Education Must Be Defended
Keynote Lecture by Anthony Bogues
Friday, March 3, 2023
4-6:30 p.m.
Rittenberg Lounge, Mather Hall, Trinity College and online
Hosted by the Trinity Social Justice Initiative and the Smart Cities Lab, Trinity College, and the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University
In the 1960s and 70s global anticolonial revolutionary thinkers were in open revolt against nationalist-driven racist attacks. Adjoining the major political campaigns of their day, they formed critical collaborative spaces of research, writing, and thinking. Participants included radical thinkers working outside the academy as well as those who considered themselves “in but not of” it. These included Cedric Robinson and Ambalavaner Sivanandan at the Institute of Race Relations in London, Sylvia Wynter at Atlanta’s Institute of the Black World, and Walter Rodney at Tanzania’s University of Dar es Salaam. The legacy of this generation informs this event, “Education Must Be Defended.”
This one-day conference, organized by the Social Justice Initiative and the Smart Cities Lab at Trinity College and the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University, considers the spatial, institutional, and pedagogical provocations posed by this tradition for the present day. Inspired by an earlier generation of radical intellectuals we will think together about how we might hold critical space for research and pedagogy amidst multiple colliding crises at present.
Image: A Black Students Union leader addresses a crowd of demonstrators in December 1968. Credit: Associated Press.
