authority. When these falsehoods are found out, they place scholars and activists who have allied themselves with these people in extremely difficult positions, and unfortunately make institutions like colleges and universities the final arbiters of how “justice” is to be served. Finally, these cases put even more pressure on N...
2023-10-2041 min
Speaking Out of PlaceLegal Experts Deconstruct Media Lies about Gaza; Voices from Around World Shout Out Solidarity with the Palestinian PeopleThe volatile situation in Gaza has been grossly distorted in the mainstream western press. By omission, selective editorializing, and misstatement of so-called “facts,” a particular caricature has emerged that has invisibilized the Palestinian people, the history and the nature of the Occupation, and the actual conditions of life in what many have called the world’s largest open air prison. To get a better sense of all of these, we speak with two seasoned experts on Palestine.After our conversation with Diana Buttu and Richard Falk, we conclude this episode with statements of solidarity with the Palestinian people...
2023-10-141h 29
Speaking Out of PlaceVoices of Resistance Emerge from Behind the Walls of India’s Security StateOn today’s episode we speak with two of the founders of the Polis Project—Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia—about their new book, How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners. We are also deeply honored that the eminent Dalit intellectual, and former political prisoner Dr. Anand Teltumbde is with us as well to lend his unique insight into the political situation in India and the realities of being a political prisoner there. The Polis Project, Inc. is a New York-based hybrid research and journalism organization that works with communities in resi...
2023-10-0552 min
Speaking Out of PlaceWhat Would a True School of Sustainability Look Like? Rejecting Oil Money, for a StartAmidst great fanfare, Stanford University created the Doerr School for Sustainability, which immediately said that it would accept funding from the fossil fuel industry. A group of students has pushed back, and built an impressive movement to dissociate from such funds. In this episode, we talk to some of the people leading the movement about what drives them and sustains them in building a True School of Sustainability.June Choi is a PhD candidate in Earth System Science at the Doerr School of Sustainability. Her research focuses on quantifying the impacts of climate change to...
2023-09-2833 min
Speaking Out of PlaceResisting Silencing as Opinion Shifts on Israel: Nader Hashemi and Omar ShakirAttacks on those protesting the Israeli state policies and practices which have maintained the violent dispossession of Palestinians have commonly misrepresented, distorted, and even manufactured disinformation. This has done great damage to the lives and careers of many. As public opinion shifts against the Israeli state, attacks by extreme Zionists have increased. On today’s show we speak with two individuals about this phenomenon. Nader Hashemi and Omar Shakir help us understand it from many different angles--legal, historical, and personal.Nader Hashemi is the Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and an Associate Pro...
2023-09-2150 min
Speaking Out of PlaceRadical, or Liberal, Race Studies at the University?A dialogue between David Kyuman Kim and David Palumbo-Liu at Stanford, on the possibilities, or the impossibility, of doing radical work on race at universities. Is it best to work within the institution, or outside it--and how can we best keep hope alive? The inaugural episode of "Speaking Out of Place," announcing future episodes on Iran, Palestine, fighting domestic violence, and surviving institutional betrayal. Ideas for other topics? Contact @palumboliu@climatejustice.social
2022-11-2145 min
The Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society: Books, Film, Music, TV, Art, Writing, Creativity, Education, Environment, Theatre, Dance, LGBTQ, Climate Change, Social Justice, Spirituality, Feminism, Tech, SustainabilitySpeaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back - DAVID PALUMBO-LIU - Highlights“To explore different worlds, essentially. That’s what literature has taught me. Reading has taught me how difficult it is to write well, to do you something other than the mundane or the expected, so all those things point to a kind of human creativity and a human capacity to both create and also to learn. To learn about life in different ways and to pass on those lessons to other people. One thing I think great teachers do is to embody what they talk about, the values that they profess, the things they feel are important in their ever...
2022-03-0610 min
The Creative Process - Arts, Culture, Society - 2021-2022Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back - DAVID PALUMBO-LIU - Highlights“To explore different worlds, essentially. That’s what literature has taught me. Reading has taught me how difficult it is to write well, to do you something other than the mundane or the expected, so all those things point to a kind of human creativity and a human capacity to both create and also to learn. To learn about life in different ways and to pass on those lessons to other people. One thing I think great teachers do is to embody what they talk about, the values that they profess, the things they feel are important in their ever...
