Writer, Public Intellectual, Scholar, Historian, Philosopher, and Activist Eddie Glaude, Jr. On the Major Questions, Challenges, Responsibilities, and Contradictions, In Struggle With the Murderous Obstacles Of Our Time As We Fight on a Political, Ideological, Moral, and Ethical Level For Freedom, Justice, Equality, and Self Determination in the 21st Century

Eddie Glaude, Jr. — We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For 

With Clint Smith

Politics and Prose

May 2, 2024 

VIDEO:  

Watch author Eddie Glaude's book talk and reading at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.  We are more than the circumstances of our lives, and what we do matters. In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, one of the nation’s preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Glaude shows how ordinary people have the capacity to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires, rather than outsourcing their needs to leaders who purportedly represent them. Based on the Du Bois Lectures delivered at Harvard University, the book begins with Glaude’s unease with the Obama years. He felt then, and does even more urgently now, that the excitement around the Obama presidency had become a disciplining tool to narrow legitimate forms of Black political dissent. This narrowing continues to undermine the well-being of Black communities. In response, Glaude guides us away from the Scylla of enthusiastic reliance on elected leaders and the Charybdis of full surrender to a belief in unchanging political structures. Glaude weaves anecdotes about his own evolving views on Black politics together with the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, Sheldon Wolin, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison. Narrated with passion and philosophical intensity, this book is a powerful reminder that if American democracy is to survive, we must build a better society that derives its strength from the pew, not the pulpit. Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is the author of several books, including Democracy in Black and the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, winner of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Book Prize. He frequently appears in the media as an MSNBC contributor on programs like Morning Joe and Deadline: White House. A native of Moss Point, Mississippi, Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University. Glaude is in conversation with Clint Smith, a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times Bestseller, and the poetry collections Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award and most recently Above Ground. His poetry collection, Above Ground, was recently published on March 28th. Smith is also the host of the YouTube series "Crash Course Black American History." Born and raised in New Orleans, he currently lives in Maryland with his wife and their two children.

 

PURCHASE BOOK HERE:

  

https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9... 

Political Journalists, MSNBC Broadcasters, Writers, and Public Intellectuals Joy Reid and Chris Hayes On the Real Stakes in the Nationwide Political Protests Against the Genocidal War in Gaza and the Repressive Roles of American university administrators and the police in attempting to physically and intellectually shut down, silence, and intimidate Pro-Palestinian students and grassroots organizers throughout the United States

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/embedded-video/mmvo210090565953 

The Reidout with Joy Reid

 

MSNBC
May 1, 2024

Columbia raid: 'Tensions exacerbated' as some protestors raised 'real concern' J-School dean says

Columbia University says it had no choice but to call the NYPD, leading to hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters being arrested on Tuesday night. Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, Jelani Cobb, joins Joy Reid to discuss.

May 1, 2024

VIDEO:

https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/chris-hayes-why-campus-protests-are-the-easier-debate-210090565985

All In with Chris Hayes

MSNBC

May 1, 2024

Chris Hayes: Why campus protests are 'the easier debate'

VIDEO: 

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/embedded-video/mmvo210090565985

Chris Hayes: It's easier to argue about what college kids are doing than to confront the human misery and destruction that's happening in the actual conflict which is, of course, the source of these protests. 

May 1, 2024

 

Pulitzer Prize Winning Author, USC Professor, Public Intellectual, and Activist Viet Thanh Nguyen On What is Happening--And Why-- on American College Campuses in Response to the Genocidal War in Gaza and the vital issues of Free Speech, State Censorship, and the Constitutional Right of Students to Protest in the United States

https://zeteo.com/p/a-student-rebellion-against-the-hypocrisy

[Zeteo is a new media organization that seeks to answer the questions that really matter, while always striving for the truth. Founded by Mehdi Hasan, Zeteo is a movement for media accountability, unfiltered news and bold opinions.]

"A Student Rebellion Against the Hypocrisy of Their Elders" - USC Prof & Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Viet Thanh Nguyen

The students protesting against Israel's genocidal war in Gaza are on the right side of history, as other student movements were in the past.

by Viet Thanh Nguyen
May 1, 2024
Zeteo

Student and other protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza gather at the University of Southern California's Alumni Park on April 24, 2024. Photo by David Swanson/Reuters

The violent crackdown on students protesting against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza reveals the stark hypocrisy of political and academic leaders at our colleges and universities, including my own. Instead of first turning to dialogue and debate – the very skills and values universities should promote – school administrators have turned to police, extreme discipline, and complying with a mainstream consensus that seems more interested in suppressing criticism of Israeli and American policy than protecting students.