2022-03-0600 min
The Creative Process - Arts, Culture, Society - 2021-2022DAVID PALUMBO-LIU - Writer, Activist, Professor & Author of Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices BackDavid Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Stanford University. He has written widely on culture, literature, human rights, and politics, both in his books and also in venues such as Truthout, The Guardian, Jacobin, The Nation, Al Jazeera, and others. · www.palumbo-liu.comTwitter: @palumboliu · www.oneplanetpodcast.org · www.creativeprocess.info
2022-03-0600 min
The Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society: Books, Film, Music, TV, Art, Writing, Creativity, Education, Environment, Theatre, Dance, LGBTQ, Climate Change, Social Justice, Spirituality, Feminism, Tech, SustainabilityDAVID PALUMBO-LIU - Writer, Activist, Professor & Author of Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices BackDavid Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Stanford University. He has written widely on culture, literature, human rights, and politics, both in his books and also in venues such as Truthout, The Guardian, Jacobin, The Nation, Al Jazeera, and others. · www.palumbo-liu.comTwitter: @palumboliu · www.oneplanetpodcast.org · www.creativeprocess.info
2022-03-0644 min
Sustainability, Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Politics, Activism, Biodiversity, Carbon Footprint, Wildlife, Regenerative Agriculture, Circular Economy, Extinction, Net-Zero · One Planet Podcast(Highlights) DAVID PALUMBO-LIU“To explore different worlds, essentially. That’s what literature has taught me. Reading has taught me how difficult it is to write well, to do you something other than the mundane or the expected, so all those things point to a kind of human creativity and a human capacity to both create and also to learn. To learn about life in different ways and to pass on those lessons to other people. One thing I think great teachers do is to embody what they talk about, the values that they profess, the things they feel are important in their ever...
2022-03-0510 minEnvironment, Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Regeneration, Sustainability, Nature, Politics, Circular Economy - One Planet Podcast 2021-2022David Palumbo-Liu · Writer, Activist, Professor & Author of “Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back” (Highlights)“To explore different worlds, essentially. That’s what literature has taught me. Reading has taught me how difficult it is to write well, to do you something other than the mundane or the expected, so all those things point to a kind of human creativity and a human capacity to both create and also to learn. To learn about life in different ways and to pass on those lessons to other people. One thing I think great teachers do is to embody what they talk about, the values that they profess, the things they feel are important in their ever...
2022-03-0500 minEnvironment, Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Regeneration, Sustainability, Nature, Politics, Circular Economy - One Planet Podcast 2021-2022David Palumbo-Liu · Writer, Activist, Professor & Author of “Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back” (44 mins)David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Stanford University. He has written widely on culture, literature, human rights, and politics, both in his books and also in venues such as Truthout, The Guardian, Jacobin, The Nation, Al Jazeera, and others. · www.palumbo-liu.comTwitter: @palumboliu · www.oneplanetpodcast.org · www.creativeprocess.info
2022-03-0500 min
Sustainability, Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Politics, Activism, Biodiversity, Carbon Footprint, Wildlife, Regenerative Agriculture, Circular Economy, Extinction, Net-Zero · One Planet PodcastDAVID PALUMBO-LIUDavid Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Stanford University. He has written widely on culture, literature, human rights, and politics, both in his books and also in venues such as Truthout, The Guardian, Jacobin, The Nation, Al Jazeera, and others. · www.palumbo-liu.comTwitter: @palumboliu · www.oneplanetpodcast.org · www.creativeprocess.info
2022-03-0544 min
Civil LibertreesEpisode 3: Professor David Palumbo-LiuStanford Professor David Palumbo-Liu shares his perspective on the recent Faculty Senate Meeting regarding the Fundamental Standard, free speech, doxxing, cancel culture, the way Stanford has historically dealt with these kinds of issues, as well as similar conversations being held on a national level.CREDITSHosts: Nicole Domingo and Avi GuptaMusic: Arnob DasEditing: Chloe MendozaCover Art: Lucy Nemerov
2022-02-0947 min
Haymarket Books LiveSpeaking Out of Place: A Conversation w/ Robin DG Kelley & David Palumbo-LiuJoin David Palumbo-Liu and Robin D. G. Kelley for an urgent discussion of Palumbo-Liu's new book and the politics of our moment.
Joined renowned scholars and activists David Palumbo-Liu and Robin D. G. Kelley as they discuss Palumbo-Liu's urgent new book Speaking Out of Place. Speaking Out of Place asks us to reconceptualize both what we think “politics” is, and our relationship to it. Especially at this historical moment, when it is all too possible we will move from Trump’s fascistic regime to Biden’s anti-progressive centrism. We need ways to build off the tremendous growth we have seen in democ...
2022-01-311h 25The Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society: 2015-2021Interdisciplinary Approaches in the Humanities with DAVID PALUMBO-LIU - HighlightsDavid Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Stanford University. Founding editor of the e-journal, Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, he writes for Truthout‘s Public Intellectual Project, and his work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, Jacobin, Salon, Al Jazeera, The Hill, Buzzfeed, Vox, and other venues.www.creativeprocess.info
2019-11-0510 minThe Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society: 2015-2021Writing for Change: DAVID PALUMBO-LIU on Advocacy, Scholarship & the Role of the Public IntellectualDavid Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Stanford University. Founding editor of the e-journal, Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, he writes for Truthout‘s Public Intellectual Project, and his work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, Jacobin, Salon, Al Jazeera, The Hill, Buzzfeed, Vox, and other venues.www.creativeprocess.info
2019-11-051h 11