From Columbia University to my own University of Southern California, peaceful student encampments in common university areas have been dismantled by city police, with hundreds of students arrested. Some have been suspended, evicted from dormitories, and threatened with expulsion and criminal conviction. At UT Austin, state troopers threw a Fox cameraman to the ground and arrested him. At Emory University, the chair of philosophy, Noelle McAfee, was arrested by a police officer wearing a balaclava, as if he were conducting an antiterrorism raid. Another Emory professor, Caroline Fohlin, who sought to protect students being arrested, was wrestled to the ground by two police officers, handcuffed, and charged with battery.

These student protests against a war that has killed over 34,000 Palestinians, at least two-thirds of whom are women and children, are what professors and administrators love to call a “teachable moment.” Unfortunately, most universities and colleges are failing their academic principles, their students, and their faculty. I wish I could say I was surprised, but after three decades in academia, I am not.

I was arrested twice in college for political protests more than 30 years ago. Along with other Asian Americans and our allies, I participated in sit-ins and occupied the chancellor's office, calling for a more diversified curriculum and faculty that better represented our community. I graduated with four misdemeanors – two each for resisting arrest and trespassing. I was lucky I was not expelled or suspended, but I was also at UC Berkeley at a time when the administration understood that these were not appropriate punishments for young people who were committed to the very principles of truth, justice, debate, and open-mindedness that universities represent. I wish I could say the same for the administrators at universities and colleges today, including my own. But too many administrators have chosen to deploy police clad in riot gear and wielding tear gas, tasers, sniper rifles, and armored vehicles against students.

(Viet Thanh Nguyen at UC Berkeley. Courtesy of Viet Thanh Nguyen)

On my own campus, the USC administration canceled the speech of its valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, after pro-Israel groups on and off campus labeled her antisemitic for including a link on her Instagram to a website that called for the abolition of Israel. Tabassum minored in resistance to genocide, offered through the Advanced Center for Genocide Research. The center’s founding director, Wolf Gruner, called Tabassum one of the most empathetic students he had ever taught. Tabassum said she planned to speak to the commencement audience about hope and human rights. She might or might not have brought up Gaza and Palestine, war and genocide, but even if she did, should that have been a reason to cancel her?

The university administration offered unspecified threats to safety so severe that it felt it could not protect Tabassum or the commencement ceremony, even though former President Barack Obama had attended the commencement the year before and presumably required heightened safety measures. It is difficult not to believe that safety was a pretext for the university to avoid controversy that might antagonize pro-Israel students, family members, and outsiders. But the real consequences of such a controversy would not have been community protest; instead, it would have been political blowback from Congress, donors, and trustees.

viet_t_nguyen

A post shared by @viet_t_nguyen

This strategy of avoidance and appeasement is doomed to failure. Columbia University president Minouche Shafik submitted completely to Republican demands to discipline her faculty and students, but this did not prevent Rep. Elise Stefanik and House Speaker Mike Johnson from demanding her resignation.

Republicans will not be satisfied until students are being clubbed and tear-gassed in a law-and-order spectacle that will please Benjamin Netanyahu and the GOP base. But the right-wing reaction against student protesters is not only about their stance on Israel and Gaza, which includes their willingness to declare the war a genocide and to demand divestment from Israel and the ending of further military aid. Instead, the right wing is stirring a moral panic around antisemitism, using Jewish students and their feelings of being uncomfortable and threatened as a reason to crack down on protesting students.

Racist and antisemitic threats are wrong and should be treated appropriately, which is to say, through academic disciplinary and legal methods targeted at the individuals who issue such threats, not through the deployment of riot police against masses of peaceful protesters. But a big difference exists between being threatened and being uncomfortable, and critics of the protesters – and the anti-war movement in general – blur the two.

This happens by conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, even though many student protesters are themselves Jewish. It’s what some have called a “weaponized antisemitism,” which places more value on how some Jewish students feel uncomfortable than how Palestinians are actually being killed en masse by an Israel whose weapons are supplied by the U.S.

Being uncomfortable is not necessarily a problem, and certainly not enough of a problem to shut down free speech and academic debate. Discomfort can be useful, and is even necessary, for us to argue and question our assumptions and those of others, leading to greater intellectual, moral, and political clarity. These are the things that are supposed to happen on college campuses and what Tabassum’s speech at USC might have provoked.

Police confront a pro-Palestine protester at the University of Southern California on April 24, 2024. Photo by Robert Hanashiro/USA TODAY/Reuters

The suppression of student protests today should worry all of us, including those who might support Israel but who are otherwise convinced about the need for free speech and the mission of universities. This is because the moral panic over antisemitism being stoked by the right is only the latest manifestation of a decades-long campaign to discipline and possibly capture academia.

Over the last few decades, American academia has undergone a painful transformation. Tenured faculty have been replaced in ever-greater numbers by faculty without job security. The humanities and social sciences have been depleted. Tuition and loan debt has spiraled rapidly. University presidents – who are increasingly CEOs, politicians, and generals instead of academics – have become ever more beholden to boards of trustees that are often composed of the wealthy and politically connected. Meanwhile, the right has fought to eliminate affirmative action for racial diversity but sought to demand the equivalent of affirmative action for ideological diversity.

In universities, the lack of democracy and transparency is more of a norm than an exception. Faculty and students are routinely ignored by university administrations when it comes to the most serious issues, which is to say those that involve money. This is perhaps why students have felt that their only recourse when it comes to demanding divestment and the end of military aid to Israel was through protest, carried out in public spaces, rather than the futile road of privately appealing to administrators.

The student protesters are on the right side of history, as they were in the 1960s and 1970s, demonstrating against the immoral and racist war the U.S. was waging in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia. The students were right again in the 1980s, campaigning against apartheid and forcing universities to divest from South Africa.

It is amazing how institutions teach idealism, including these cases of opposition to war and apartheid, and are then astonished that students are idealists. We are now witnessing a student rebellion against the hypocrisy of their elders and the powerful, who tell them they have to accept the lesser of two evils, and who weaponize antisemitism to justify genocide.

Student protesters face real penalties in terms of their reputations and job prospects, as well as their physical and emotional well-being. School administrators who stand up for academic principles and defend their students and faculty may lose their positions, but they would return to the ranks of the faculty, and with tenured security. This is the choice the university leaders face, and it is quite different in consequence to what the students face, which makes their cowardice even more disturbing.

The saying “those who can’t do, teach” seems all too true now in this moment. Instead, it is the students who are teaching their professors and the public at large. Through their actions, the students are showing what idealism and conviction actually look like.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

 

Zeteo contributor Viet Thanh Nguyen is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and a professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. His novel, The Sympathizer, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and numerous other awards. Subscribe to Zeteo to get more from Viet and other Zeteo contributors straight to your inbox.

Political Journalists, Public Intellectuals, Broadcasters, and Activists Medhi Hasan and Naomi Klein On the Ideological and Political Meaning and Corruption of Zionism in the 21st Century and its fundamental connection to the Reactionary Israeli and U.S. Governments and the ongoing Genocide in Gaza

https://zeteo.com/p/new-series-naomi-and-mehdi-discuss

NEW SERIES: Naomi & Mehdi discuss Zionism on 'Unshocked'

 

Naomi joins Mehdi for a new and provocative Zeteo segment. 

Team Zeteo

April 30, 2024

VIDEO:  https://zeteo.com/

In a conversation with Mehdi for her new contributor segment at Zeteo called ‘Unshocked,’ Jewish activist, academic, and author Naomi Klein calls for an “exodus from the ideological shackles of Zionism.” 

Naomi also reacts to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu comparing student protesters at Columbia University to Nazis, telling Mehdi that when it comes to Netanyahu, “there is nobody more adept at exploiting Jewish trauma, historical trauma, and turning it into a political weapon for his own advantage.”

Mehdi also opens up to Naomi about why he decided to boycott the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. 

“I can't call out what Israel is doing to Palestinian journalists with American-made bombs and then go to a fun, comedy-type dinner with the President of the United States — who's not just responsible for that, but is also not even acknowledging it,” Mehdi tells Naomi. 

In 2007, Naomi wrote The Shock Doctrine, a best-selling book that explains what happens when a national crisis throws citizens into a state of shock and how the powerful exploit those moments.

Although it may be one of her most popular books, Naomi tells Mehdi that she dreams of a day where The Shock Doctrine will no longer be relevant, where people can stay grounded even in times of chaos. 

“The idea for calling this segment ‘Unshocked’ — it's not to communicate a kind of world weariness, like nothing can shock me… It's the idea of what I'm hoping we can do together, which is yank us out of shock through analysis, facts, history, and really rooting us in reality,” Naomi explains.

Look out for ‘Unshocked’ with Naomi Klein every month, where she and Mehdi provide deeper analysis on various topics related to current events, religion, politics, ideology, and more.